The Role of Citizen Science in the Research and Management of Invasive Lionfish across the Western Atlantic

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript presents an interesting synthesis of the importance of citizen science in monitoring and mitigating impacts of the invasive lionfish. The study has aimed to capture the extent of citizen science in various organizations throughout the invasive range in the western Atlantic. The manuscript is well written and the results, although extensive, are well presented. I only have few minor comments.

Figure 1.

I would be more interested in seeing the locations of the organizations rather than the total number of responses per country, but I believe this is done to retain the anonymity of the respondents. Also, I’d suggest that you add some references for the lionfish range from for example https://nas.er.usgs.gov/viewer/omap.aspx?SpeciesID=963. As I read the figure now, the range is considered as continuous until 300 m depth along the coast. This probably is true, but I suggest justifying the range with a reference to a source.

R531-532

Harris, Fogg, Gittings, et al., 2020,  reference is there twice.

R511-532 When discussing the data citizen science projects produce, I’d also discuss the type of data and its limitations. These data often are presence only and therefore often require standard monitoring to complement. Regardless of the limitations, citizen collected observations are often crucial for monitoring NIS spread.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Review of the manusctipt on ’Regional Synthesis of Invasive Lionfish Citizen Science Programs in the Tropical Western Atlantic’ by Clements et al.

This is a very nice study of citizen science programs on one of the most invasive non-indigenous marine species. Have a few major and several specific comments for the authors to consider.

Major comments:

1. Better structuring several parts of the manuscript would be required, to ensure better readability and understanding. This concerns methods, results and discussion sections.
2. Re-arranging of the discussion section would be needed, to ensure better balance between different sections. Considerations should be also given to modifying title of one sub-section.
3. Repetitions should be checked and whenever possible/feasible, eliminated and/or minimised.
4. Several technical issues, listed under specific comments, should be carefully checked and the manuscript edited as appropriate.

Specific comments:

L112 Methods section requires structuring and inserting sub-headings to allow readability. Would suggest max 5 subheadings (necessarily one on case studies and one on statistical analysis). Also, please see comments below on L264-277 and L427-428.

L136-136 Suggest deleting the sentence ’ Through the survey, we gathered information about organizations’ lionfish management approaches, public participation, types of participation, citizen science, and the importance of citizen scientists to lionfish work’, as the same thing is said on L153-156.

L217-218 Please check and correct. French Guiana has one respondent and Saint Barthelemy is not indicated in the map (Fig.1). Suriname has 0, as Anguila (Fig. 1). Please check both the map and text to make them conistent.

L236 Check the score range. It appears from the Table 1 that minimum should be 0.04 (and not 0.22).

L250, 254, 258 What is the reason to provide the number of respondent, if you are not using such information systematically in your manuscript? Suggest to delete.

L278-399 Information and text provided by case studies is extremely difficult to follow and compare to each other. Please organise information by a few general and similar sub-headings/topics by all case studies (e.g. objective, main activity, outcomes, etc. etc.)

L264-277 List and spell all case studies. Should be done under Material and Methods section. And use acronymes later in the text.

L330, L362 Should it be ’non-profit’ instead of ’not-for-profit’? This is applicable for the whole manuscript.

L356 … approach WHICH IS DEFINED AS MOBILISING …

L409 and 413 Delete decimals (to be consistent with other parts of  the manuscript).

L427-428 if you arrange results by broader regions (central America and south America), you should clearly tell which countries belong to those regions. This should be done under Materials and Methods. Otherwise the message is lost.

L430-435 Figure 3 heading needs serious attention, as seems to be largely a copy-paste from Figure 1 (i.e. contains irrelevant statements; e.g. ’The number after each county name is the number of organizations that responded to the survey and engage citizen scientists.’; and ’ Gray represents countries with no response.’). Also, consistency of naming/wording should be ensured: is it ’location’ or ’country’ (L431) – this to be checked throughout the manuscript (Figure 1 legend uses ’country’ only).

L474 There are actually six (and not five) approaches displayed in Figure 5.

L498 Would say ’Engagement’ better describes the content of this section.

L514-515 Delete ’ meaning that citizen scientists primarily support data collection efforts’ as repetitive (see first sentence of this paragraph).

L570-584 Consider a bit adopting and moving to fit the next section.

L585 Would ’Challenges’ be better?

L607-620 Would say this suits under ’Challenges’ better. And ensures better balance between sections 4.1 and 4.2.

L608-609 Delete the sentence about representativeness, as the first sentence of this section tells broadly the same thing. Further, based on purely this sentnce, the paper can be immediately rejected (as the methodology is inadequate and results therefore not representative – which is actually not the case!).

L611 Replace ’numerous’ by ’several’.

L611-620 Organise the different factors given either by bullets or number them. To increase readability.

L641-654 Check with the abstract to ensure no/minimal overlap.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This manuscript attempts to describe the initiatives of organizations from the western Atlantic regarding the lionfish invasion. However, the manuscript does not clearly establish the objective of the work because it appears more than a report that a scientific comparison of organization’s engagement. By doing an “inventory of initiatives” is definitely not scientific in the way that the manuscript is not clearly establishing any comparison between the initiatives. Or, exploring which founding initiatives have produced keystone results to understand the progression of the lionfish’s invasion or any other biological or socio-ecological factor involved.

A suggestion of objective, would be:

In this study, our work aimed to compare the role that non-governmental organizations from western Atlantic play to address the lionfish invasion in terms of management approaches, citizen engagement for collaboration, and public perception. Actually, a more suitable title would be something like:

“Key role of citizen science programs to enhance research and management of the lionfish invasion in the western Atlantic”

The abstract needs to include key findings. As it is, just mentioned that

“Our findings demonstrate the conservation value of citizen scientists to organizations and their efforts to monitor and control the invasion”. But this information is not enough.

In the Introduction some sentences need editing. For instance, “Invasive Indo-Pacific lionfish (Pterois volitans and P. miles) in the Western Atlantic Ocean are the most successful marine fish invasion recorded to date (Côté et al., 2013; 57 Cure et al., 2014)”.

I suggest: In the western Atlantic Ocean, the Indo-Pacific lionfish (Pterois volitans, P. miles) has reached one of the most successful biological invasions in the marine ecosystem to date (..). The quoting Lopez-Gomez (i.d.) must be 2014 (see reference: López-Gómez, M. J., Aguilar-Perera, A., & Perera-Chan, L. (2014). Mayan diver-fishers as citizen scientists: detection and monitoring of the invasive red lionfish in the Parque Nacional Arrecife Alacranes, southern Gulf of Mexico. Biological Invasions, 16(7), 1351-1357).

¿What is a wicked management problem? Line 83.

The methods sections must begin with explaining the scope of the study area, this means countries in which the study was centered, and the proceed to explain how the questionnaires were assembled to record which kind of information. I recommend getting a better organization of the Methods section. The “snowball” technique has to be described, because it is only mentioned.

The beginning of Results section is awkward. It could begin much better than just mentioning that “Results are presented in this section”. This latter is obvious.

In other words, I recommend authors to better explain the approach they followed in order to presents the Results accordingly. I mean to offer a better design of the study in the Methods sections and based the narrative of the Results accordingly.

Figures (map) are great! But I consider the map is not necessary unless you are making comparisons of contributions between countries or any other sort of procedure. The lionfish range depicted in the map is expected since it is dispersed all over the region, so it is not necessary to be depicted. Fig 1 and Fig 3 are showing the same information, I mean the number of respondents. So, Fig.3 is not necessary either.

Discussion must be accordingly to Results. I urge authors to make the Discussion short and to the point.

For instance, 4.2 Obstacles could be merged with 4.3 Limitations of the study in one shorter section. Future Research would be another short section in which recommendations are made.

Why did authors not include more comparisons in the Discussion to the very same problem is currently happening in the Mediterranean Sea with Pterois miles. There is a very important body of knowledge in which citizen science is incorporated to explore the invasion there. Authors did just mention this “Similarly, detections by citizen scientists are facilitating the monitoring of the lionfish invasion currently underway in the Mediterranean Sea (Azzurro et al., 2017; Savva et al., 2020; Ulman et al., 2021)”. Or why did authors not include comparisons of citizen science usefulness with other cases in the marine ecosystem such as early detecting invertebrates, such as introduced (invasive) crabs, corals, shrimps with help of citizen engagement. There is vast scientific literature on this latter.

Conclusions must be clearer in which were the key findings. I noticed that authors mention the relevance of citizen science, but this finding has to be more substantiated.

Various references in the list are not correctly referred, such as 63.Scyphers which does not have journal name. Other references do not have year or are incomplete. I urge authors to provide adequate format to the list of references and those in text too.

I do not understand why authors mixed two ways of quoting. They used in text the last name and year, but in the List of References used the numbering system (Vancouver) but it is alphabetically ordered. The journal uses the Vancouver, with numbers in text and listed in references.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I have now read the revised manuscript and compared it against the initial version and my comments. Am glad that the authors have done very good job and seriously considered all my comments. I think we can accept the revised version.

Reviewer 3 Report

• Authors did a great job addressing my suggestions to improve the manuscript. However, there are still various suggestions and corrections must be made by authors before this manuscript could be accepted for publication.
• Title is now reflective the objective of the manuscript. However, the title in the METADADA of the journal remains the same as the old version. Also, the abstract needs editing. I suggest the following first sentence for the abstract: The management of the population of lionfish (Pterois volitans, P. miles) in the western Atlantic Ocean surpasses the capacity of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) alone. Consequently, NGOs have engaged the collaboration of public as citizen scientists in order to obtain additional help. In this work, we used a structured survey to document the perceptions and activities of members from 71 NGOs directly engaging the public to address the lionfish invasion in the region. In addition, five study cases were included in which exemplified, varied and multi-pronged approaches to public and citizen scientists’ engagement in lionfish control, monitoring, and knowledge were used.
• Please, rephrase what you meant in lines 30-32 in abstract.
• It is not clear which group (either the public in general or citizen scientists) was the one contributing the most in the analysis. Because from line 32 to 32 in the abstract readhs “Sixty-five percent of organizations surveyed engaged the public in data collection, and data collection was ranked as the scientific research activity in which the public is most often involved”. However, in lines 36-37 in abstract it reads “Collectively these findings demonstrate the conservation value of citizen scientists to assist organizational efforts to control, manage, and study a large-scale marine invasion”.
• Please, clarify. For the purpose of this work, is there any difference between public in general and citizen scientist. In my understanding, the public does not have any specific guidance to help any NGO, but by contrast a “citizen scientist” does have any previous basic training in what to do to help the NGO dealing with lionfish, for instance.
• It could be useful to clarify that P. volitans is the main invader in comparison to P. miles in the Gulf of Mexico.
• Line 150, must be: The survey was sent to 186 individuals, of whom 170 consisted of a seed….
• Lines 154-156: Do authors consider this information is relevant?
• Line 157: Do authors consider this information is important, If so, then it has to be in the Results section.
• Lines 540. It reads Impact and importance. But I would ask, impact and importance of what? Please, clarify.
• Discussion section could still be shortened enough just to include key comparisons. Please.
• I have a great concern with conclusions. Authors provide high importance to citizen scientist all over the manuscript. But authors never defined what a citizen scientist is. Is this person trained to become a citizen scientist? What approaches are done to train a person to become a citizen scientist? In this regard, I noticed that in Conclusions authors state “Our research emphasizes the importance of citizen scientists to organizations; the majority of organizations engaging citizen scientists noted they could not conduct their work without them. Collectively, our findings demonstrate the conservation value of citizen scientists and volunteers to organizations and the invasion at large”. Here, in the Conclusion section I was expecting responses to the objectives the authors stated in the Introduction:

            “Specifically, we sought to understand: i.) the types of scientific activities and     management approaches citizen scientists and the public engage in; ii.) the ways          organizations engage the public and citizens scientists; iii.) the importance of     citizen scientists for conducting lionfish management and research; iv.) if    involvement of the public and citizen scientists affects the perceived impact of   lionfish management programs; and v.) the limitations organizations face with   regard to lionfish research and management”. So, which are the responses to    those objectives then? I strongly suggest the responses to these objectives in the        Conclusions section please.

• All bunch of questionnaires, or other stuff, MUST be in a supplementary material section.
• Again, authors did not follow the standard to use the Vancouver style for the references in which numbers are used in text instead last names and years and the list of references has to be numbered. Why did all authors miss that? I do not understand. The journal DIVERSITY requires that reference format.
• I suggest a missing reference, which represent the very first record of lionfish in the Gulf of Mexico: Aguilar-Perera, A., Tuz-Sulub, A. (2010). Non-native, invasive red lionfish (Pterois volitans [Linnaeus, 1758]: Scorpaenidae), is first recorded in the southern Gulf of Mexico, off the northern Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. Aquatic Invasions 5(2), 9-12.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.