Diversity of Palaearctic Dragonflies and Damselflies (Odonata)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is a very well written and conducting study by the authors. Congratulations with it.

I recommend that the authors also discuss under future research the need of updating their results based on the many new data that are available in Europe and based on the new European Red List (in prep). That will definitely change the species to include that are threatened or NT and which European assessment is at the same time their global assessment. The many new data will make difference even more clearly visible, but will not change the pattern and the results as they are now presented

 

Some textual comments:

L344-346: number C and D are not mentioned on the figure above

L409: ...an area of low diversity. Based on Fig 1 this seems to me rather an area of 'high' diversity

L452: southwest and central Asia

L495: replace reference Boudot et al. 2009, by Boudot et al. 2021 (already mentioned under references). The latter is for the Levant much more up-to-date and accurate.

L549: reference not correctly cited, replace by De Knijf et al.  2011

L643: authors not complete: replace by De Knijf,G.;Flenker,U.;Vanappelghem,C.;Manci,C.O.;Kalkman,V.J.;Demolder,H.

 

Author Response

Textual comments have all been addressed. We did not include a section on updating the database based on new data becoming available as this ads little to the content of the paper and as the issue with the imbalance in data is already addressed in 3.4 (sampling effort). 

Reviewer 2 Report

I have read the paper and found it well written and supported by the data. I have very few comments, some just minor corrections of typos, that I have marked on the ms. Comments to authors: This paper summarizes a large dataset of distribution for odonates in the Palaearctic, and aims at studying patterns of diversity of lotic and lentic species, and areas of endemism and threatened species. All these goals have been correctly addressed and I have no major comments. My only suggestion is about the contrasting diversity of Japan compared to other areas at the same latitude, particularly in the Mediterranean. One further explanation is the much more humid weather of Japan, which makes freshwater habitats more common and widespread. Could this have an effect on the current fauna of both areas?

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Corrections of typos shown in the pdf have been incorporated in the new file. The higher diversity of Japan was discussed with the authors and the suggestions of the reviewer that the higher diversity in the south is partially explained by the more humid climate has been included in the summary and the main text.