New Cumacean Records in the Italian Marine Waters (Mediterranean Sea)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

I am including a PDF with several marked issues and suggestions to improve the manuscript. Check all of them carefully. Text grammar and structure must also be thoroughly revised.

The presented information is generally sound and contributes to the knowledge of a sometimes neglected group within the Peracarida.

Check through the whole text the times when you cite taxa for the first name and make sure to include the author and year for them. Also, use abbreviated forms of genera that have already been mentioned.

In the Introduction, take care as you start and repeat the word Cumacea/Cumacean many times, so you must change it to avoid redundancy.

Other things are marked on this session.

Material and Methods: any reason for skipping "J" and "K" on the map? minor issues marked.

Tables: it is not necessary to state in the legend "Table shows[...]".

Distribution and depth: This information would be best presented in the form of a table; otherwise, it would be important to include more information about the material examined and a list of synonyms. 

Discussion: many issues are marked on this part; Many paragraphs are unnecessarily separated. Many sentences are confusing and general writing must be reviewed. The ending is not very conclusive, please elaborate on it. You could cite taxonomic impediments for many peracarid groups, and the necessity to train new researchers on taxonomy, integrative approaches, etc. Special attention when you state in the same sentence the information from the literature and then the information from your findings. It is important to let this information more clear and concise.

Best regards

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Please, check many writing issues, not only related to grammar but also to the structure of the text.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The localities of the sediment burrowing group of cumacean crustaceans are presented, with seven species reported as not found before in the seas surrounding Italy. Secondly, four types of sediment are recorded in which each species is found.

The abstract promises information on ecology but what is presented is merely absence or presence of species in the four types of sediment. The observation that species might have a preference, or not, for a certain type of sediment is lost in the text and could be worked out more. No clear conclusions on this are made visible.

Occurence of species in different types of sediment might give information on their ecology but the way the authors treat these observations confuses the reader:

" Three specimens belonging to specie Cumopsis goodsir were collected during our sampling surveys at 3 and 15 meters on sandy bottom as reported in literature; this species burrowing into fine sand, but it was also present at medium sand and muddy sand sediment. Cumopsis goodsir is generally most abundant in presence on a sandy beach with a lower organic content, however, in our samples the number of individuals found is rather low, probably due to the presence of organic matter due to human activities along the coasts. In fact, in stations where Cumopsis goodsir is scarce or absent, the presence of the vicarious species Cumopsis longipes is recorded as well as observed by Ledoyer and Messe ..."

And personally I find that the following sentences should not be used anymore by biologists who are not directly contributing to applied conservation research:

"Collecting information about this group is very important both because Cumacean constitute a link in the trophic webs of the benthic environment, being food for many organisms, and because it increases our knowledge of marine biodiversity, in this case above all for the Italian Sea. "

We know that all organisms constitute a link in trophic webs. Cumaceans themselves also eat organisms who are indispensable for their well-being. Even politicians cannot be impressed by such claims.

Author's plea for more taxonomic skills can be put into practice by showing proof of the identification of the seven newly reported species. Photo's of the animals and some detailed photo's or drawings of diagnostic features will enhance the credibility of adding names to a checklist.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

The English needs to be very much improved. I started with suggestions but soon stopped at a point where I felt that I was rewriting the text. The incorrect use of articles (the, a), adjectives, and singular and plural in subjects and nouns quite often obscures the meaning of the text. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript by Marusso et al., is a result of twenty-years study of the Cumacean fauna of Italian Seas. The research contains valuable data and should be published, but definitely not in the current state. First of all, the authors must significantly improve the language, since the English in the presented manuscript is a mess. I strictly recommend the English proofreading with a native speaker.

Second, authors should significantly reduce the number of paragraphs by concatenating them. Throughout the manuscript, there are paragraphs consisting of a single sentence that could be combined logically with the next or with the previous paragraph. In general, the logic of presentation should be improved and reworked.

Third, the discussion of the results is only a statement of individual facts, without further evaluation. The authors obtained new data on the distribution of cumaceans, which do not correspond to those described earlier. This is a very interesting result itself, that requires some kind of discussion, but it is totally absent in the manuscript text. The last “concluding” paragraph adds nothing to the discussion and should be removed or totally rewritten.

Thus, I recommend a major revision and substantial rewriting of the manuscript text.

Minor comments:

First of all, I do not understand what is “Italian Sea”. Perhaps it should be Italian seas?

Line 19: Cumaceans are betic organismS…. …can borrow tunnelS.

Lines 20-24: These organisms… The sentence looks like a result of a long editing process that has not been proofread in the end. There are only two features mentioned and I cannot say that they are unique for crustaceans. For example, Notostraca also possess carapace and cylindrical abdomen. Please, rephrase.

Lines 25-26: “They can be influenced by the type and nature of the sediment as well as of its organic matter content”. How could they be influenced? It would be much better to explain this idea in a couple of words here, in the manuscript text. I’ve checked the references and, but they are rather about substrate preferences and feeding strategies depending on it, but not about the effect of substrate on Cumacea.

Line 52: “to increase knowledge about Cumacean taxon.” I did not understand, what kind of knowledge about the whole taxon Cumacea the authors would like to increase. Please clarify or rephrase.

Line 108: “The presence in the Italian Sea of each species collected was verified through the use of the last edition of Italian checklist…” How can you verify your own data using the literature??? In my opinion such studies themselves verify and updates the former lists of species. Of course there may be some mistakes in species identification, but in this case, if the authors are not sure in their identification skills, they should contact with specialists in cumacean systematics. Perhaps it was just a comparison of your results and the former studies, but this should be properly described.

Lines 126-136: Too many paragraphs. You do not need to make each new sentence a separated paragraph. Please, rewrite.

Legend to figure 1: I think It would be better to provide also the information about the numbers 1-9. Just a couple of words with a reference.

Line 156: “About all species collected…” Perhaps it would be better to write “Of all the species collected”?

Line 197: I would change the table name to the following: List of species collected in surveys from 2001 to 2021

Line 198: Should “Individual number” be a “Number of specimens”?

Line 226: I think there is no need to repeat the word “table” here. Just begin with “Biogeographical distribution…” The same is for Table 3 (Line 432)

Line 275: On the Figure 1 I did not find any information about the depths. However, this information is provided later in the text. Please rephrase, or provide the corresponding information on the figure 1. The same is for lines 312-313, 341-341, 366-367, and 389-390.

Lines 484-484: The whole paragraph looks like it came from the introduction. Especially the first sentence. It should be rewritten or removed from the manuscript.

Lines 491-497: Too many separate paragraphs that should be rearranged and rewritten in a new one.

Line 498: specieS. The word "Species" is singular and plural. The word “specie” means coin money. Please, check this throughout the manuscript!

Line 510: The reference is missing (number 26 perhaps?)

Line 511: What is “Mediterranean France Sea”? Perhaps it should be “French coast of the Mediterranean Sea” or something like this.

Line 523: “D'arachon Basin” shoud be bassin d’Arcachon if you use French spelling, or Arcachon Bay in English spelling.

Here I repeat once again, the authors must significantly improve the language, since the English in the presented manuscript is a mess. I strictly recommend the English proofreading with a native speaker.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

Thanks for improving the MS. I am sending a pdf file with some more suggestions and corrections to be addressed before final acceptance. 

Kind regards

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear authors,

Thanks for improving the MS. I am sending a pdf file with some more suggestions and corrections to be addressed before final acceptance. 

Kind regards

ok

Reviewer 2 Report

Although many spelling errors have been corrected and unclear language has been repaired the paper still needs a careful close reading by an editor. 

Although many spelling errors have been corrected and unclear language has been repaired the paper still needs a careful close reading by an editor. 

Author Response

Although many spelling errors have been corrected and unclear language has been repaired the paper still needs a careful close reading by an editor.

I’ve already submitted the manuscript to an English mother tongue.

The authors addressed almost all my comments and have significantly improved the manuscript. They have done a great work and the new version of the manuscript looks really good. Nevertheless I still have some minor points that must be improved before publishing.

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors addressed almost all my comments and have significantly improved the manuscript. They have done a great work and the new version of the manuscript looks really good.  Nevertheless I still have some minor points that must be improved before publishing.

Lines 27-32: The sentence is too long in my opinion. I'd prefer to split it. For example: " This taxon represents an important link in marine trophic webs because they are common food for many species of fish, especially those species that live near the bottom, such as Pleuronectiformes or Mulids [5]. They are also known as indicators of organic enrichment [6] and eutrophication on soft bottoms [7] and are therefore often used together with other Peracarids for environmental monitoring. "

Line 364: 63 m?

Lines 377-380: The sentence is too long and should be divided into two parts. For example: "We collected 2 individuals belonging to L. (Leucon) affinis in the Adriatic Sea, (Biogeographical Area 9) at a depth of 29 m on a muddy bottom. Strafella [10] also collected this species in the same area but at a depth of 75 m on sediment mainly muddy; nevertheless, the Italian checklist still does not report this data."

Lines 389-393: Again the long sentence which is too hard to undestand. You may easily chop it to several smaller sentences. For example: "On the other hand, there are wide gaps, regarding the characteristics of the sediment features of the bottom in which the species prefer to live. In fact, of the 29 species collected, we have found information only for 12 of them. Moreover, B. pulchella and P. longicorne longicorne are described as species living on the sandy bottom, but we also found them on the muddy and detrital bottom."
I also would like to see here a reference for bottom preferences of B. pulchella and P. longicorne longicorne, or maybe it is a reference 31?

Line 395: collected it FROM a sandy bottom?

Lines 395-399: As far as I know there should be either "preferred" and "lived" or "prefer" and "live". Just a sequence of tenses.

Lines 406-417 made me a bit confused. The article is about diversity and distribution of cumaceans, not about philosophical problems of zoological science, isn't it? In my opinion this should be shortened to one or two small sentences. The same is for conclusions, lines 423-427.

Author Response

Lines 27-32: The sentence is too long in my opinion. I'd prefer to split it. For example: " This taxon represents an important link in marine trophic webs because they are common food for many species of fish, especially those species that live near the bottom, such as Pleuronectiformes or Mulids [5]. They are also known as indicators of organic enrichment [6] and eutrophication on soft bottoms [7] and are therefore often used together with other Peracarids for environmental monitoring. "

Ok

Line 364: 63 m?

Ok, yes 63 m.

Lines 377-380: The sentence is too long and should be divided into two parts. For example: "We collected 2 individuals belonging to L. (Leucon) affinis in the Adriatic Sea, (Biogeographical Area 9) at a depth of 29 m on a muddy bottom. Strafella [10] also collected this species in the same area but at a depth of 75 m on sediment mainly muddy; nevertheless, the Italian checklist still does not report this data."

Ok

Lines 389-393: Again the long sentence which is too hard to undestand. You may easily chop it to several smaller sentences. For example: "On the other hand, there are wide gaps, regarding the characteristics of the sediment features of the bottom in which the species prefer to live. In fact, of the 29 species collected, we have found information only for 12 of them. Moreover, B. pulchella and P. longicorne longicorne are described as species living on the sandy bottom, but we also found them on the muddy and detrital bottom." I also would like to see here a reference for bottom preferences of B. pulchella and P. longicorne longicorne, or maybe it is a reference 31?

Ok, and I added the reference.

Line 395: collected it FROM a sandy bottom?

Ok

Lines 395-399: As far as I know there should be either "preferred" and "lived" or "prefer" and "live". Just a sequence of tenses.

Ok

Lines 406-417 made me a bit confused. The article is about diversity and distribution of cumaceans, not about philosophical problems of zoological science, isn't it? In my opinion this should be shortened to one or two small sentences. The same is for conclusions, lines 423-427.

Lines 406-417

Other reviewers have suggested including this part and we agree, in our opinion it’s not surely a philosophical topic, but it’s  indeed a zoological one. So it doesn’t need to be shortened. Of course, the article talks about the distribution of Cumaceans but getting to obtain these results is sometimes difficult and, in our opinion, this is also a place to bring out the problems encountered in this field, also to encourage the reader to share the few existing information.

lines 423-427

This paragraph, on the other hand, is important because by now we are approaching research not only for knowledge but also for preserving and protecting. Our results are therefore useful to governors and in our opinion, it is also good to report it in the manuscript. So it doesn’t need to be shortened.