Diversity, Distribution, and Habitat Association of Anuran Species from Keffa, Southwest Ethiopia

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Kassie et al. and provides an account on the diversity of Ethiopian frogs from Keffa. This survey is extensive, yet it misses some broader information that could be useful for the wider community. For instance, no information is provided about each species and family raw numbers (how many individuals were collected during the entire survey and specific months per species and family). Likewise, no information is provided about life history on each species (e.g., SVL per sex per species, how many juveniles per species, habits per species: terrestrial, nocturnal, arboreal, etc.). This study provides new insight on diversity metrics (e.g., abundance, richness) this region yet is unclear how it differs from any previous studies on this region and Ethiopian amphibians in general.

Here are some concrete suggestions to expand or focus on this MS:

1)    What is different in this study from others in terms of frog diversity and abundance from previous studies of Ethiopian herpetofauna? If this study is the first, then how it compares on others in nearby areas. If not the first, are the tendencies observed similar or different from previous reports. Are previous reports more optimistic (e.g., higher diversity, abundance, richness, etc.) and reflects the impacts of human disturbance and an overall decline as seem in other amphibian communities.

2)    What are the human pressures and the impact of climate change on the Keffa region. We tend to assume that the diversity, abundance and other diversity metrics tend to stay, yet human pressure tends to cause such estimates to decline or change as farmland expands or climate change impacts hydrological patterns. The authors showed correlations between diversity and temperature. This environmental parameter is the most likely to be affected by climate change, so in a future world (60-80 years from now), how is the future Keffa compared to the present one in terms of environmental parameters. For instance, are the wetlands expect to be as wetlands in the future or these habitats would follow the pattern of desertification as expected in other regions of the planet such is Eastern South America and the Amazon.

3)    As mentioned, data on life histories and raw values are important for future reevaluations on the diversity Keffa. So future research needs such raw data (geographic coordinates were each species was collected, SVLs, number of juveniles, number of males/females, clutch sizes etc.) As this study is presented, the results are final and static values that could be compared if a future study is done, when the impacts of climate change would be more evident.

There are few spelling and grammar errors, please do a proof-reading before submitting your MS.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, 

I have attached here my response for the comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Review of “Diversity, distribution, a d habitat association of anuran species from Keffa, southwest Ethiopia

This paper presents the results of an intensive field and laboratory study, that sheds light on a relatively little-known area in Ethiopia. The research design and analyses are appropriate and clearly laid out. The tables are useful and the figures also. One figure containing a number of frog photos is not of the highest quality. I have indicated which images need to be replaced.

The statistics have been nicely detailed, and used to support the findings.

The references are all suitable, and no important references have been omitted.

The writing is very good, and the paper is worthy of publication.

Detailed comments are preceded by the line number:

21. Hyperolius must be italicised

100. 600 m [no hyphen]

142. insert space between 48 and µl

227. Is the distance based on 16S, or CO1? If 16S, these values are significant, but if based only on CO1 they may not indicate species-level separation. It is not useful to combine these genes for calculation of p.

241. insert space between 2390 and m

244. insert space between 2427 and m

268. Table 1: why is A. clarkei in bold and underlined?

271. Figure 3 caption: why was 16S not used? CO1 will show excessive differences due to its high variability, and may over-estimate the number of species present.

322. insert space between ‘and’ and ‘riverine’

339. frog species [no capital F]

383. insert space after A. and also after H.

384. Phrynobatrachus must be in italics

385. insert spaces between sp. and nov. and 1

411. delete (Neckel-Oliveira et al. 2000)

412. delete (Auguste and Hailey, 2018)

415. delete (Dodd, 2010)

427. The sentence starting : ‘In line with this’ needs to be expanded, as it is somewhat cryptic as it stands

443. The first word should not be in bold

486. can you replace images ‘c’, ‘f’, ‘l’ and ‘o’ with better quality photos?

528. The formatting of the references is uneven

Author Response

I have uploaded my response.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx