Rainfall Influences the Patterns of Diversity and Species Distribution in Sandy Beaches of the Amazon Coast
, Hugo H. R. Costa 2, Guilherme N. Corte 3, Fernanda M. Souza 4,5 and Maíra Pombo 2,*Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
In general, this is a basic study on the diversity and ecological drivers of the distribution of macrobenthic invertebrates from a tropical estuary.
The manuscript is well structured and easy to read. The study questions and hypotheses are well presented. The discussion and conclusions are nicely compared with references relevant to the research. Therefore, this manuscript fits well within the aims and scope of the special issue journal. Despite the simple and effective approach, I think that this study contributes to improve the knowledge to the research field in an understudied area (Amazon delta).
My single and current reservation is the presentation of Fig. 6 (RDA triplot) – I could not find in the plot all the species coded as ‘non-overlapping ones’ (as stated by the authors in the figure caption), in particular, ‘sp. 7’ and ‘sp. 8’. Authors could consider both the rebranding the figure to a Biplot (variables and species) and the repositioning of the codes of the selected species. This can be easily achieved with simple updates in command lines in vegan. Authors can set the argument ‘pos’ of function ‘text’ to a specific number that resets the position of the labels. After that, the manuscript could be accepted for publication as is.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
We would like to thank you for your time to review our manuscript and for the comments and suggestions given. We have revised aiming to address all the points raised and provide below a response to each one of them. We hope that is now suitable for acceptance.
Thanks again for your time,
On behalf of the authors,
Helio H. Checon, Hugo H. R. da Costa, Guilherme N. Corte, Fernanda M. Souza and Maíra Pombo
Reviewer. In general, this is a basic study on the diversity and ecological drivers of the distribution of macrobenthic invertebrates from a tropical estuary.The manuscript is well structured and easy to read. The study questions and hypotheses are well presented. The discussion and conclusions are nicely compared with references relevant to the research. Therefore, this manuscript fits well within the aims and scope of the special issue journal. Despite the simple and effective approach, I think that this study contributes to improve
the knowledge to the research field in an understudied area (Amazon delta)
Authors. We appreciate the kind words and the acknowledgement of the potential contribution of the study.
- My single and current reservation is the presentation of Fig. 6 (RDA triplot) – I could not find in the plot all the species coded as ‘non-overlapping ones’ (as stated by the authors in the figure
caption), in particular, ‘sp. 7’ and ‘sp. 8’. Authors could consider both the rebranding the figure to a Biplot (variables and species) and the repositioning of the codes of the selected species. This
can be easily achieved with simple updates in command lines in vegan. Authors can set the argument ‘pos’ of function ‘text’ to a specific number that resets the position of the labels. After that, the manuscript could be accepted for publication as is
A. Thanks for the suggestion. Indeed, there is a lot of overlap in the species representation, due to the overall low correlation with the rda axis. We had used the argument “pos” but it did not help in this case. However, we have redone the figure using the “orditorp” argument, which we found to be the best in this case to reduce overlap. Thus, we believe it is less clumped and more species can be identified, although some overlap still exists among species very close to 0. The new figure is inserted in the revised version (Fig. 6). We have also corrected the caption to address some mistakes identified by Reviewer 2.
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript “Rainfall influences the patterns of diversity and species distribution in sandy beaches of the Amazon Coast”, by Helio H. Checon, Hugo Henrique Rodrigues da Costa, Guilherme N. Corte, Fernanda Maria de Souza, and Maíra Pombo, submitted to Sustainability, assesses spatial and temporal changes in the soft-bottom biodiversity and environmental variables of three beaches in the northernmost stretch of the Brazilian coast, at the north of the Amazonas river delta. It is a very interesting study, and very well written and put together. It is well supported by the literature, and it presents sound conclusions. I have only detected some details that should be corrected, before publication, which are detailed bellow.
L119-124: it is not clear the period for each of the precipitation measurements. Does they refer to the full period (e.g. <50mm is for 3 month (September- November)) or is the monthly value?
L132: 20cm [diameter] cylindrical core
L135: Not sure if “evaluated” is the proper word. Maybe “inspected” is more adequate.
L214: There is an extra “0” in “Figure 02”
L223-224: The units for each variable should not be included here, because in this context they are meaningless.
L246-247: What do the shaded areas represent? Is it a confidence interval? If so, that should be stated in the figure caption. If it does not have any meaning, the authors should consider removing.
L293: it should be “mostly related to…”.
L299: it should be β-diversity, at the beginning of the figure caption
L314-318: Why there are different colored dots, what do they represent? And there are no A and B panels as mentioned in the caption.
L386: “… Culicoides sp. [which] were mostly…”
L391: “corroborates other findings, Gandara-Martins et al.” Replace the “,” by “:” or by “.”
Supplementary Information
There are no mentions on the text to most of the supplementary figures. Those figures should be mentioned on the text or be removed from the supplementary material.
Figure S1 caption: “among beaches: [10] at Goiaba”
Fig. S2.. There is an extra “.”
Fig. S4, S5 and S6: again, the shaded areas should be described or removed.
Author Response
Reviewer: The manuscript “Rainfall influences the patterns of diversity and species distribution in sandy beaches of the Amazon Coast”, by Helio H. Checon, Hugo Henrique Rodrigues da Costa, Guilherme N. Corte, Fernanda Maria de Souza, and Maíra Pombo, submitted to Sustainability, assesses spatial and temporal changes in the soft-bottom biodiversity and environmental variables of three beaches in the northernmost stretch of the Brazilian coast, at the north of the Amazonas river delta. It is a very interesting study, and very well written and put together. It is well supported by the literature, and it presents sound conclusions. I have only detected some details that should be corrected, before publication, which are detailed bellow.
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for the suggestions and appreciation of our work. We have addressed all the points raised and provide below a response to each one of them. We hope that is now suitable for acceptance.
Thanks again for your time,
On behalf of the authors,
Helio H. Checon, Hugo H. R. da Costa, Guilherme N. Corte, Fernanda M. Souza and Maíra Pombo
R: L119-124: it is not clear the period for each of the precipitation measurements. Does they refer to the full period (e.g. <50mm is for 3 month (September- November)) or is the monthly value?
We improved the explanation in the M&M section, as follows:
“To compute these precipitation values, daily values of this parameter were gathered from the National Institute of Meteorology (INMET) database; we then computed the cumulative measures for the 30 days immediately preceding each campaign date.”
R: L132: 20cm [diameter] cylindrical core
Amended in the MS
R: L135: Not sure if “evaluated” is the proper word. Maybe “inspected” is more adequate.
Suggestion accepted, amended in the MS
R: L214: There is an extra “0” in “Figure 02”
Amended
R: L223-224: The units for each variable should not be included here, because in this context they are meaningless.
Amended
R: L246-247: What do the shaded areas represent? Is it a confidence interval? If so, that should be stated in the figure caption. If it does not have any meaning, the authors should consider removing.
Shaded areas are a kind of confidence interval, calculated for the non-linear model; it represents data dispersion based on the threshold value used to adjust the curve. We added a brief explanation on the Figure caption, hope the reviewer is in agreement.
R: L293: it should be “mostly related to…”.
Amended
R: L299: it should be β-diversity, at the beginning of the figure caption
Amended
R: L314-318: Why there are different colored dots, what do they represent? And there are no A and B panels as mentioned in the caption.
R: L386: “… Culicoides sp. [which] were mostly…”
Amended
R: L391: “corroborates other findings, Gandara-Martins et al.” Replace the “,” by “:” or by “.”
Amended
Reviewer: Supplementary Information
There are no mentions on the text to most of the supplementary figures. Those figures should be mentioned on the text or be removed from the supplementary material.
Below the lines (within the final text) where the SI figures are mentioned:
Figure S1: Line 143.
Figure S2: Line 234
Figure S3: Line 255
Figures S4-S6: Line 278
R: Figure S1 caption: “among beaches: [10] at Goiaba”
Amended
R: Fig. S2.. There is an extra “.”
Amended
R: Fig. S4, S5 and S6: again, the shaded areas should be described or removed.
We added the same information of Figure 3.
Reviewer 3 Report
Review
Paper title: Rainfall influences the patterns of diversity and species distribution in sandy beaches of the Amazon Coast
The authors conducted a field survey to describe macrobenthic communities of sandy beaches from the northernmost part of the Brazilian Amazon Coastal. They provided novel data on diversity and distribution patterns of coastal macrobenthic communities and compared the data with previous studies. They concluded that the most important factors explaining variations in the macrobenthic communities were rainfall variability and organic matter content in sediments. This study may have important implications for further monitoring and conservation in the region.
All these reasons explain the relevance of the paper by Helio H. Checon and co-authors submitted to “Sustainability”.
General scores.
The data presented by the authors are original and significant. The study is correctly designed and the authors used appropriate sampling methods. In general, statistical analyses are performed with good technical standards. The authors conducted careful work that may attract the attention of a wide range of specialists focused on diversity of the Amazon basin.
Recommendations.
L 17. The authors should update the abstract with species richness, H' and mean abundance of macroinvertebrate communities at each site.
Specific remarks.
L 19. Consider replacing “aggregated” with “an aggregated”
L 38. Consider replacing “its” with “their”
L 57. Consider replacing “the few” with “a few”
L 102. Consider replacing “are more” with “is more”
L 141. Consider replacing “were carried out” with “was carried out”
L 300. Consider replacing “differences in species” with “differences in the species”
L 310. Consider replacing “exceptions was” with “exceptions were”
L 325. Consider replacing “in the beaches” with “on the beaches”
L 364. Consider replacing “in the beaches” with “on the beaches”
L 382. Consider replacing “at this period” with “in this period”
L 384. Consider replacing “variations on” with “variations in”
L 411. Consider replacing “at the area” with “in the area”
L 413. Consider replacing “patterns at the” with “patterns on the”
L 415. Consider replacing “changes to” with “changes on”
L 418. Consider replacing “provide” with “provided”
L 425. Consider replacing “of Amapá” with “of the Amapá”
Author Response
Reviewer: The authors conducted a field survey to describe macrobenthic communities of sandy beaches from the northernmost part of the Brazilian Amazon Coastal. They provided novel data on diversity and distribution patterns of coastal macrobenthic communities and compared the data with previous studies. They concluded that the most important factors explaining variations in the macrobenthic communities were rainfall variability and organic matter content in sediments. This study may have important implications for further monitoring and conservation in the region.
All these reasons explain the relevance of the paper by Helio H. Checon and co-authors submitted to “Sustainability”.
General scores.
The data presented by the authors are original and significant. The study is correctly designed and the authors used appropriate sampling methods. In general, statistical analyses are performed with good technical standards. The authors conducted careful work that may attract the attention of a wide range of specialists focused on diversity of the Amazon basin.
Thank you for your recommendations to improve our MS and for appreciating our work. We hope that is now suitable for acceptance.
Thanks again for your time,
R: Recommendations.
L 17. The authors should update the abstract with species richness, H' and mean abundance of macroinvertebrate communities at each site.
We have added further information to the abstract, thank you.
R: Specific remarks.
All considerations below were met and are now amended in the MS.
L 19. Consider replacing “aggregated” with “an aggregated”
L 38. Consider replacing “its” with “their”
L 57. Consider replacing “the few” with “a few”
L 102. Consider replacing “are more” with “is more”
L 141. Consider replacing “were carried out” with “was carried out”
L 300. Consider replacing “differences in species” with “differences in the species”
L 310. Consider replacing “exceptions was” with “exceptions were”
L 325. Consider replacing “in the beaches” with “on the beaches”
L 364. Consider replacing “in the beaches” with “on the beaches”
L 382. Consider replacing “at this period” with “in this period”
L 384. Consider replacing “variations on” with “variations in”
L 411. Consider replacing “at the area” with “in the area”
L 413. Consider replacing “patterns at the” with “patterns on the”
L 415. Consider replacing “changes to” with “changes on”
L 418. Consider replacing “provide” with “provided”
L 425. Consider replacing “of Amapá” with “of the Amapá”
