Review Reports - Influence of Urbanization on Patterns of Variability of Mytilus galloprovincialis Populations

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Reviewer Reports:

I recommend a revamp and resubmission to be able to suit a journal of such repute. Out of scope.

General comments:

I reviewed the manuscript entitled “Influence of urbanization on spatial-temporal variability of Mytilus galloprovincialis populations”. The work carried out in the manuscript is interesting and aimed at the variability patterns in percentage cover, total density, spat density, condition index, clump thickness and shell length of M. gallo provincialis were compared between urban (i.e., close to large coastal cities on the NW Portuguese coast) and non-urban (i.e., far from large coastal cities) shores over a temporal scale of 12 months and multiple spatial scales, ranging from 10s of cm to 10s of km. However, there are several points authors should kindly concentrate on. The manuscript has a lot of information however there are some lacking connectors and the writing style makes it very confusing. I suggest authors take a closer look and adjust the write-up to be more precise and appealing to the readers. The innovation and the importance of this work are not clearly highlighted in the abstract, introduction, and conclusions. The explanation of each section is shallow and needs more elaboration. The authors need to emphasize the research novelty, research significance, and contributions to academics and practices. Please work on this and prove to us why this work is valuable. Please remove all the multiple references. After that please check the manuscript thoroughly and eliminate all the lumps in the manuscript. This should be done by characterizing each reference individually. This can be done by mentioning 1 or 2 phrases per reference to show how it is different from the others and why it deserves mentioning. This comment is applied all over the paper. Please carefully check, revise and improve the whole manuscript as there are few syntax/grammatical errors. The service of an expert in the use of English in scientific writings should be sought if necessary. Highlights are necessary for this journal. It is highly recommended to provide a graphical abstract, as it will increase the visibility of the work and make the manuscript more appealing. This manuscript is not within the scope of Water. The detailed comments can be seen below:

Detailed comments:

Title: Ok.

Abstract:

In the abstract, it should have one sentence per each: context and background, motivation, hypothesis, methods, results, and conclusions. In the abstract, please add an indication of the achievements from your study that are relevant to the journal scope. Please be concise - maximum 1-2 lines. The abstract should state briefly the purpose of the research, the principal results, and the major conclusions.

Introduction:

The introduction section, should follow the state of the art in this field and review what has been done, for supporting the research gap and the significance of this study. Please improve the state of the art overview, to clearly show the progress beyond the state of the art. The lack of proper justification creates the wrong impression that the authors are unaware of the recent developments. In the introduction section, the author provides many citations and related works. However, what is the research gap? Which is not presented well. The concluding part of the introduction is not convincing enough. More critical discussion for better highlighting the novelty and significant observations from the study raised by the reviewer. Where is the aim of the introduction???

Please eliminate the use of redundant words. Eg. In this way, Recently, Respectively, therefore, currently, thus, hence, finally, to do this, first, in order, however, moreover, nowadays, today, consequently, in addition, additionally, furthermore. Please revise all similar cases, as removing these term(s) would not significantly affect the meaning of the sentence. This will keep the manuscript as CONCISE as possible. Please check ALL. Avoid beginning or ending a sentence with one or a few words, they are usually redundant. Kindly revise all.

Materials and Methods:

Please add in the beginning your scientific hypothesis. In the course of describing the performed actions, please provide reader guidance, sufficient for understanding why those actions have been performed. Please avoid having one heading after another with no discussion in between as in the case of Sections 2 and 2.1. Kindly inspect the entire document for similar instances and revise accordingly.

Results and Discussion:

The structure of this work should be reorganized. For example, the Section on results should be combined with the Discussion. The explanation of the results should be elaborated. What can you conclude from the results? Furthermore, it is advised to compare the result with recent relevant state-of-the-art in the result section. The authors need to present how the results can be validated and verified. Some of the cited papers are not relevant to the current study.

Conclusions:

Missing?? Please provide a separate section with a proper heading???

References:

Bibliography style is not always consistent, please check the reference section carefully and correct the inconsistency.

Author Response

General comments:

1. I reviewed the manuscript entitled “Influence of urbanization on spatial-temporal variability of Mytilus galloprovincialis populations”. The work carried out in the manuscript is interesting and aimed at the variability patterns in percentage cover, total density, spat density, condition index, clump thickness and shell length of M. gallo provincialis were compared between urban (i.e., close to large coastal cities on the NW Portuguese coast) and non-urban (i.e., far from large coastal cities) shores over a temporal scale of 12 months and multiple spatial scales, ranging from 10s of cm to 10s of km. However, there are several points authors should kindly concentrate on. The manuscript has a lot of information however there are some lacking connectors and the writing style makes it very confusing. I suggest authors take a closer look and adjust the write-up to be more precise and appealing to the readers. The innovation and the importance of this work are not clearly highlighted in the abstract, introduction, and conclusions. The explanation of each section is shallow and needs more elaboration. The authors need to emphasize the research novelty, research significance, and contributions to academics and practices. Please work on this and prove to us why this work is valuable.

We have revised the manuscript and tried to make it more concise and appealing. However, these commentaries are too vague and we are not sure if our changes are exactly what the referee expect.

2. Please remove all the multiple references. After that please check the manuscript thoroughly and eliminate all the lumps in the manuscript. This should be done by If we characterizing each reference individually. This can be done by mentioning 1 or 2 phrases per reference to show how it is different from the others and why it deserves mentioning. This comment is applied all over the paper. Please carefully check, revise and improve the whole manuscript as there are few syntax/grammatical errors. The service of an expert in the use of English in scientific writings should be sought if necessary.

We have followed the instructions to authors and format proposed by the journal for citing references. If we characterize each reference individually the size of the manuscript will growth too much and will be more difficult to read. The English was revised.

3. Highlights are necessary for this journal. It is highly recommended to provide a graphical abstract, as it will increase the visibility of the work and make the manuscript more appealing. This manuscript is not within the scope of Water.

We have checked the instructions to authors and many of the most recent published papers and highlights are not mentioned at all. Graphical abstract can be included but, most of the published papers don’t include it. We do not have any good and clear image to summarize this work and thus, no graphical abstract was added. About the scope of Water, we think that our study is within the scope of this particular special issue. In any case the editor of this special issue is the responsible and the best one to check if the manuscript is within the scope. If the editor decided to send this manuscript to review it must be within the scope.

Detailed comments:

Abstract:

4. In the abstract, it should have one sentence per each: context and background, motivation, hypothesis, methods, results, and conclusions. In the abstract, please add an indication of the achievements from your study that are relevant to the journal scope. Please be concise - maximum 1-2 lines. The abstract should state briefly the purpose of the research, the principal results, and the major conclusions.

We have followed the instruction to authors of the journal, that are different of the proposed changes by referee.

Introduction:

5. The introduction section, should follow the state of the art in this field and review what has been done, for supporting the research gap and the significance of this study. Please improve the state of the art overview, to clearly show the progress beyond the state of the art. The lack of proper justification creates the wrong impression that the authors are unaware of the recent developments. In the introduction section, the author provides many citations and related works. However, what is the research gap? Which is not presented well. The concluding part of the introduction is not convincing enough. More critical discussion for better highlighting the novelty and significant observations from the study raised by the reviewer. Where is the aim of the introduction???

We think that we have described the state of the art including recent developments. In the last years, we have done several studies about this topic and we think that we have an actualized view of the topic. We need more specific details to know what is missing is our introduction.

6. Please eliminate the use of redundant words. Eg. In this way, Recently, Respectively, therefore, currently, thus, hence, finally, to do this, first, in order, however, moreover, nowadays, today, consequently, in addition, additionally, furthermore. Please revise all similar cases, as removing these term(s) would not significantly affect the meaning of the sentence. This will keep the manuscript as CONCISE as possible. Please check ALL. Avoid beginning or ending a sentence with one or a few words, they are usually redundant. Kindly revise all.

We have removed some of these terms but, we have maintained many of them. We think that this is a style issue and we do not like to use a telegraphic style in our papers. Of course, there are different preferences but we think that using these terms the reading is more pleasant and easier.

Materials and Methods:

7. Please add in the beginning your scientific hypothesis. In the course of describing the performed actions, please provide reader guidance, sufficient for understanding why those actions have been performed. Please avoid having one heading after another with no discussion in between as in the case of Sections 2 and 2.1. Kindly inspect the entire document for similar instances and revise accordingly.

The scientific hypothesis can be found at the end of the introduction. The actions done were explained as much as possible following the standard style of this ecology papers. More detail will increase the size of the manuscript too much (see comment of referee 3). Headings style follows the journal indications.

Results and Discussion:

8. The structure of this work should be reorganized. For example, the Section on results should be combined with the Discussion. The explanation of the results should be elaborated. What can you conclude from the results? Furthermore, it is advised to compare the result with recent relevant state-of-the-art in the result section. The authors need to present how the results can be validated and verified. Some of the cited papers are not relevant to the current study.

It is true that these two sections can be combined but, it is not mandatory and we prefer to keep them separately. The conclusions of the study were included in a different section. We have compared results with recent relevant studies but, this is a poorly studied topic and we should use other similar studies focused on other organisms or habitats. For example, there are not any similar study for mussels in the whole Iberian Peninsula. We have detailed the field laboratory and statistical methodology and thus, they can be validated, verified or even repeated by any author.

Conclusions:

9. Missing?? Please provide a separate section with a proper heading???

This section is not mandatory but, a section with main conclusions were included.

References:

10. Bibliography style is not always consistent, please check the reference section carefully and correct the inconsistency.

The style of bibliography was checked.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Manuscript ID: water-1715689

Manuscript Title: Influence of urbanization on spatial-temporal variability of Mytilus galloprovincialis populations

General comments:

This study presents interesting findings how urbanization influences coastal ecology, specifically Mytilus galloprovincialis populations. Overall, paper is novel, well written, and the methods used are scientifically sound. However, mechanisms or the way how urbanization contributes to Mytilus galloprovincialis is not adequately discussed. Few minor concerns are provided below to improve the paper.

Specific Comments:

1. L 97 Population value is not clear. Two decimal places.

This was corrected in the new version.

2. L 107 It would have been better if physical and chemical characteristic of water/shores also presented in the table 1.

Following recommendation of referee 3 this table was changed by a map. Moreover a sentence clarifying that urban and non-urban shores show similar environmental conditions were included in the study area section.

3. L 279 – L380 Reasoning/justifications of observations are limited to literature findings only. Therefore, identifying how and in what ways the urbanization influences Mytilus galloprovincialis is yet to be proven. Therefore, recommend including a parahighlighting gaps/limitation in the current study and necessity of further research.

Yes, you agree. Our study is observational so we can provide potential explanations for observed patterns based on literature findings. However, to prove and establish a cause-effect relationship between effects of urbanization and mussel population, future manipulative studies should be done, probably focused on individual stressors commonly associated with urbanization that could affect mussel beds. Anyway, our study provides a good base of empirical knowledge to establish these experiments.

A paragraph including limitations of our study was included at the end of the discussion.

Reviewer 3 Report

In this paper, mussels in urban and non-urban shores are compared in different months with collected data. It’s an interesting study in general but still has some issues. Below are some detailed comments.

I suggest substituting Table 1 with a map showing the location of shores, to provide a straightforward view to readers.
Aside from urban and non-urban difference, what are other differences between the two shore groups? e.g., climate difference, water temperature difference?
Line 117, please provide more information about “mid intertidal level”.
Line 121, is 10 m apart far enough?
In line 89, the authors indicate “mussels are compared over multiple spatial scales, ranging from 10s of cm to 10s of km”, but this is not elaborated in the method section. Please explain.
What do a, b, c stand for in figures 3, 6&7? The description in the caption is very vague.
Please add legends to your figures.
Please simplify your Table 2&3. Only show important information.
Please add a conclusions section.
In this study, only variance was compared. What about the difference in mean?
The analysis was performed based only on urbanization difference. So, it’s improper to say spatial variability in the title.

Author Response

In this paper, mussels in urban and non-urban shores are compared in different months with collected data. It’s an interesting study in general but still has some issues. Below are some detailed comments.

1. I suggest substituting Table 1 with a map showing the location of shores, to provide a straightforward view to readers.

This change was done and a map was included as Figure 1.

2. Aside from urban and non-urban difference, what are other differences between the two shore groups? e.g., climate difference, water temperature difference?

The main difference among shores is their different urbanization condition. Environmental conditions were similar between urban and non-urban shores. This was clarified in the study area section by adding the following sentence: ‘However, environmental conditions such as water temperature or climatic conditions are similar between urban and non-urban shores [2].

3. Line 117, please provide more information about “mid intertidal level”.

The change was done by adding the following information after level ‘(between 1.5 m and 2 m above Chart Datum)’.

4. Line 121, is 10 m apart far enough?

Based on previous studies, mussel populations showed significant variability at this scale (please check reference 2 included in bibliography).

5. In line 89, the authors indicate “mussels are compared over multiple spatial scales, ranging from 10s of cm to 10s of km”, but this is not elaborated in the method section. Please explain.

We have clarified this in the beginning of the data analyses section by adding: ‘In order to quantify and compare between urban and non-urban conditions, patterns of variability in mussel populations were determined at multiple spatial scales: replicate (10s of centimeters), site (10s of m) and shore (10s of km). Independent estimates of variance components were calculated for the percentage cover, total density, spat density, clump thickness, condition index and shell length of M. galloprovincialis at each surveyed spatial and temporal scale’.

6. What do a, b, c stand for in figures 3, 6&7? The description in the caption is very vague.

This is a common way of indicating significant differences in a factor with more than two levels, as spatial scale in our case. Different letters indicate significant differences among spatial scales whereas equal letters show absence of significant differences among spatial scales. This was better explained in the figure caption. Please note that these figures in the new version of the manuscript are included as supplementary material.

7. Please add legends to your figures.

We do not understand this comment because we have provided legends to all figures. We guess that the problem could be when the word file was converted to pdf because some of the legends passed to the next page of the figure. But we provided legends to all figures.

8. Please simplify your Table 2&3. Only show important information.

Table 2 and 3 summarize results of ANOVA analyses. We have already included only relevant information.

9. Please add a conclusions section.

Conclusion section was included.

10. In this study, only variance was compared. What about the difference in mean?

Mean values and variance provide us different information. As our aim is to test if variability change between urban shores and non-urban shores, variance is the proper measure to achieve our aim.

11. The analysis was performed based only on urbanization difference. So, it’s improper to say spatial variability in the title.

We agree, urbanization is the focus of our study. However, we have assessed variance components at different spatial scales to test if spatial variability changed between urban and non-urban conditions. Anyway, we have changed the title to: ‘Influence of urbanization on patterns of variability of Mytilus galloprovincialis populations’.

Reviewer 4 Report

This ms seemed very lengthy. There were many references and some were unnecessary for the ms (it is not a PhD thesis)

Author Response

This ms seemed very lengthy. There were many references and some were unnecessary for the ms (it is not a PhD thesis)

Comparing our manuscript with other papers published in Water, our manuscript is no longer than most of the studies published in Water. The same in the number of references we have 72 references and some of the papers recently published in Water have even a higher number of references than ours. Here some examples: 88 references https://doi.org/10.3390/w13040460; 79 https://doi.org/10.3390/w14010132; 80 https://doi.org/10.3390/w14010130

Anyway, we have tried shortened the manuscript, including some information as supplementary material and eliminated some of the references in the new version of the manuscript.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Reviewer Reports:

I have reviewed the revised version manuscript entitled" Influence of urbanization on spatial-temporal variability of Mytilus galloprovincialis populations". I appreciate your effort to improve your manuscript, however, deeper corrections would be required before its publication. It is better to do not to use the first person's pronoun. Do not use "we, us, or our" throughout the paper. Please see my previous comments and applied to the revised accordingly. It is better to merge the results and discussion section. The abstract should state briefly the purpose of the research, the principal results and the major conclusions. An abstract is often presented separately from the article, so it must be able to stand alone. The abstract should include a sentence about your findings, discussions and conclusions in your abstract and underscore the scientific value-added of your paper in your abstract.

Author Response

Reviewer Reports:

1. It is better to do not to use the first person's pronoun. Do not use "we, us, or our" throughout the paper.

We agree your corrections. In the new version of the manuscript all first person’s pronouns were changed.

2. Please see my previous comments and applied to the revised accordingly. It is better to merge the results and discussion section.

Thank you for your comment about merge results and discussion. However, as this is not mandatory at this journal, we think that for this kind of study it is better keep both sections independently.

3. The abstract should state briefly the purpose of the research, the principal results and the major conclusions. An abstract is often presented separately from the article, so it must be able to stand alone. The abstract should include a sentence about your findings, discussions and conclusions in your abstract and underscore the scientific value-added of your paper in your abstract.

The abstract was modified but you should consider that we only have 200 words as maximum according to instructions of the journal.