Odonata as Indicators? Dragonflies and Damselflies Respond to Riparian Conditions along Ozark Spring Streams
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
General comments to authors:
The manuscript “Odonata as indicators? Dragonflies and damselflies respond to riparian conditions along Ozark spring streams" examined and compared the sensitivity of both odonate and full riffle macroinvertebrate communities in spring streams of the Ozark Highlands (USA) to various degrees of impact to riparian zones.
I believe this study is a valuable contribution to understand the distribution of Odonata in streams in North America
However, my main concern with this article there are several confusing aspects. For example, the objectives are not aligned with the title, and the latter with the results.
The title is specific to Odonata, but its objectives also involve macroinvertebrates in general. I believe something needs to be aligned. Either you work only with Odonata (as mentioned in the title) or you encompass all macroinvertebrates and make this clear in the title and modify the rest of the work.
I send the commented PDF, I hope it helps the authors in the review.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript aims to compare the sensitivity of odonate species and macroinvertebrate communities in Ozark Highlands spring streams sampled across a gradient of riparian zone conditions. The article is well written, there is one minor aspect that authors should consider for publication. I suggest that the authors better characterize what was an impact on the riparian zones. The difference between moderately and highly impacted streams was not very clear. This was also reflected in the results considering the physical-chemical characterization. Great job!
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
This paper provides the most compelling evidence that I have seen so far for the claim that Odonata can serve as indicator taxa. Most such claims are based only on data on Odonata, but in this manuscript, data on Odonata are directly compared to commonly used methods of sampling benthic invertebrates, and the results show that Odonata are better indicators of riparian habitat degradation than all of the other taxa combined. Furthermore, the results show that some species of Odonata are positive indicators and others are negative indicators of riparian condition. I do have some suggestions, however, for improving the manuscript that I hope the authors will find helpful.
The Introduction is excellent.
The Methods are very clearly described and in most cases well justified, but I have a few questions I hope the authors can answer in a revision. What was the rationale for selecting sampling points near the spring source? What was the rationale for defining the riparian zone as four times the wetted width? Did this distance always exceed the width of the dry portion of the stream bed? When were these surveys carried out relative to the periods of the year with the lowest and highest flow volumes?
Line 205-207: I don't understand this sentence, probably because I don't know what "2 communities of focal interest" refers to. Elsewhere in the paper, Odonata is referred to the focal group of interest, and there are two suborders of Odonata in this study, but Odonata are insects, so comparing them to the "insect-only subset" wouldn't make sense. This was not clarified for me in the Results. In trying to sort this out, I realized that the word "community" is used in multiple ways and too loosely, in my opinion, in the paper — sometimes to refer to the assemblages of odonates at a particular site, other times to refer to all of the species in a particular microhabitat (e.g.,"riffle community"), and also in other ways. I recommend using more specific terms where possible (e.g., guild, assemblage) and doing so consistently, to avoid confusing readers.
In figure 2, I recommend using other shapes besides circles at the tips of the dendrogram to identify the 3 classes of riparian impact (for color-blind readers and also for black and white prints). Likewise for the supplementary figures.
I also recommend using same shapes to identify the classes of riparian impact in all three figures — currently different shapes are used in figures 1 and 3 and color is used in figure 2 and the supplementary figures.
The statistical term "stress" in NMS is unfortunate because it could easily be confused with one of the biological meanings of stress (e.g., as used in the Introduction and Discussion of this manuscript). If there is no better term to use in the Results and Methods, I think the NMS meaning of "stress" should be explained in the Methods and that the reader should be reminded that this is a statistical term in the Results.
There are lots of unusual abbreviations and acronyms in this paper (RipC, LSRC, WR, VHM, etc.), which makes it hard to follow the results, figures, tables, etc. Commonly used acronyms (e.g., TDS, NMS) are fine, but each novel acronym adds to the reader's burden. I think some of these terms could be spelled out without running up the word count much or clogging up the figures and tables.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Brief summary:
The manuscript “Odonata as indicators? Dragonflies and damselflies respond to riparian conditions along Ozark spring streams" examined and compared the sensitivity of both odonate and full riffle macroinvertebrate communities in spring streams of the Ozark Highlands (USA) to various degrees of impact to riparian zones.
I believe this study is a valuable contribution to understand the distribution of Odonata in streams in North America.
The authors have made efforts to amend the manuscript based upon the original comments. The changes made by the authors improve the manuscript.
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors' responses were adequate and I recommend the publication of the article.
