Review Reports - Curvature Analysis of Seed Silhouettes in the Euphorbiaceae

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors, I have reviewed your paper entitled "Curvature analysis of seed silhouettes in the Euphorbiaceae" and I have to say I found it very interesting.The manuscript is well written and complete, especially thanks to the iconographic part that allows readers to better understand the scientific relevance of the topics discussed.

I just have a few things to report:

Table 4: Plukenetia volubilis L. (2): Correct L. into L.

Table 5: Please, uniform the name of the species with the author names.

Author Response

Dear authors, I have reviewed your paper entitled "Curvature analysis of seed silhouettes in the Euphorbiaceae" and I have to say I found it very interesting. The manuscript is well written and complete, especially thanks to the iconographic part that allows readers to better understand the scientific relevance of the topics discussed.

I just have a few things to report:

Table 4: Plukenetia volubilis L. (2): Correct L. into L.

Table 5: Please, uniform the name of the species with the author names.

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for reading the manuscript and your corrections to it.

Your commentaries have been considered and corresponding changes have been made.

With best regards,

Ángel Tocino and Emilio Cervantes

Corresponding authors

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article is scientifically robust, well structured and written. All its sections are congruent among them. The Introduction gives a good background of the topic and the Objective is clear and accurate. The Methods are well explained and concise. The Results are well organized and clear, and the photos have a good resolution. The Discussion is clear; as well as the Conclusión, both propositive.

Though, there are two point to be cleared:

i) It is important to mention why, in some cases, very few seeds were analyzed (i.e.1 seed).

ii) It is important that tables and figures ought to have a title and an explanatory legend to give a general idea of the research and the importance of the data shown. Hence, any reader could be able to understand them without reading the whole article or a section of it.

Small corrections were done through the text.

Please, see file attached.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for reading the manuscript and for your corrections.

Your comments have been taken into account and changes have been made accordingly. The corrections indicated in the PDF have also been made.

With best regards,

Ángel Tocino and Emilio Cervantes

Corresponding authors,

i) It is important to mention why, in some cases, very few seeds were analyzed (i.e.1 seed).

i) The following sentences have been added in Materials and Methods:

Sect. (2.1): "The low number of seeds considered in some cases (i.e.1 seed for some species) is due to the absence of publicly available images. "

Sect. (2.5): "Statistical analyses were done when the amount of data was sufficient. "

ii) A bold title has been given for each table and figure, and an explanatory legend is given separately from the title where required.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript should be improved before further consideration In particular, the Results section is too long and should be shortened by collapsing or deleting the part of figures. The general scientific purpose of the current study is quite unclear and should be explained better in the Introduction, with a clear aim to solve some problem or task. Similarly, the conclusions are very uneven and should be rewritten with a better accent on the outcomes obtained and the questions that are resolved. The list of references, I believe, should be shortened as there are many extensive citations in the text that cite quite general publications that can be easily omitted without damage to the manuscript. Finally, it is not Ok to write in the manuscript that some table/figure represents something. You should incorporate the table/figure citation in the context, not just repeat their captions. Please see some other my notes in the attached file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

English is Ok. I have found no any of particular issues.

Author Response

Comments: The manuscript should be improved before further consideration In particular, the Results section is too long and should be shortened by collapsing or deleting the part of figures.

The general scientific purpose of the current study is quite unclear and should be explained better in the Introduction, with a clear aim to solve some problem or task. Similarly, the conclusions are very uneven and should be rewritten with a better accent on the outcomes obtained and the questions that are resolved. The list of references, I believe, should be shortened as there are many extensive citations in the text that cite quite general publications that can be easily omitted without damage to the manuscript. Finally, it is not Ok to write in the manuscript that some table/figure represents something. You should incorporate the table/figure citation in the context, not just repeat their captions. Please see some other my notes in the attached file

Thank you very much for your reading of the manuscript and corrections to it.

The results section has been shortened. The legends to tables and figures have been removed from the text, and citations are now incorporated in the context. Also, two Figures have been removed from the section.

The following sentence has been added to the Introduction to explain the general scientific purpose of the study:

“The application of new, quantitative methods based on curvature analysis [38-44] to seed morphology may contribute to the taxonomy of the Euphorbiaceae.”

Other corrections in the Materials and Methods and Results section have been done according to your commentaries.

The conclusions have been enlarged and the following sentence has been added:

“Differences in morphological measurements were found between subfamilies, as well as between subgenera of Euphorbia. Curvature analysis provides a new tool to interpret the seed morphology in this family. For this purpose, the seeds are oriented regularly and their contour is analyzed as a geometrical curve.”

Additional corrections indicated in the PDF file have been made.

With best regards,

Ángel Tocino and Emilio Cervantes

Corresponding authors

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

All the comments and suggestions have been included in an attached file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The manuscript needs minor grammatical revisions. Most of them have been included in the attached file.

Author Response

Comments to authors:

In the Introduction, the authors mentioned different types of dispersal syndromes in the family. It would be interesting to know if there is a relationship among the in species which this mechanism is known.

Due that the caruncle is related to the myrmecochory, the use of this structure to analyze the curvature must be clarified by the authors.

In the Appendix A, some names must be substituted or corrected.

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your reading of the manuscript and corrections to it.

Concerning the relationship between curvature and dispersal syndrome, given the complexity of this family and the generality of the present study, which did not focus on this interesting aspect, the following sentence was added to the discussion:

“In this regard, it may be of interest to compare the seed curvature values in relation to the dispersal syndrome, e.g. in species with a caruncle, curvature analysis may provide clues about differences in this structure among populations or its relative relevance in different taxonomic groups”

Names in appendix A have been corrected, and the names of the authors in all the taxa in appendix B have been deleted according to your indications.

The names of the botanical authors have been deleted also in the Results section.

The Reference section has been revised and corrections made.

Other corrections indicated in the PDF file have been made.

With best regards,

Ángel Tocino and Emilio Cervantes

Corresponding authors

Round 2

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I consider that the conclusions are very poor, and they don't express the correlation between the curvature and its interest to analyze the dispersal syndromes in the family Euphorbiaceae.

Author Response

Comments: I consider that the conclusions are very poor, and they don't express the correlation between the curvature and its interest to analyze the dispersal syndromes in the family Euphorbiaceae.

Response: The correlation between curvature and dispersal syndromes is an interesting subject that may receive attention in future work. In this article we have not focused on this particular topic. Nevertheless the relationship between curvature analysis of seeds and the dispersal syndromes has been indicated in the conclusions (lines 398-400).

Round 3

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I sent my opinion in the previous comments.

Author Response

Comments: I consider that the conclusions are very poor, and they don't express the correlation between the curvature and its interest to analyze the dispersal syndromes in the family Euphorbiaceae.

Response: The discussion and conclusion sections have been rewritten with emphasis on the relationships between seed size and shape, curvature and dispersal syndromes.

The discussion has now been divided in four sections:

4.1 Variations in seed shape according to fruit type

4.2. Curvature analysis in different taxonomic groups

4.3. Relation between seed shape and dispersal syndrome

4.4. Implications of seed shape and curvature analysis in taxonomy

New morphological data related to tropical species of Hura and Plukenetia have been included in these sections and the relevance of curvature analysis in the study of dispersal syndromes has been highlighted in the new version.