Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: HERBIVORE BIOCONTROL AND MANUAL REMOVAL SUCCESSFULLY REDUCE INVASIVE MACROALGAE ON CORAL REEFS
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: This MS describes a trial for controlling introduced seaweeds on coral reef in Hawai’i, using a combination of manual seaweed removal with subsequent suppression of re-establishment by deploying hatchery-reared grazers (the sea urchin Tripneustes gratilla).

While simple in its design and with only two replicates (due to logistical constraints) the study is a robust demonstration of the effectiveness of the tested control method. The results (including the cost estimates) are very relevant for reef-management and publication is recommended.
Experimental design: The experimental design is fit for purpose, the explanation why a fully orthogonal design was not chosen is sufficient and make sense.

The statistical analysis is appropriate for the simple experimental design.
Validity of the findings: The results are clearly presented, backed up by appropriate figures and tables, and sufficiently discussed.

The only part of the MS that is a bit weak is the discussion about risk and potential side effects of the tested combined control method (removal of macroalgae and increased grazer densities). This could be better structured and more detail (plus references) added.

The efficiency of macroalgae removal is described and briefly discussed but there is little mention of potential side effects, e.g. damage to corals, disruption of reef-associated fauna, and removal of native macroalgae. This should be discussed in more detail.

In line 437-443 the risk of deployment of hatchery raised urchins is discussed. It is interesting to note that the native macroalgae where not affected by the treatment- this should be discussed, eg why were they not consumed by the urchins? Also, is there potential to introduce diseases to other echinoderms? How was this controlled (eg hatchery protocols). Is there competition due to the higher T. gratilla densities with other invertebrates?
Additional comments: Minor comments by line numbers – mix of editorial suggestions and content queries that should be addressed in a revision:
32-34	 consider rephrasing
34	add macroalgae (seaweed) before “mariculture”
35	Add “commercial” before Macroalgae
38	suggest to change to “often cultivating non-native or domesticated species of the genera…”
38	genera not generas
40	“opportunities” instead of “incentives”; ad “can” before “offer”
41	“viable” instead of “lucrative”; omit “struggling”
43	Hewitt
44-45	select more suitable references, ie those where reef decline is related to macroalgal cover (there are plenty)
45-48	 sloppy wording. Suggest being specific to macroalgal growth being an issue, which you do in the next para. Alternatively reword to describe here the current coral reef “crisis” with many reefs being affected by anthropogenic pressures (most recently the global coral bleaching events), which makes it necessary for reef managers to consider all option to reduce manageable pressures (such as the one you are investigating in your study).
58-60	Reword to make clear that phase shift are a general problem (especially in eutrophied conditions) but that invasive macroalgae add another dimension (as they generally have been selected for traits like fast grow, easy and frequent reproduction). Perhaps add some newer references on phase shifts, e.g.
	Mumby, P.J., Steneck, R.S., Adjeroud, M., Arnold, S.N., 2015. High resilience masks underlying sensitivity to algal phase shifts of Pacific coral reefs. Oikos.
	Dell, C.L.A., Longo, G.O., Hay, M.E., 2016. Positive Feedbacks Enhance Macroalgal Resilience on Degraded Coral Reefs. PLoS ONE 11, e0155049.
	van de Leemput, I.A., Hughes, T.P., van Nes, E.H., Scheffer, M., 2016. Multiple feedbacks and the prevalence of alternate stable states on coral reefs. Coral Reefs, 1-9.
66	“management objective” instead of “response goal”
72	missing “in” before “water”?
84	perhaps “ability to produce and deploy adequate densities of biocontrol grazers”
92	vagility?- do you mean “mobility”?; maricultured?
155	 DNLR, write out in full when first tam used
160	“rehabilitation” instead of “restoration”?
165	suggest: “was yet to be tested at a management-relevant, reef-wide scale.”
168	 “using” instead of “following”
171	 no dash
192	 island-like
207	add reference for description of “super sucker” removal technique
215	“branches” instead of “fingers”
225	 “manually deployed” or “released” instead of “hand placed”?
229	 “deployed” instead of “outplanted”
248	 omit “binned”
253 	“turf algae cover”- perhaps add definition of turf in your study (eg less than 10 mm height or something)
256 	add “initially”
286	just use “vs. control”
288	 delete patch reef here
296	 what transformations?
301	 xxx?
307	 delete “biological”
308	 hard corals? Not reef…
313	“ had similar cover of each….”
327 	I assume this refers to the baseline surveys? If so, what are T. gratilla pre-control at the treatment reefs? Perhaps this information could be better included in previous section.
333	 add “cover” after macroalgae, use “different” instead of “affected”
341	 add “was”
357	“components” instead of “portions”- deployment of urchins happened only once? No repeat deployment was required?
363	“techniques” instead of “acrions”
369	 “a” instead on “the”; add “cover”
379	suggest” reducing the risk of unintentional dispersal”
385	add an estimate of time to the cost estimate results
386	 how many and how is this captured in the cost estimate? Did you have a threshold when you decide to deploy additional urchins?
387	 does that mean that after full treatment establishment no further urchin re-stocking was required?
403-411	 presumably the juvenile urchins grew to adult size during your study. What does this mean for grazing efficiency?
447-448	 why would that be? Is that the only explanation for the observation that macroalgae cover also decreased on control reefs?
498	reword, cost does not automatically reflect value
502-504	but the risks of unwanted side-effects may also increase….


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: HERBIVORE BIOCONTROL AND MANUAL REMOVAL SUCCESSFULLY REDUCE INVASIVE MACROALGAE ON CORAL REEFS
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: Reporting is clear and professional English used throughout with proper citations and background information.
Experimental design: Well defined questions with good experimental design
Validity of the findings: no comment
Additional comments: The authors have revised previous version of their manuscript and the present version is good and clear. I don't have any more comments with respect, all the comments and suggestions  for the previous version of the manuscript has been taken care.
I am happy to see this get through and published.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: THE LARVA AND FEMALE OF PERIGOMPHUS BASICORNIS AMAYA-VALLEJO, NOVELO-GUTIÉRREZ & REALPE, 2017, AND THE FIRST RECORD OF PERIGOMPHUS PALLIDISTYLUS (BELLE, 1972) FOR COLOMBIA (INSECTA: ODONATA: GOMPHIDAE)
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: Please share pictures of the adult habitus (including the wings).
Include, if possible, an inventory number for your specimens.
Experimental design: no comment
Validity of the findings: no comment
Additional comments: This is a wonderful work which I really enjoyed to read. The photographs are also well done.
But please consider that this work can be improved by sharing sharp pictures of the wing venation. In paleontology (my primary field), we are dependent on the access to sharp images or drawings of the wing venation for comparing fossil and extant species. Please illustrate all four wings of your adult female (you mentioned intra-individual differences). This will also increase the impact of your study.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: THE LARVA AND FEMALE OF PERIGOMPHUS BASICORNIS AMAYA-VALLEJO, NOVELO-GUTIÉRREZ & REALPE, 2017, AND THE FIRST RECORD OF PERIGOMPHUS PALLIDISTYLUS (BELLE, 1972) FOR COLOMBIA (INSECTA: ODONATA: GOMPHIDAE)
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: English language generally is very good, with a few inconsistencies; for example, ln. 35 'endemic to tropical' (not 'endemic of...'); ln. 46-47 use of terms like 'some' is vague.  Why not provide the numbers of collected larvae and the number of moralities? ln. 48 '... one turned out to be..' is a bit journalistic '...one was a female.' would be better. ln. 279 'we reach 66% of the larvae for the genus' is not clear.

Cited literature is rather sparce and only briefly mentions Perigomphus.  I would like to see a few more lines in the Introduction, and at the start of the Abstract, about the Gomphidae: what mates this a special odonate family (distributions, habitats, species and threats)? Please provide more context for the need for species diversity, conservation and the need for more taxonomic descriptions in Gomphids. Ln. 223 - lacks context. Please expand literature to indicate HOW far south the record of this species is (in km).

Detailed descriptions of larvae and imagos seem reasonable, and the figures are generally well presented. Please add scale bars to the figures.

Report is discovery driven and has no hypotheses as such. The manuscript is unfocussed as it provides (1) a species description (2) and a new record (P. pallidistylus) for Columbia. It is not clear why the authors' 2017 description (in Zootaxa) of MALE P. basicornis did not contain these descriptions of the FEMALES. Providing separate descriptions of sexes of the same species seems unhelpful for taxonomists.
Experimental design: Project describes odonate species, which I believe to be in the remit of PeerJ (as Biological Sciences), though I would expect species' descriptions to be in Zootaxa (which the authors did for the males of P. basicornis (see above).

There are no well-defined research questions: project is 'discovery based'.  Description of species and records of new occurrences are information useful for conservation. However, the details of the fieldwork are very sparce. If there were robust field expeditions, then it would be useful to provide a map/list of field sites, and the dates of expeditions, to show areas where Perigomphus were NOT found.  Can the authors provide more detailed information about the possible range of these species in Columbia? Or was there really only a single sampling trip?

Methods about the fieldwork are inadequate (as stated above).  For example, ln. 161 - how did you arrive at the conclusions about microhabitat preference? What were the available microhabitats in the streams? What habitats in sampled streams was this species absent?  What odonates co-occurred with these species?  How was larval sampling performed?

Descriptions of exuviae and imago follow guidelines and are adequate.
Validity of the findings: Data appear robust.  It would be nice to see scale bars on figures, and a link to the original images of different specimens so other researchers could measure these. No statistical analyses as such.

This manuscript is simply a species description (but expanding a previous description) and 1st record and there are few real conclusions that link to any question.

Can the authors include more data on specific habitat requirements (e.g. water temperature, surrounding vegetation, substrate type, pH) and co-occurring species? In a revision of this manuscript, there needs to be some indication about the type and number of sites where the authors (or collaborators) have searched for this P. basicornis (and failed to find it) as these data help understand its rarity/range.  Also, there is some indication that P. basicornis requires pristine habitats (ln. 280), but there is no context about how the authors arrived at this conclusion.

Discussion about 'genetic barcodes' is weak - what marker would be used? I urge the authors to try and include some sequence data in a revision of this manuscript (it really is not costly to sequence 4-6 specimens) to understand the phylogeny of this genus.

There should be some discussion about the southward expansion of P. pallidystylus.  Is this southern record due to range expansion or because of a prior lack of sampling for tropical odonates, for example? If an expansion is likely, then why and what is the possible route and where should this species be found?
Additional comments: Comments were made above.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: A NEW MEGASPILID WASP FROM EOCENE BALTIC AMBER (HYMENOPTERA: CERAPHRONOIDEA), WITH NOTES ON TWO NON-CERAPHRONOID FAMILIES: RADIOPHRONIDAE AND STIGMAPHRONIDAE
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: There are many references with incorrect spelling or formatting. I cannot list everything, but just a few examples:
- Bulletin-Institut royal (lines 423, 428) vs. Bulletin de l’Institut Royal (line 420)
- all references from Dessart lack the French accents. Ex. for 1966: should be ‘Contribution à l’étude des Hyménoptères …’
- Genus/species names not italicized in many cases…
- the use of upper case and lower case is a real mess.

Also, some figures are not appropriately labeled (see details in the general comments below).
Experimental design: no comment
Validity of the findings: no comment
Additional comments: I appreciate the effort of the authors for the detailed description and illustration of the new fossil species, coupled with the revision of taxa from a group of wasps with a scant fossil record. Particularly useful for future studies is the brief review of recent ceraphronoid’s diagnostic traits provided in introduction. Also, the description of the new species and suggested placement of D. dubitatus, Radiophronidae and Stigmaphronidae as incertae sedis are convincing. In clear, the study is sound and is certainly worth the publication in PeerJ.

The MS suffers many factual errors or inaccuracies, however, that make its reading sometimes unpleasant or difficult to follow. Below are my comments on things that need revision or complement before the MS can be published:

- Line 1, title: when dealing with a fossil taxon, it is important to provide the age in the title. (i.e., "A new megaspilid wasp from Eocene Baltic amber »;
- Line 27 and throughout: Dendrocerus and Lygocerus are alternatively used for the species dubitatus. Even in line 307, D. dubitatus comes out among the Lygocerus paragraph. Please be consistent and use the valid combination only!
- Line 41: "pronotum, mesopectus, metapectal-propodeal complex and metanotum" used here, but metapectus used in Fig. 1. Be consistent.
- Line 69: Baltic amber is NOT 55 myo! Where does this age come from? Correct age is Middle to Late Eocene (Lutetian-Priabonian, 34-48 Ma according to the International stratigraphic chart, latest version 2017/2: http://www.stratigraphy.org/index.php/ics-chart-timescale). See Sadowski et al. 2017 (in: Am. J. Botany 104: 694-518; or in Stapfia 106: 1-76) and references therein for further details and discussion on the age.
- Line 70: the studied amber piece, and pieces of Baltic amber in general, cannot be called ‘opaque amber’ in any way. Baltic amber is distinctly translucent compared to amber from some other deposits. The opaqueness as seen by the authors results from examination at high resolution with a light microscope, without both incident and transmitted lights.
- line 74: the bifid anteromedian projection is absolutely invisible on Fig. 4A. Better refer to the Supplementary 3D figure only.
- Lines 79-90: I am OK with this assertion, but same is true for entomologists like the authors working punctually on a fossil (whether an amber inclusion or rock imprint): they have clearly no knowledge on fossil deposits, chrono- or biostratigraphy, geological ages, and examination methods for such material. Here and in couple previous papers, the authors claim that a correct study of fossil wasps can only be made by neontologist experts like them, but they should seriously consider adjoining the collaboration of a paleoentomologist to avoid basic mistakes in the interpretation of fossils and their geological record.
- Caption of fig. 1:
1/ a similarly compact mesosoma can also be found in the extinct, Cretaceus family Maimetshidae (previously suggested as a possible ceraphronoid family, by the way), though these wasps are always winged (but no idea if the ball-and-socket articulation is present in these wasps…). Discussion on this family should be added.
2/ In (D), should read ceraphronoid instead of cerahronoid
3/ "an unbroken pterostigma that arises from the posterior third of of pterostigma" ? Makes no sense to me…
- Fig. 2A: too dark, please improve the contrast (i.e., no dark blue on a black background); also the bifurcated projection should be indicated by an arrow.
- Lines 101-102: accession numbers do not correspond to those in Table S1( i.e, #1013 and 1805). Be consistent.
- Lines 106-108: meaning of KIT is explained in its second use only (line 108); should be explained in first use. Same for POL and OOL in line 161
- Line 116: when speaking of 3D tomography, I think the correct word is voxel, not ‘pixel’.
- Lines 107-126: not what I would call a method of ‘quick data collection’ (cf. abstract)!
- Line 161: fig 1B is not Conostigmus. Do you mean fig 1C?
- Line 163: note that F1 length / F2+F3 length are not given in description nor in Table S1. They should appear somewhere.
- Fig 3D: the bifid projection is not visible at this scale and under this view. Thus, arrows are entirely useless.
- Figs 4B-D: seems to be the paratype rather than the holotype; also for 4D: not a right lateral view – seems the same as 4B to me.
- Fig. 5B: meaning of the arrow on the head? Not explained in caption
- Fig5 caption: except for the scale and pedicel, the structures given in abbreviations are nearly invisible at this scale. Better refer to Supplemental 3D figure.
- The call to figures is incorrect in several cases (e.g, line 53: Figs 1A, B should be Figs 1B, C; line 167: Figures 1C, 3B, C, 4, 5 should be 1C, 2A, 3C, 3D, 4, 5, etc…). Check all calls to figures carefully.
- Line 173: are these two metrics the holotype and paratype lengths? (cf. Tab S1, specimen numbers unclear).
- Line 269 and throughout: references are often incorrectly formatted, e.g.: Conostigmus (Mikó et al. (2016); Dessart (1997) … should read (Mikó et al., 2016; Dessart, 1997; CT personal observation). Check throughout the entire MS.
- Line 281: years of references should read consecutively, e.g.: Dessart 1972 to 2001.
- Line 310: should read pterostigma, not pterostigmata
- Line 386: delete one ‘confidently’
- Line 400: add caption of supplementary table 1.
- Ref. Zhang et al. 2017 is now published; Please update with volume and page numbers.
- Suppl. Fig 1:
1/ Abbreviations (S, A, R, M, C) are not explained.
2/ D. dubitatus is not listed!
3/ Correct name is Burdigalian, not Burdigarian.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: A NEW MEGASPILID WASP FROM EOCENE BALTIC AMBER (HYMENOPTERA: CERAPHRONOIDEA), WITH NOTES ON TWO NON-CERAPHRONOID FAMILIES: RADIOPHRONIDAE AND STIGMAPHRONIDAE
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: Mikò and colleagues present a morphologically and taxonomically comprehensive manuscript. The paper uses a new fossil species as a kind of catalyst for assessing megaspilid and ceraphronoid synapomorphies and taxonomic assignments more broadly. The authors are clear experts in the morphology of the group and provide a nice description from a morphological point of view. I recommend the manuscript for publication, following that the authors respond to the following comments. Most importantly, the authors must improve the text relating to the age of Baltic amber and provide the geological setting in the description.

Line 36: "phylogenetic studies have failed to classify the superfamily with confidence" do you mean that the molecular studies do not support monophyly? If so, it would read more clearly with respect to phylogenetics vs taxonomy as "phylogenetic studies have failed to support the monophyly of the superfamily with confidence"

Line 38: Corresponding with above, "Irrespective of their phylogenetic position, recent ceraphronoids comprise a morphologically well-characterized group that can be readily separated from other hymenopterans based on the following traits." But, you (may) acknowledge that there may not be molecular support for the monophyly of Ceraphronoidea in the previous sentence. It would be helpful for overall clarity and consistency if you acknowledged the possibility of this similarity representing homoplasy (in cases where the molecular results indicate polyphyly) or perhaps a retention of an ancestral traits (if the group is recovered as paraphyletic).

Line 69: Very important: Molecular folks may be inclined to use your paper for future divergence estimations, so the age you report here should be accurate. I do not believe this age for Baltic amber is correct, I recommend investigating this age before reporting and absolutely recommend including a citation, for example with the following paper, which reports the age as ~44.1 Ma. Weitschat, W. & Wichard, W. 2010. Baltic amber. Penney, D. (Ed.): Biodiversity of fossils in amber from the major world deposits. Siri Scientific Press, Manchester, pp. 80-115. Also, worth mentioning that this fossil is from the Eocene somewhere in the paper and description or even title. Curiously, the age appears to be correct in supplemental figure 1.

Figure 1: It may be helpful for folks unfamiliar with the group to highlight sutures of the fused mesonotal sclerite and the individual components: pronotum, metanotum, mesopectus, etc. If difficult or you feel it would not contribute, feel free to ignore.

Figure 2: It would be nice to link boxes D and E in Fig 1 by showing where on the wing the triangular elements shown in the SEM image are found. This can be done with a bounding box in figure D, for example. Also just a recommendation.

Lines 165-251: The description would be improved with the following additional sections: etymology; locality and geographic range/age for the type material.

Line 272: if you feel it would contribute to your discussion: how plastic are flagellomere and pedicel lengths in other ceraphronoid taxa? If highly homoplastic elsewhere, this could help explain the differences as well.

Lines 324-325: These four traits do seem to be relatively homoplastic overall - if possible, recommend elaborating on why the flattened coxa, elongate spurs, and shortened metasoma in particular are not likely to be highly variable.

Supplemental figure 1: should have citations to give credit to original taxonomic papers as well as allow others to investigate the fossil history of the group in more detail.

Supplemental figure 1: the increments on the timeline are currently not labeled, and simply go from "1 million" at the far right (not present?) to 150. Please label at increments to make more legible.

Supplemental figure 1: what do the bracketed letters indicate? Apologies if this is in a figure caption not visible to reviewers.

Abstract: "Conostigmus talamasi Mikó and Trietsch, sp. nov. from Baltic amber represents an intermediate form between the type genus, Megaspilus, and one of the most species-rich megaspilid genera, Conostigmus, supporting the hypothesis that Megaspilus is nested within Conostigmus." There is another possibility for this similarity that does not reflect a nested relationship between these two genera: What if C. talamasi represents an early lineage of Conostigmus and so possesses a mosaic of Conostigmus and Megaspilus features for that reason?

Abstract: The abstract directly states that three taxa are removed from Ceraphronoidea: Dendrocerus dubitatus, Stigmaphronidae, and Radiophronidae. It appears that only one of these taxa are explicitly stated as being interpreted as incertae sedis in the main text (Radiophronidae). Dendrocerus dubitatus is not mentioned in the discussion text in this context, however Lygocerus dubitatus is - did I miss a synonymization or is this a typo of some kind?

Very minor suggestions:
Line 33: "Myriad other…" should perhaps be "A myriad of other…"

Line 45: Recommend avoiding "evolutionary advantage" as the fusion seen may be a requirement based on some other morphological feature or developmental requirement, rather than an advantage itself per se.

Line 57/58: Would read a little more clearly if "albeit" were replaced with "while"; "is present" should be "are present"

Line 69: "key specimens" could be "type material" to be more specific

Line 304: "detailed description as it was already outlined by McKellar and Engel" should be "detailed description as outlined by McKellar and Engel" or similar for clarity.

Line 340: "phenotype" refers to the overall composite of morphological features, recommend trait/character/feature instead.
Experimental design: Line 86: "In such poor conditions, only those who have trained their eyes by looking at thousands of ceraphronoid specimens are able to identify these taxa correctly." This seems a little excessive as a qualifier (would looking at hundreds of specimens be enough, for example) and not necessary in the context of the surrounding text.

Line 88: "In some ways, the examination of fossil specimens is similar to studying specimens of recent taxa with a low quality microscope. Morphological traits are usually obscured by artifacts or debris, making them difficult to properly observe (if they can be seen at all)." These sentences are true in some cases, but I'm not sure I agree with this overall. Amber fossils can preserve remarkable detail, and can even provide clean views of lightly sclerotized anatomy, for example by fixing inclusions with mouthparts exuded or preserving effectively "cleared" insects and exposing internal apodemes, etc. Not necessary to revise of course but putting in a conditional "in some cases" for poor preservation and obscure views would be more accurate in my view.

Line 105: "3D measurement tool Amira" should be "3D measurement tool in Amira" as Amira is the overall software package for segmenting, not just a measurement tool.

Line 119: was any darkening of the amber matrix noticed after the scan? This is typically the case with amber in the synchrotron and not reported, however it'd be helpful to report when this happens (only if it happened in this case, of course!).
Validity of the findings: no comment
Additional comments: No additional comments


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: EVIDENCE OF ACCLIMATIZATION OR ADAPTATION IN HAWAIIAN CORALS TO HIGHER OCEAN TEMPERATURES
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: The manuscript is largely well-written; suggestions for specific edits are in the general comments section below.

No raw data has been provided.

IACUC permit listed for fish used to control tank parasites, but no information on coral collection permits is listed.
Experimental design: The primary research question is timely and the methods used are sound. I have no concerns with respect to the methods used or statistical analyses conducted; however, the raw data has not been provided.
Validity of the findings: The discussion is to the point and succinct, but there are a few potential alternate explanations that I think would be worth discussing. First, the absolute tolerance of the selected coral species to the 31C heat stress increased across years, but the relative magnitude of the heat stress is not considered. In 1970, corals were exposed to a roughly +4.5C temperature increase, while in the present manuscript, the exposure was only a +2.5C change. The calcification data from 1970 (Fig. 4) suggests that a +2.5C change was also not as detrimental to coral performance, and I wonder how the survivorship curves compare at these temperatures to the 2017 experiment if that data is available? And whether a similar +4.5C increase in the present day would result in similar mortality rates. It would be unrealistic to collect additional data from a 34C stress treatment, but I think some discussion of the difference between relative and absolute thermal stress is worth including, and if the survival/bleaching data for the +2.5C treatments in 1970 are available, these would be worth including in the present manuscript as well.

In addition, the authors point out that other environmental variables have changed in Kaneohe Bay since the original experiment was run – namely, that water quality was also a major issue in 1970 – corals experienced higher nutrients, lower water clarity and decreased light levels. They hypothesize that this would have countered bleaching in the original 1970 experiments, but recent work on the role of symbiont density in driving coral bleaching suggests the pattern may be exactly the opposite - e.g. (Cunning and Baker 2014, Baker et al. 2018). Eutrophication favors the proliferation of symbionts (Fagoonee et al. 1999) and corals with greater symbiont densities are more susceptible to bleaching (Cunning and Baker 2013). This transition was also recently shown to be associated with an increase in symbiont parasitism – in which symbionts sequestered more resources for their own growth at a cost to the host (Baker et al. 2018). Consequently, is it possible that the difference in bleaching thresholds and growth deficits among years can be partially explained by a decrease in symbiont density across years as a result of improved water quality? Is there any way to get data on symbiont density? In any case, I think the potential role of changing water quality and possibly symbiont density should be considered in more detail.

Baker, D. M., C. J. Freeman, J. C. Y. Wong, M. L. Fogel, and N. Knowlton. 2018. Climate change promotes parasitism in a coral symbiosis. The ISME Journal 12:921–930.
Cunning, R., and A. C. Baker. 2013. Excess algal symbionts increase the susceptibility of reef corals to bleaching. Nature Climate Change 3:259–262.
Cunning, R., and A. C. Baker. 2014. Not just who, but how many: the importance of partner abundance in reef coral symbioses. Frontiers in Microbiology 5.
Fagoonee, I., H. B. Wilson, M. P. Hassell, and J. R. Turner. 1999. The Dynamics of Zooxanthellae Populations: A Long-Term Study in the Field. Science 283:843–845.
Additional comments: Though we are not supposed to comment on the “impact and novelty” of manuscripts, I nevertheless think this work will be of great interest to the coral research community. When asking about coral adaptation and/or acclimatization, we contemporary coral biologists substitute space for time – and compare corals inhabiting different reef localities. Re-running a nearly 50 year old experiment to ask how coral thermal tolerance has changed in time is hugely exciting!

My main criticisms are listed above in the ‘Validity of the findings’ section – my primary concern is that there may be alternate explanations for the difference in coral performance between the two experiments that are not adequately considered or discussed. Additional minor editing suggestions are listed below.

L20-21: I don’t think this sentence is needed and I think the abstract would be stronger without it.

L24-25: Can the bleaching result be worked into the prior sentence? This sentence is a bit confusing as written

L30-31: Given that irradiance did not alter calcification and only impacted mortality somewhat, I think this wording needs to be toned down or rephrased a bit.

L31-32: “the first strong evidence” is a bit vague – I suggest rewording to be more specific.

L51-55: This sentence is confusing, and moreover, does not reference the primary literature. I suggest rewording for clarity; and both here and in L56-58 finding more appropriate references.

L111-112: A reference is needed for this sentence.

L164: Information on coral collection permits is needed.

L344-345: The mean temperature increased, but was there also a concomitant change in variability? Did the range of temperatures experienced in a given day increase, decrease or stay the same?


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: EVIDENCE OF ACCLIMATIZATION OR ADAPTATION IN HAWAIIAN CORALS TO HIGHER OCEAN TEMPERATURES
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: Overall, the writing is clear, professional, and well constructed. I note a few minor suggestions for clarification of the introduction and alternative citations. The introduction could be re-focused to target the relevant background for evidence for climate-change acclimatization/adaptation to make it stand out from the myriad of "corals are dying from climate change" introductions of standard bleaching papers. I also strongly suggest including raw data at the level of individual for all response variables. As presented, the data are not able to easily be re-analyzed.
Experimental design: The experimental design is sound and well-described. One question is why there were different numbers of individuals in the shaded and unshaded portions of each tank? This should be clarified and described specifically in the text as it creates an imbalance in sample numbers across treatments.
Validity of the findings: The authors present a very exciting and robust dataset, however there is one gap in the analysis that is serious enough to preclude a recommendation for acceptance at this time. I strongly suggest statistically analyzing the 1970 vs. 2017 comparisons directly for all of the data (Calcification, Survivorship, and Visual Assessment). Survivorship data could be analyzed as in "Oliver and Palumbi 2011 CoralReefs Do fluctuating temperature environments elevate coral thermal tolerance" with a cox hazard regression approach including study/year as a term in the model to directly compare resulting curves from 1970 and the 2017 experiments. Visual assessment data could be treated similarly to Oliver and Palumbi as well via some sort of trend-line fitting and statistical comparison of slopes. Calcification data could be compared via an ANOVA with study/year as a fixed factor. As it currently stands, all conclusions regarding differences between the years are based only on trends and not on any analyses. I don't expect the results to change, but this needs to be addressed prior to me recommending acceptance for publication.
Additional comments: General line-by-line comments below:
	line 40-41, suggest modifying the area to the actual statistic of 0.17% of the world ocean area (sensu Smith 1978 Nature Coral-reef area and the contributions of reefs to processes and resources of the world's oceans) and updating the diversity stat to 33% of marine animal species (sensu Fisher et al 2015 CurrBiol Species Richness on Coral Reefs and the Pursuit of Convergent Global Estimates). The McAlister reference is difficult to access and I haven't been able to validate it's use in this instance while Smith 1978 presents an exact calculation and Fisher 2015 is a more updated diversity reference.
	line 43, the phrasing "once climate change exceeds 1-2°C above the preindustrial" is confusing. Suggest clarifying to "preindustrial global/ocean temperatures" or similar specific term.
	line 46, actually coral bleaching is first attributed to Vaughan 1914 (see first sentence of Jokiel and Coles 1990). Vaughn reference can be accessed via archive.org (or email me and I can send you a copy).
	lines 52-53, again please be specific with your temperatures, are these ocean/sea-surface/atmospheric/etc. temperatures?
	lines 55, but see (Xu et al 2018 JGeophysRes Evidence for the Thermal Bleaching of Porites Corals From 4.0 ka B.P. in the Northern South China Sea)
	line 59, maybe cite Hughes 2017 Nature?
	line 89 and 92, suggest citing Liu et al 2014 RemoteSense Reef-Scale Thermal Stress Monitoring of Coral Ecosystems New 5-km Global Products from NOAA Coral Reef Watch or Liu,G.,Rauenzahn,J.L.;Heron,S.F.;Eakin,C.M.;Skirving,W.J.;Christensen,T.R.L.;StrongA.E.;
Li, J. NOAA Coral Reef Watch 50 km Satellite Sea Surface Temperature-Based Decision Support System for Coral Bleaching Management; NOAA Technical Report NESDIS 143; NOAA/NESDIS: College Park, MD, USA, 2013; p. 33. over the website.
	lines 109 and 111, suggest citing references for these definitions.
	lines 134-135, add Jokiel and Coles 1990 as well
	line 139, but what about Logan et al 2014 GCCBiol Incorporating adaptive responses into future projections of coral bleaching?
	line 163, re-format citation to match others
	line 182-187, citations for the breeding modes?
	line 192, re-format last citation to match others (as well as others throughout listing full authors)
	lines 314-322, why are there sometimes two different p-values for the same comparisons? e.g., the p<0.0001 and p=0.0006 on lines 321-322?
	lines 356-360, were survivorship differences tested statistically? Could do a chi-squared to compare percent survival at the end or a repeated-measures ANOVA to compare survivorship percentages across time with fixed effects of temperature, day, and individual as the repeated measure.
	line 384, use past tense "is" to "was" for consistency.
	line 387-388, this is the second time the authors use a similar statement referenced to Coles and Brown 2003, though the statement is a bit misleading. I believe they are referring to naturally occurring, long-term differences in thermal thresholds between similar corals in different geographic locations (i.e., thermal environments). However, here, they are clearly demonstrating short-term shifts in thermal tolerances within the past 46 years due to warming seas. I think it is safe to say that this is the first time that thermal acclimatization/adaptation to anthropogenic warming has been experimentally determined in corals, a very different phenomenon from the naturally occurring geographic variation across latitudes.
	lines 392-411, based on my reading of the results, none of these statements are supported by any statistical comparisons. The only statistical comparison between 1970 and 2017 results was the regression analyses for the temperature data.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: EVIDENCE OF ACCLIMATIZATION OR ADAPTATION IN HAWAIIAN CORALS TO HIGHER OCEAN TEMPERATURES
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: The revisions adequately addressed my concerns.
Experimental design: The revisions adequately addressed my concerns
Validity of the findings: The revisions adequately addressed my concerns
Additional comments: A few minor comments below. This should not require re-review:

Lines 47-49, it's actually not super clear who first described bleaching. See below summary and references from Glynn 1996. It sounds like maybe the Vaughn 1911 (not 1914) though I haven't found a copy of this to verify:

The first documented account of bleaching was reported by Goreau (1964), off the south coast of Jamaica in 1963. Two earlier reports that are cited to indicate that bleaching is not a recent phenomenon are Vaughan (1911) and Yonge & NichoIIs (1931). Vaughan (1911) used the term 'bleached' to describe the condition of the upper surfaces of massive corals that were periodically exposed during extreme, midday low tides in the Florida Keys. According to this report the stress (subaerial exposure) and response were presumably acute, causing rapid tissue death and sloughing. This resulted in a bare white skeleton that was soon invaded by epibenthic fouling species. This is not coral bleaching. The bleaching described by Yonge & NichoIIs (1931) did not occur naturally, but was induced by experimental treatments. Natural bleaching events must certainly have occurred in response to stress condi- tions in the past, but it is intriguing that they are so rarely mentioned until the 1970s. This suggests that the increased incidences of coral reef bleaching observed toward the end of this century are genuine. However, the absence of records of earlier periods of bleaching (from 1870 to 1970) are enigmatic, perhaps a result of non-occurrence, but also possibly due to non-reporting.
Goreau TF (1964) Mass expulsion of zooxanthellae from Jamaican reef communities after Hurricane Flora. Science, 145, 383-386
Vaughan TW (1911) The Recent Madreporaria of southem Florida. Carnegie Institution of Washington Yearbook (1910), 9, 135-144.
Yonge CM, Nicholls AG (1931) Studies on the physiology of corals. V. The effects of starvation in light and in darkness on the relationship between corals and zooxanthellae. Scientific Reports of the Great Barrier Reef Expedition 7928-29, 1, 177-211

Line 99, suggest changing to "globally,"?

Lines 172-173, Repeated from earlier in the paragraph

Line 405 "has" not "have"?

Line 486 "finding[s]"

Line 503 Cite Bruno papers here?

Conclusions (is the bulleted format allowed?)


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: ARE SOME INDIVIDUALS GENERALLY MORE BEHAVIORALLY PLASTIC THAN OTHERS? AN EXPERIMENT WITH SAILFIN MOLLIES
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: This is a nice little study of relationships, across individuals, between different types of behavioral plasticity.  The study focuses on contextual plasticity: the behavior expressed by the same individuals when they are tested in two different social contexts. It also includes an assay of a different type of plasticity: a measure of learning rate in a reversal learning task, estimated using a standard method in the field (number of trials to criteria).
At present there are a lot of ideas floating around about reasons why one might expect particular types of plasticity to be correlated with one another across individuals.  However, data on this topic is still sparse. So the current study should provide some much-needed information on this topic.

See comments below on suggestions on references that might be added to the paper, and suggestions on ways to reorganize the introduction
Experimental design: The experimental design used to measure the behavior of the subjects seems fine, with evidence that the authors have taken a number of steps to control for spurious internal and external factors that might have affected the behavior expressed by their subjects.
My main concerns have to do with the statistical analyses.  It seems a shame that the authors were not able to use a multivariate analysis which would allow them to simultaneously analyze the variation within contexts (e.g. variation across the 2 alone treatments) and the variation across contexts (e.g. variation in the behavior expressed in the different social treatments). At present, the large number of comparisons necessarily make it impossible to detect statistically significant correlations of the magnitude one would expect to observe in this sort of study (see comments 10 and 13, below). Another question is whether the results of this study would have differed if plasticity had been measured based on the difference in scores, instead of being based on the absolute value of the difference in scores (see comment 6, below). The two ways of measuring plasticity will yield the same answers if the direction of plasticity is the same for all of the subjects. However it is not clear whether this is the case in the current study.
Validity of the findings: Given the number of comparisons in this study, I think that it works better as an exploratory study than as a confirmatory one.  The authors present a number of results which can provide the basis for additional, more-focused, experiments on this topic.  However, the current study lacks the statistical power necessary to test for correlations of the magnitude reported in previous studies of this topic. Hence, I think that it would be a mistake for the authors to try to explain why different measures of plasticity were NOT correlated with one another across individuals. Instead, they can present their results with the correlations indicated, and leave it to future research to determine whether the (mostly) positive correlations they reported do reflect underlying mechanisms which affect different types of behavioral plasticity.  Another positive aspect of the way that they have reported their results is that other researchers who want data to test specific hypotheses about plasticity (e.g. correlations across individuals between plasticity in mating behavior and plasticity in exploratory behavior) should b able to pick that data out of their table.
Additional comments: 1. Although the current article focuses on individuals, the authors may also want to look at an article that considers correlations across genotypes between different types of behavioral plasticity:
Saltz et al. 2017. Genetic Correlations among Developmental and Contextual Behavioral Plasticity in Drosophila melanogaster. Am. Nat. 190 Pages: 61-72
Some of the issues discussed in this article are relevant to the current one, e.g. the measuring correlations between contextual and developmental plasticity (see below)

2. Line 20.   I am not sure why the authors consider changes in personality across a social gradient to be a 'direct' example of plasticity, and variation in learning rates to be an 'indirect' example of plasticity.

3.  Lines 55-63.   It might be easier for readers to follow if the hypotheses on reasons why one might expect different types of plasticity to be correlated with one another across individuals were presented first, and then studies that support or refute this hypothesis were presented.  For instance, the only reason for mentioning studies that look for correlations, across individuals, between personality and plasticity is because such studies imply that the same personality trait will be related to different types of plasticity. Thus, Sih & Del Giudice 2012 (Linking behavioural syndromes and cognition: a behavioural ecology perspective. Phil. Trans. Roy Soc. B.  367, 2762–2772), is relevant because it discusses relationships across individuals between reversal learning rates, acquisition learning rates and other cognitive traits, based on the assumption that different types of cognitive traits are linked to personality traits.
For the current article, the most relevant empirical studies are not those which have looked for links between personality and plasticity, but rather those which have tested relationships across individuals between different types of plasticity. Since there currently aren't many empirical studies on THIS topic, this would be a good place to mention the ones that have been published. For instance,  Mitchell&Biro 17 should be cited here, rather than waiting for the Discussion section.
At present, lines 66-67 offer a somewhat dated review of empirical studies which have looked for correlations across individuals between different types of behavioral plasticity

4. Lines 93-96.  I am not sure how the results in Mathot et al. 11 support the hypothesis that physiological state prevents individuals from expressing the optimal amount of plasticity for a given trait. Although they failed to detect individual differences in the plasticity of one type of behavior (escape flights)...this was not surprising, given that they tested the subjects in flocks, and escape behavior tends to be coordinated across individuals within bird flocks.

5. Lines 106-108:  " For each fish, we measured its behavioral plasticity both directly as the change in its personality traits or mating behavior in response to subtle, large or intermediate changes in environmental stimuli and indirectly as its performance on a reversal-learning task"
See 1.  It is not clear why a change in a personality trait would be considered to be a 'direct' measure of behavioral plasticity whereas reversal learning would be an 'indirect' measure of behavioral plasticity.

6. Re Line 156.  I get that it might be useful to measure plasticity as the absolute value of the difference between the scores expressed under two conditions, but the direction of the difference might also be relevant. For instance, if some males reduced nibbling under competitive conditions whereas other males increased nibbling under competitive conditions, then males with the same absolute plasticity scores would expressing different types of responses to the same set of conditions. So unless all of the males changed in their scores in the same direction (e.g. all of the contextual reaction norms had positive slopes as a function of level of competition) it would be a good idea to also present the results based on the actual difference in scores, and not just based on the absolute difference in scores.

7. Re Line 200.   A problem re the terms 'subtle', 'medium' and 'large' is that those terms seem to be assigned based on the author's assumptions about the reasons why an individual's score might vary across treatments. For instance, 'subtle' implies that differences in external stimuli in two 'alone' treatments were responsible for differences in an individual's scores in the two treatments:
"After the 2 tests were completed, we estimated for each fish its levels of plasticity when the changes in environmental stimuli were: i) subtle (i.e. as the difference in absolute value between the 2 replicates of the alone treatment |T1-T2|)".
The problem here is that variation in the scores expressed by a given individual tested more than once in the 'same' context can vary for all sorts of reasons other than subtle variation in environmental stimuli between the tests. In particular, the individual's internal state can vary from one test to another, and this can contribute to, or be mostly responsible for, variation in its scores in this situation.
I suggest that the authors present the results without making assumptions about the extent to which the fish subjects considered the treatments to involve different stimuli.
Later (in the discussion) might be a better place to speculate about the factors that might have contributed to the plasticity in the different situations.

8. Re Line 207.   It is great that the authors are aware of ceiling effects. However, just removing subjects from analysis when they had maximal possible scores for a given treatment might not fix the problem. For instance, if possible scores under low competition ranged from 0 to 1, and if the maximal observed amount of plasticity observed in any fish was +.5, then a fish with a score of .9 under low competition would be unable to express the level of plasticity expressed by another individual with a score of .5 in that condition. This is another reason why providing data on the direction of plasticity would be helpful, because a fish with a score of .9 under low competition could easily DECREASE its score by .4.
A more conservative way to avoid ceiling effects would be to determine the maximum amount of plasticity (with direction included) of plasticity expressed by any subject, and then restricting the analyses to those individuals who scores were sufficiently far from the maximum score to ensure that they could have expressed the maximum level of plasticity.

9. Re Line 219 "The fish were tested after 24h to 48h of food deprivation (depending on their satiety level) until they choose the correct corridor 6 consecutive times".
Unclear.. how was satiety level determined so that fish could be assigned to the different treatments?

10. Re Line 280.  Given the very large number of comparisons, it is not surprising that none of the correlations were significant after Bonferroni correction.  The authors might consider using a different test for family-wise error which might yield slightly higher p levels (e.g. Hochberg 1988, Biometrika, pp 800-802).
Also, it might make sense to present the article as an 'exploratory' study, one which might suggest profitable avenues for future research on this topic with this species. For instance, based on Table 1, it might be useful in future to look at relationships between Neophobia S and Mating Behavior, or between Reversal Learning and Anxiety S.
Conversely, it would not be reasonable to take the results presented herein as evidence of a LACK of relationships across individuals between different types of plasticity (as is currently indicated in Lines 296-298).
This is because previous studies which HAVE documented correlations across individuals between different types of behavioural plasticity usually report relatively low correlation coefficients (on the order to 0.3- 0.4).  So at least some of the correlations tested in the current study might have been as strong as those reported by previous authors, but a focused experiment with greater power would be required to determine whether those correlations were significantly higher than zero.
Also, see  6, above.  It is possible that correlations that were relatively weak when plasticity was measured in absolute terms would be stronger if plasticity was measured as the actual difference in scores.  This is particularly true if individuals varied in the direction of plasticity.
It should be relatively easy to add correlations based on difference in scores to Table 1 by redoing the Table as a 9x9 matrix, with correlations based on difference scores above the diagonal, and correlations based on absolute scores below the diagonal.

11. Line 288. " By contrast, differences in body length were more strongly associated with differences in reversal learning speed and reproductive tactics than with differences in plasticity of personality traits: smaller fish exhibited greater plasticity in mating tactics but were slower in the reversal learning task compared with larger individuals."
Where is the statistical test that supports this finding?

12.  Line 308.  " Indeed, we found that individuals with the greatest plasticity estimated between the 2 trials without an audience had the longest latency".  I wasn't able to find these results don't seem to be reported in the Results.

13. Line 318-320.   "Since all subjects in our study experienced the trials in the same order, however, this explanation alone cannot account for the total absence of significant correlations among the different measures of plasticity".
See 10, above.  In order to detect significant correlations of the same magnitude as those reported in previous studies, you would need either a much larger sample size (for the same number of comparisons) or a study with only one or two comparisons.
Currently, you have a sample size of about 30, and a p level of  < .001 based on the number of comparisons. I did a quick calculation of power for this situation (power = refers to the probability that your test will find a statistically significant difference when such a difference actually exists. It is usually set at a minimum of .80).
In this study, you would need to have a correlation of at least .7 between two types of plasticity to have a reasonable chance (power = .80) of detecting a significant correlation (e.g. a correlation greater than 0).  Not saying that this level of correlation across individuals between two types of behavioral plasticity is impossible, but given previous studies on this topic, it is very unlikely.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: ARE SOME INDIVIDUALS GENERALLY MORE BEHAVIORALLY PLASTIC THAN OTHERS? AN EXPERIMENT WITH SAILFIN MOLLIES
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: The authors use clear, unambiguous, and professional English language throughout. The introduction and background neatly and succinctly place the context and justify the need to study behavioral plasticity in multiple contexts. However, the introduction would benefit from including reference to the term “behavioral flexibility” which refers to the same tendency to change behavior in response to changing environments. There are several papers showing that purported measures of behavioral flexibility (e.g., innovation, social learning, tool-use, see Reader, Hager, & Laland, 2011, and reversal learning/inhibitory control) do not all correlate with each other such as Logan, 2016a (reversal learning and a problem-solving task); Brucks, Marshall-Pecini, Wallis, Huber, & Range, 2017 (various measures of inhibitory control); and Johnson-Ulrich, Johnson-Ulrich, & Holekamp, 2018 (repeated innovation and inhibitory control), and probably others that I am not immediately aware of. Logan (2016b) also compares flexibility (via reversal learning) with personality traits. Generally, most studies do continue to assume that flexibility/plasticity is a single trait and studies addressing and explaining this issue are welcome.

The structure conforms to PeerJ standards, figures are relevant, high-quality, well labeled and described.
Raw data is supplied.

References:
Brucks, D., Marshall-Pescini, S., Wallis, L. J., Huber, L., & Range, F. (2017). Measures of Dogs’ Inhibitory Control Abilities Do Not Correlate across Tasks, 8(May), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00849
Johnson-Ulrich, L., Johnson-Ulrich, Z., & Holekamp, K. (2018). Proactive behavior, but not inhibitory control, predicts repeated innovation by spotted hyenas tested with a multi-access box. Animal Cognition, 21(3), 379–392. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-018-1174-2
Logan, C. J. (2016a). Behavioral flexibility and problem solving in an invasive bird. PeerJ, 4, e1975. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1975
Logan, C. J. (2016b). Behavioral flexibility in an invasive bird is independent of other behaviors. PeerJ, 4:e2215. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.2215
Reader, S. M., Hager, Y., & Laland, K. N. (2011). The evolution of primate general and cultural intelligence. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, 366(1567), 1017–27. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2010.0342
Experimental design: This paper describes original primary research within the scope of the journal.
The research question is well defined, relevant, and meaningful and the current research address an identified knowledge gap (is plasticity repeatable across contexts?).
The methods are described in sufficient detail and are generally rigorous although the measures chosen need to be justified (see line comments below).

Line 154: Please elaborate on this method to justify its inclusion as a measure of plasticity. Is it the standard way to assess sexual behavior in sailfin mollies? If so please add a citation. What do more or less nibbles indicate? Do sailfin mollies typically vary in how much they nibble, and in different contexts?

Line 158: Likewise, justify your use of exploration/anxiety and neophobia (and specific methods) to assess personality. This could simply be several representative citations and a sentence stating that these are commonly used to assess personality. (This comment applies regardless of comments in section 3).

Line 210. Please justify use of reversal learning to measure plasticity with representative citations.

Lines 200-208: “Environmental differences” are 1) uncontrollable differences between trials (please expand on what these might be) 2) differences in audience members (assuming it is a different audience each time?), and 3) alone vs audience? Please clarify this point. Are these changes that we would expect individuals should be plastic (or at least it might be advantageous to behave differently?). Please clarify 1) why these environmental conditions may or may not elicit plasticity in behavior for sailfin mollies and 2) what makes the various changes subtle, medium, and large.
Validity of the findings: Part of the data analysis has a major flaw, which hurts the discussion, but the discussion is otherwise well-stated.

The problem with the analysis is that, first, it is conceptually awkward to use measures of exploration, anxiety, and neophobia as measures of both personality (consistency over time/context) AND plasticity (change over context). Second, this creates statistical problems as you are creating correlations between two measures constructed from the same data (with the exception of personality traits, which are derived from alone trials, with the Medium-environmental change plasticity, which are derived from audience trials). In particular, correlating the personality traits with the Subtle Plasticity measures is inappropriate because the personality trait is the mean of two replicates, while the plasticity trait is the difference between the same two replicates. If this is a good measure of plasticity (e.g., subjects do vary between replicates in differing degrees), then it is NOT a valid measure of personality and using the mean is inappropriate. In order to justify using means as measures of personality traits, one must first show the data you are averaging from is repeatable. This method also means that your significant correlation between Neophobia and Neophobia-S is an artifact, not a result. If trial 1 has a very long latency, then it is unsurprising (regression to the mean) that the second trial will be much shorter. This creates subjects for which their neophobia is high (due to the high first latency skewing the mean upwards) and their plasticity is also high (also because of the high first value), and vice versa.

I would recommend choosing to use exploration, anxiety, and neophobia as either measures of personality OR plasticity, and not both. The issue of measuring personality in labs, and whether it is actually repeatable across contexts, may be a separate issue from the main topic of your paper, although you demonstrate (Fig. 4) that these “personality” traits change in different contexts, which perhaps suggests that they are not actually personality traits.
If you do want to include personality in this paper, do not use data from exploration, anxiety, and neophobia tests to measure plasticity (and instead rely on the mating behavior and reversal learning measures for plasticity. This would still yield comparable results (e.g., plasticity does not correlate in different contexts, nor does it correlate with “personality traits”) and provides ultimately the same conclusions.
Alternatively, you could continue to use exploration, anxiety, and neophobia to look at plasticity and remove Table 2 (essentially, and add body length to Table 1). This leaves you with the appreciably wide array of plasticity measures (and the environmental context), while again, drawing the same basic conclusions. (This would be my preferred solution, as it more closely aligns with your hypotheses as presented in abstract and introduction, e.g., Lines 103-110).

Other comments:
Line 273. No statistics were done on the data used to produce this figure? Looks like could be significant differences between S and L groups.
Line 331-333. This statement also support the previous ideas, so “however” is not necessary.
Additional comments: My first impression is that this is an interesting and well-written study that does a good job of analyzing plasticity in multiple contexts (including in contexts that are usually considered to measure personality). It is probably justifiable to continue referring to exploration, anxiety, and neophobia as "personality traits" and discuss plasticity with regards to personality traits, but using the same data to create measures of plasticity and measures of personality seems inherently flawed. Nevertheless, removing the "personality" measures (but preserving the use of exploration, anxiety, and neophobia tasks to measure plasticity) would be relatively simple and greatly improve the quality of the paper.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: MINDFULNESS AND AUTONOMOUS SENSORY MERIDIAN RESPONSE (ASMR)
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: This report is well written and concise. The study explores a timely question of the potential link between ASMR and mindfulness.  The rationale for the study is clearly explained and the research question is well formulated and straightforward.
Experimental design: The design of the experiment and the numbers of participants in the control and experimental groups are adequate.
Validity of the findings: Several issues have been identified:

1. The recruitment of the controls is straightforward; however, it isn’t clear how it was established that the participants in the ASMR group did indeed experience ASMR. The authors mention they were recruited from ASMR Reddit site, however, raw data set and the supplemental materials do not seem to include any methods of verification of ASMR. Were they asked explicitly whether they experience ASMR (as were the controls)? There are questions related to how often they watch ASMR videos etc. on the ASMR checklist but many people enjoy watching such videos without experiencing the sensory response. Therefore, I am concerned that as these participants didn’t explicitly state that they experience the physiological response which constitutes ASMR, there is no way of knowing whether they indeed experience ASMR.

2. The raw data set doesn’t include answers to all questions listed in ASMR checklist. E.g. this question is missing: ‘What is the earliest age you can recall having an ASMR experience? (For example, if you remember first having an ASMR experience at the age of four, please choose "4". In this question, a "first ASMR experience" refers to the first time that you noticed you were experiencing ASMR-related tingles, even if at the time you did not know what they were called’).

3. Means and SDs should either be stated in the results section or a reference to the table containing this information should be provided.

4. The results of correlational analysis reported on p.13 line 305 are in fact non-significant rather than marginally significant – it would probably be more appropriate to refer to it as marginally non-significant

5. The authors could also cite another paper which reported the same finding with regards to openness to experience among individuals reporting to experience ASMR - Janik McErlean, A., & Banissy, M. (2017). Assessing individual variation in personality and empathy traits in self-reported Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response. Multisensory Research, 30(6), 601-613. doi:10.1163/22134808-00002571

6. The explanation of the gender differences on Curiosity subscale of the TMS is a bit vague. Could the authors elaborate on what is meant by ‘attentional mechanisms’ and ‘more cognitive processes’ (p.15, line 349)?

7. I don’t think that consistency of ASMR tingles to specific triggers has been examined and established so far. Therefore, it is probably better to not include this description (p.2 line 43)
Additional comments: This is a timely study which further contributes to the understanding of the nature of ASMR. However, clarification regarding the points mentioned in this review is needed.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: MINDFULNESS AND AUTONOMOUS SENSORY MERIDIAN RESPONSE (ASMR)
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: The writing is excellent technically and easy to follow, with very clear and precise wording.  As a whole, the article is tight and flows well.  The literature review is concise, yet provides a solid explanation of ASMR, its relationship to mindfulness, and the rationale for the investigation.  The references are relevant.   It may be worthwhile to consider expanding the background to include previous findings regarding other traits associated with ASMR (e.g., Fredborg, Clark & Smith, 2016; Janik McErlean & Banissy, 2017). I think it is up to the authors' discretion, however, whether it would fit into the nicely focused structure of this article.  Results are clearly reported, and the use of headings to separate results by instrument makes for a straightforward reading experience.  The raw data has been shared as requested, along with consent form and human subjects approval.
Experimental design: This is a methodologically sound research article on a topic relevant to the health sciences.  The authors present a defined research question and state their hypotheses. The aim of the study is to offer "novel insight into the phenomenology of ASMR, while also showing how this atypical conscious state is related to mindful states and traits." Recruitment methods and all procedures are clearly indicated.  The instruments are well-described with technical properties reported.   The inclusion of the author-designed ASMR Checklist in the supplemental materials also allows for replicability of results.
Validity of the findings: The authors used age and sex-matched participants and utilized an additional screening method for ASMR to ensure the samples were accurately represented. I did wonder about the potential for sampling bias because different methods were used to recruit ASMR and non-ASMR participants, and perhaps this should be noted. Results are reported with specificity, including both significant and non-significant findings.  I appreciated that authors often noted the strength of correlations presented.  They justifiably conclude that there appears to be a correlation between mindfulness and ASMR, as is supported by the findings of this research.  They raise a number of interesting questions (e.g., whether ASMR is a cognitively active process) and potential future research directions (e.g., whether mindfulness training would increase likelihood of ASMR).
Additional comments: No additional comments


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: MINDFULNESS AND AUTONOMOUS SENSORY MERIDIAN RESPONSE (ASMR)
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 3

Output:
Basic reporting: Some reporting should be tabulated, see below.
Experimental design: Adequate.
Validity of the findings: See below.
Additional comments: This study is on an extremely interesting phenomenon, and one which is chronically under-investigated compared to its popular interest. The authors should be commended for their understanding and approach of such a topic, which might be regarded as falling outside the range of 'acceptable' topics for an academic endeavour.

As the field is nascent, I feel it is appropriate for review to be reasonably forgiving - all preliminary work such as this is eventually at the very least heavily qualified by later replications and more concrete concepts. To try to hold the work to a standard of a well-established field may serve to not allow the field to develop at all. However, it also pays to be scrupulous.

These are points as they occur in order. I have left page numbers in the copied sections for reference:

* "In addition, the intensity and duration of ASMR
57 experiences are often under the control of the individual, a characteristic that distinguishes
58 ASMR from the automatic sensory responses of synesthesia."

It is a shame this point was not expanded further. As far as I am aware, synesthesia is an entirely automatic and non-conscious mechanism. However, ASMR is - presumably - capable of being suppressed even when participants encounter a strong stimulus. This is a strong piece of evidence in favour of the similarity to mindfulness (especially when experienced as a cultivated habit or meditation). Future work would do well to include an item about the *capability of suppressing ASMR*, which may vary with the perceived strength of the phenomenon.

* "A
251 principal-components analysis of the 14 items on the checklist revealed five “intensity” factors
252 underlying the common ASMR-triggering stimuli chosen for the checklist, each of which had an
253 eigenvalue greater than 1.0. These intensity factors (with items in parentheses) were Watching
254 (“Watching others paint,” “Watching others draw,” “Watching others open a package,” and
255 “Watching others cook”), Touching (“Watching someone touch another person’s hair,”
256 “Watching someone touch their own hair,” “Watching others apply makeup and/or nail polish to
257 themselves,” and “Watching others apply makeup and/or nail polish to another person”),
258 Repetitive Sounds (“Tapping sounds” and “Scratching sounds”), Simulations (“Dentist
259 simulation” and “Haircut simulation”), and Mouth Sounds (“Chewing sounds” and
260 “Whispering”), respectively (Fredborg et al., 2017)."

Consider reducing this to a Table?

* Where were Control individuals recruited?

* "112 The current study received ethical approval from the Department of Psychology’s Human
113 Research Ethics Committee (HREB)."

Is this a typo?

* Explicitly state (a) this is an exploratory study, and require ongoing verification (b) it is speculative to conduct a power analysis with entirely novel questions, so one was not conducted.

* The correlation between Tcur and MAAS is reported for the whole sample, however, it appears from the subsamples that the relationship in ASMR participants (r=0.13) is substantially lower than for the regular sample (r=0.27).

* Is the Embodied Emotion scale absent? It appears in the study description, but neither the data set nor the results.

* Qualtrix returns forms which only allow continuation between screens until answers are complete. However, the raw data is missing from an estimated 40 to 60 cells. Was this lost before or after collection? Include an explicit statement of adjusted n's for each calculation.

* On Table 1, what does ASMR (M) denote?

* The first participant in the questionnaire in the ASMR group does not appear to show any symptoms of ASMR in response to any trigger. Was this a test line left in by accident?

* Also in this data, the averages in column BE do not match the columns AK through AX. Is this because some of the items were redacted? The items are reported as 14, however they are numbered to 16, and several "optional" items were apparently measured but not included. Please clarify.

* I cannot reconcile the "STIM" values in the spreadsheets being null for participants when all the other data is given. This may be my misunderstanding.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: MINDFULNESS AND AUTONOMOUS SENSORY MERIDIAN RESPONSE (ASMR)
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: No comment
Experimental design: No comment
Validity of the findings: No comment
Additional comments: The authors addressed my concerns raised in the original review and  therefore I recommend this article for publication.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: MINDFULNESS AND AUTONOMOUS SENSORY MERIDIAN RESPONSE (ASMR)
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: No comment.
Experimental design: No comment.
Validity of the findings: No comment.
Additional comments: All my concerns are well addressed.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: VINASSE APPLICATION AND CESSATION OF BURNING IN SUGARCANE MANAGEMENT CAN HAVE POSITIVE IMPACT ON SOIL CARBON STOCKS
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: no comment
Experimental design: The experimental design is good. The approach, sampling method and measurements are well designed. The description for the method is very detailed and understandable. Author needs to supplement the detailed information of UB treatment for straw deposition as stated in my attachment.
Validity of the findings: no comment
Additional comments: The manuscript is well designed and is well written in the part of Introduction and Methods and Materials. However, I think there are some serious problems.
1.	The conclusion of Vinasse application and cessation of burning in sugarcane management having positive impact on soil carbon stocks is questionable. Although Fig 2 and Fig 3 shows that some individual soil horizons have a C accumulation after vinasse application or cessation of burning, Table 1 clearly shows that the difference in soil C stocks between NV-to-V management or between B and UB were not deemed statistically significant for not only top soil but also whole profile of soil (0-30, 0-50 and 0-100 cm). Moreover, Fig 4 shows all of soil fractions (including labile and recalcitrant pool ) in all soil horizon have not significant difference between V and NV treatments. Similarly, Fig 5 shows all of soil fractions in all soil horizons have not significant difference between B and UB treatments except for silt and clay fractions in 0-20 cm horizon. Therefore, based on your results, vinasse application and cessation of burning have a weak impact on soil carbon stocks. Thus, I think it is no meaning to calculate the C sequestration rate or payback time.
2.	The authors used the CENTURY model simulate future C change under vinasse application and cessation of burning, and the results showed that C accumulates continually in the future. I am not familiar with modelling, and I cannot judge whether it is reliable.
3.	The Discussion part is badly organized and tedious. It did not explain well for the results of this study. Moreover, it did not discuss the limitation of this study (e.g. spatial heterogeneity).
4.	The detailed information can be seen in my attachment.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: VINASSE APPLICATION AND CESSATION OF BURNING IN SUGARCANE MANAGEMENT CAN HAVE POSITIVE IMPACT ON SOIL CARBON STOCKS
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: The research question is significant and important. The data are novel and interesting.
Experimental design: I think the introduction should pay more attention to the impact of different management practices on SOC stock rather than other unrelated content. Besides, author should summarize a better research motivation of this study. And I want to know why not set a control (Native vegetation treatment), this helps to better explain the results.
Validity of the findings: no comment
Additional comments: L21-22 “ mainly regarding soil aspects”, “which requires a better understanding of its effects in a short and long term.” These statements are too broad, the theme of soil carbon should be highlighted, rephrase.

L27 According to your result (L319-320) and discussion (L462), “0-40” should be “0-30”?

L34 “first data?” please confirm

L58-73 L82-92 these two paragraphs are too long and useless, perhaps you should reduce the description about “the vinasse application and burning management situation” and merge this paragraph with the next paragraph, respectively

L69-71 “An appropriate vinasse application, however, requires chemical analyses of the vinasse nutrients, particularly the soil exchangeable K concentration (CETESB 2006).” This sentence is redundant in the introduction. Delete or rephrase.

L81 reword this sentence “It is estimated that over 80% of São Paulo State is under vinasse ferti-irrigation”. Because I do not know the purpose of this sentence appeared at the end of the paragraph

L90-92 delete or reword this sentence “ Despite the cessation burning in São Paulo this practice is still evident in other regions such as in the Brazilian Northeast (States of Pernambuco and Paraíba) and in parts of the State of Minas Gerais state where the uneven topography is present” It is redundant

L214 why not 3 replicates for 90-100 cm?

L321 “;” should be “,” I think

L429-432 There is no need to discuss yield. Besides, vinasse addition stimulates the growth of microorganisms may be another reason that increase C stock, please consider

L434 delete “(”

L442-443 “ the accumulation of soil C through greater root turnover and exudation.” It requires some references

L447 “Silt+Clay containing greater soil C under vinasse application” or “Silt+Clay containing greater soil C under vinasse application and no vinasse application”, check

L447-448 The logic is ambiguous for me. On the one hand, vinasse application significantly increased soil C stocks in 0-40 cm depth, on the other hand, no differences in C content were found in any of the physical fractions. I really want to know the fate of excess C in V treatment, compared with NV treatment.

L451-453 Can you get the result that “LF can show high spatial and seasonal variability” from your study rather than other study (i.e., Christensen 1992)?

L459-460 More profound discussion is necessary

L485 detailed description.

L485-495 The purpose of this paragraph is to support which of your result?

L499-500 “soil under this management often has higher fertility than soil under burned management”, this sentence is contradictory to your result that no significant difference of C stock was founded between B and UB from 0-30 cm.

L510 The definition of “carbon” must be consistent and rigorous. total C is different from “soil organic C (SOC)”, check

L573-585 Delete sentences that have nothing to do with the conclusion


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: VINASSE APPLICATION AND CESSATION OF BURNING IN SUGARCANE MANAGEMENT CAN HAVE POSITIVE IMPACT ON SOIL CARBON STOCKS
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: no comment
Experimental design: no comment
Validity of the findings: no comment
Additional comments: I would  be very glad to re-review this paper named "Vinasse application and cessation of burning in sugarcane management can have positive impact on soil carbon stocks ". I think the submission has been greatly improved and is worthy of publication. And it is better if the authors further improve figures more beautiful and standardized before submitting the final version .


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: DISTRIBUTION AND POPULATION STRUCTURE IN THE NAKED GOBY GOBIOSOMA BOSC (PERCIFORMES: GOBIIDAE) ALONG A SALINITY GRADIENT IN TWO WESTERN ATLANTIC ESTUARIES
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: The paper “Distribution and population structure in the naked goby Gobiosoma bosc (Perciformes: Gobiidae) along
a salinity gradient in two western Atlantic estuaries” describes the genetic population structure of the naked goby along two estuaries in North Carolina using the marker CO1 and places it in a larger geographic context using published CO1 sequences. The two main questions are whether the populations will show genetic structure at a small geographic scale (estuary) and if this structure correlates with the salinity gradient in the estuary.

The biggest weakness of the paper are:
1.	We are missing information on the number of samples collected at each site.
2.	Discussion points are in the results and introduction material is in the discussion
3.	Significance of results are exaggerated
4.	Some of the discussion is off topic or missing key points to discuss
Experimental design: Is there a reason why fin clips and marking the fish could not have been used instead of killing the fish? If so it should be in the methods.

In general: nowhere in the methods is it clear how many gobies you sampled per site and how many samples you use in the larger geographic comparison. You mention “a maximum of 10 gobies” but we don’t know exactly how many. This should be clearly shown in Table 1 so that we can compare the number of haplotypes to the number of fish sampled. This is a big flaw for this analysis!

L 176 “from five locations” should read “from 9 locations”.

L 189-190 “ten collecting units per river” There are only 4 sites in the Pamlico river, so that would be 8 collecting units.

L 208 to 214 – This should be in the introduction – why you think there should be a genetic gradient correlating to a salinity gradient.

L 227 What type of sequencing was carried out? Sanger? MiSeq? Please be more precise.

L229 Did you align them to a reference CO1 sequence? Did you clean the sequences you received? Please be more specific.

L 230 – extra closing bracket “New Zealand))”

L 243 – 252 This paragraph is confusing and presents too many different points – restructure. Where do you get the abundance data from????

L 257 Phist – Please indicate the table #
L258 nMDS – Please indicate the figure #
L 260 TCS network – please indicate which figure? Use “haplotype network” instead of TCS network  throughout the paper.

L 261 New paragraph for salinity – “We used ARLEQUIN to obtain…”

L 267 New paragraph for haplotype accumulation
Validity of the findings: There are some parts of the results that read like the discussion. Please remove those sections and develop them in the discussion (see below).

The haplotypes shown in figure 1 are difficult to see (too small) and are not discussed in the results.

L298 –This conclusion should not be here but in the discussion and discussed with all the caveats. Also you haven’t shown if these differences were significant. This could be due to a difference in sampling, undersampling or could be random.

L300 The MDS results are not that clear and again should not be discussed in the results but in the discussion.

L329 – 351 – The title of the paper is about population structure along a salinity gradient – it seems that table S1 and Figure S1 are central to this and should be in the body of the paper. At least the salinity table.

L329. Remove “also”

Discussion

L 379 to 404: This entire paragraph belongs to the introduction. Please re-write presenting the key finding you would like to discuss in the sections you’ve defined (you do this around L 399)
L414: If you are going to make such a broad statement, make sure you have the literature backing it up, including the most recent ones. I think you will find that the state of the literature shows a much more complex story with examples of marine dispersal being dictated by small-scale factors. You don’t actually need to make a comparison with the marine realm here to make your point regarding estuarine fish.

L419 to 421 This sentence doesn’t make sense – If there is gene flow why would you expect to find barriers to gene flow? How can you find both gene flow and population structure? Please clarify. The star-like structure of Fig 3 with a lot of new haplotypes with few mutations between each of them suggests to me is that there may have been a recent population expansion in these estuaries where haplotypes are not in equilibrium. This needs to be discussed.

L425-428. Your point here doesn’t support the theory of barrier to gene flow. Also, cite references for each of your ideas - develop them in separate paragraphs (for e.g. idea that habitat patchiness will influence population structure).

L441-461 Your data never showed that there was a significant difference in shared diversity between the estuaries – the data doesn’t reveal “clear differences”. Either add analysis showing that the observed differences are statistically significant or review this paragraph.

L479-492 CO1 has been shown to not always be neutral. II think it is important to discuss in this section the possibility that you may be seeing adaptation to salinity (and not wave and currents.). If this population is in recent expansion and not in equilibrium, you could be seeing haplotypes variability due to adaptation to salinity. You miss the point in this paragraph. It needs to be reviewed.

L494 to 520 It is difficult to understand the point you are trying to make in this paragraph. The upriver migration of larvae doesn’t fit here and is not relevant to the point you are trying to make. Start the paragraph at L506 “Adult G.Bosc”… The point of complex habitat influencing genetic diversity is a valid one but gets lost. It would be good here to see citations of other work that shows that habitat patchiness can reduce gene flow and increase genetic structure.

Conclusion

The excerpt from Emily Dickinson is nice but doesn’t fit in the conclusion – takes away from the points you want to make.
Additional comments: No additional comments


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: DISTRIBUTION AND POPULATION STRUCTURE IN THE NAKED GOBY GOBIOSOMA BOSC (PERCIFORMES: GOBIIDAE) ALONG A SALINITY GRADIENT IN TWO WESTERN ATLANTIC ESTUARIES
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: The paper is a very well-written manuscript. The references are thorough and the background and context provided are very strong.  The hypotheses are relevant and clearly stated, the structure of the manuscript is appropriate, and the tables and figures are of good quality.  I have made some comments regarding the figure legends, as they are too large and much of the information there should be in the main text, not the legends.
Experimental design: The sampling design was described in adequate detail, and is appropriate for this type of study, however based on the findings of the study, it appears that many, many more samples would be needed to strongly support/reject their hypotheses, due to the large number of unique haplotypes and the tremendous amount of unsampled diversity still sitting out in the wild populations. Based on the rarefaction curves, I can't imagine how any study with a finite budget/timeline would be able to sample the number of individuals required to adequately summarize the patterns here.  The estimates on the number of haplotypes out there is itself is a pretty cool finding.   The authors make good use of the existing public data, especially by incorporating the invasive population from the phylogenetic study with the previous pop-gen dataset.

I do not see if/where the new sequences generated from this study were deposited.  The authors should plan to make these data available on GenBank, noting the accession numbers in the methods.  Space-filler numbers (eg. "Accession numbers XXXXX-XXXXX") are fine for review purposes until the paper gets published.
Validity of the findings: Overall I think that the main findings of the study are that:
1) there is no significant genetic structure within the two estuaries samples
2) there is no effect of salinity
3) The overall position of NC in the biogeographic picture is consistent with what one would expect based on prior results.

With regards to #1 and #2, I think that the authors may be a little guilty of trying a little hard to make something out of nothing, especially when looking at the relationship of salinity variability and genetic diversity.  I think that the positive correlation that they found, if it is indeed real, has less to do with actual salinity itself (i.e. salinity is not really a driver for local adaption), and more to do with the fact that the areas with variable salinity are also those that are subject to mixing of water (and thus recruits) from different areas around the estuaries. I also think that the comparison of the % of individuals with shared haplotypes, or the number of singleton haplotypes, across the two bays is not all that meaningful, because there are SO many unsampled haplotypes.  Trying to come up with biological reasons for differences in these two metrics is highly speculative, considering that with such small sample sizes we are barely scratching the surface of the true diversity in the system.

I recommend toning down or removing the talk of adaption in the abstract and elsewhere, and instead sticking to the main findings I listed above.  While #'s 1 and 2 could be viewed as negative or inconclusive results, I think they are highly relevant for this system, and perhaps expected given the ecology of the organism.
Additional comments: I have made some additional comments and suggestions on the attached PDF as sticky-notes.  These largely echo the comments above, but are more detailed in some cases.

Overall, I think the study is publishable pending some minor revisions, which relate to not overstating the findings given the limitations of the data.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: DISTRIBUTION AND POPULATION STRUCTURE IN THE NAKED GOBY GOBIOSOMA BOSC (PERCIFORMES: GOBIIDAE) ALONG A SALINITY GRADIENT IN TWO WESTERN ATLANTIC ESTUARIES
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: Clear writing - the figures, tables and manuscript has been revised.
Experimental design: The authors have cleaned up the methods and clarified table 1.
Validity of the findings: The authors have reviewed the discussion according to the reviewers comments.
Additional comments: No additional comments


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: PROFILE AND CLINICAL IMPLICATION OF CIRCULAR RNAS IN HUMAN PAPILLARY THYROID CARCINOMA
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: The manuscript lacks clarity and professional writing. The English in the manuscript should be corrected before publication.
Experimental design: The investigation is otherwise meaningful and OK, but I would like to point out one case in which the authors should provide more details. In Results section, under the subsection "Functional analysis of differentially expressed circular RNAs", the identification of the target genes of the circular RNAs, which has been used for GO and pathway enrichment analysis, is not clear. Are they identified as the target genes of the miRNAs that are predicted o target the circular RNAs? The authors never mentioned anything about this. And how did they identify differentially expressed genes? The methods section only describes microarray experiments for circular RNAs with Arraystar Human circRNA Array V2, which is not for standard protein coding genes. So it totally unclear how the authors detected differentially expressed genes. I request the authors to explain this.
Validity of the findings: In the functional analysis section (page 15-16), the authors reported the results of the enrichment analysis for GO and KEGG pathways for the upregulated or downregulated circular RNAs. However, as I mentioned already, how they got the target gene set for these analysis is not clear. Moreover, the authors did not elaborate further what are the implications of the enriched processes or pathways in context to PTC. The authors should either provide sufficient explanation or remove this section.
Additional comments: The study reports two circular RNAs to be associated with clinical factors in PTC. They chose these two circular RNAs in the basis that these were the top upregulated or downregulated candidate between PTC/normal tissues. They did not mention if there were other candidate circular RNAs in their study which had correlation with clinical factors. Did the authors check other circular RNAs from their list for potential clinical relevance or they just picked these two circular RNAs? It is not mentioned in the Results or Discussion section. If they did not include other disregulated circular RNAs then why so? I would recommend they search for the clinical implications of other circular RNAs as well, if not done already.