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: COMPARISON OF THE COMPOSITION AND FUNCTION OF GUT MICROBES BETWEEN ADULT AND JUVENILE CIPANGOPALUDINA CHINENSIS IN THE RICE SNAIL SYSTEM
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 3

Output:
Basic reporting: I have specific suggestions about the language, but there are more important points addressed below.
Experimental design: ok
Validity of the findings: I believe the work is important. But to strengthen the work, I would suggest that the authors would have to replicate it at least three times in different locations. Additionally, it says 30 samples were collected per age, but when you look at the data you only see three samples (data points). Then it says that there was a random selection of samples. I could not understand if the random selection was from the original environment or after collecting the sample, some were randomly selected for sequencing. But if a fraction of samples were selected for sequence then all of that should have been explained explicitly and I could (maybe I am mistaken) retrieve that information with clarity from the materials and methods or legends. Besides, if 30 samples were collected, why were not all sequenced and analyzed? Were they pooled? As for data visualization of taxa, I would also suggest not showing the data for individual samples but instead plotting collectively with box and whiskers or some other ways to show the variation across host and environment. Another consideration would be to confirm the observed differences by 16S rRNA sequencing using qPCR for a specific genus (e.g., Aeromonas). Also, I would suggest changing the coloring scheme for all plots with the exception of Figures 3 and 4.
Additional comments: I emphasize that I empathize with the importance of the work. But I respectfully believe there is extra work to be done prior to 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: COMPARISON OF THE COMPOSITION AND FUNCTION OF GUT MICROBES BETWEEN ADULT AND JUVENILE CIPANGOPALUDINA CHINENSIS IN THE RICE SNAIL SYSTEM
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: ok
Experimental design: In the rebuttal the authors said "Moreover, we extracted DNA for each parallel group, and then extracted an equal amount of DNA samples from the 10 individuals in the parallel group and pooled them for library construction, in order to avoid the influence of individual differences."
My previous review was to reject the paper based on the sample size obscurity. Now that is clarified. But if you examine the initial study objective as stated in the intro:

"Herein, it is necessary to systematically understand the dynamic
67 changes of intestinal microflora of C. chinensis so as to develop the best diet for snails. "

"In this study, we performed high-
71 throughput sequencing of 16S rRNA gene to study the function and composition of intestinal microbiota in
72 adult and juvenile C. chinensis under artificial habitat. This result provides insight into the reasons for
73 differences in feeding behavior and food preferences between juvenile and adult snails. "

In my view, individual responses would have been necessary to achieve this goal. If it were just a survey of microbiome compositional differences, I presume pooling would be fine. But given the initial objective, my opinion remains the same. The study is valid, and the other changes are all acceptable and great. I just think that as the objectives are stated it cannot be accepted. Now if this is published a survey of microbiome differences as a hypothesis-generating study, then my opinion would be to accept it.
Validity of the findings: NA
Additional comments: NA


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: COMPARISON OF THE COMPOSITION AND FUNCTION OF GUT MICROBES BETWEEN ADULT AND JUVENILE CIPANGOPALUDINA CHINENSIS IN THE RICE SNAIL SYSTEM
Review round: 3
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: ok
Experimental design: ok
Validity of the findings: ok
Additional comments: ok


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: ESSENTIAL…BUT ALSO VULNERABLE? WORK INTENSIFICATION, EFFORT/REWARD IMBALANCE, FATIGUE AND PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH OF SPANISH CARGO DRIVERS DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: The proposed manuscript  investigates the association between occupational stress (measured by Siegrist questionnaire –ERI-) and some scales of fatigue or perceived health (such as CIS and GHQ). Authors also developed a “work intensification scale” to asses perceived changes in workload during the covid pandemic.
The topics is of interest because pandemic related events surely increased stress in several work conditions including transports but occupational medicine papers usually focused mainly on health workers. Instead, indirect effect on work condition related to pandemic restrictions and a general feeling of insecurity, could sensibly increase  perceived stress even in workers not related to health sector.
Experimental design: The main weakness in this study is the cross sectional design (stress and effect measured only once and in the same moment). Thus we cannot infer direct causation as authors tends to do in several aspects: for example in abstract  objective “This study investigated the joint effect of the Effort/Reward Imbalance (ERI) model of stress and work intensification …. on the psychological health” and in abstract results “… it was found that both (ERI and work intensification) models significantly predict driver’s fatigue and psychological strain”.
In my view, authors should keep in mind that they were able to find an association, but they cannot prove that ERI predict GHQ, because both variables have been measured in the same moment of time.
Moreover reverse causation in questionnaire about perceived wellbeing must always be considered. For example “need for recovery” could increase “effort” in the stress scale.
Second main limitation: authors did not provide the participation rate ( or the total number of eligible workers) thus we cannot understand if the study sample is really representative of the real working group, or if is for some reason self- selected etcetera)
Third -  the main results are reported in table 3 and are performed by linear regression models. Please provide details about how authors defined general fatigue is a score of a given  scale, treated as a continuous variable!), need for recovery and psychological  strain. Moreover please report punctual p values instead of  “*<0.05” etcetera. Related to this, I would suggest to perform analysis also in term of odds ratios (logistic regression) considering as outcome variables to score above a given cut-off in the investigated scales (general fatigue-need for recovery and psych. strain). This could suggest the risk to score above the relevant cut of for any given increase in risk factors. Because reverse causation I also would suggest to include ERI as dependent variable in a logistic regression model (the risk to score above 1 at the ERI scale)
Validity of the findings: no further comments (see experimental design comments)
Additional comments: Within the abstract and in various paragraphs, the paper tends to be too much colloquial (i.e. – in pratical terms-…. in other words…. bearing in mind the previous evidences appended in the  introduction…..)  and authors insert comments in some part of the results (i.e. “Results: As initially hypothesized…”) . Please correct and leave comments only in discussion and conclusion.  In general terms I think that English could be improved by a native English collaborator or reviewer.


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: ESSENTIAL…BUT ALSO VULNERABLE? WORK INTENSIFICATION, EFFORT/REWARD IMBALANCE, FATIGUE AND PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH OF SPANISH CARGO DRIVERS DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: The authors investigated the impact of pandemic in terms of work intensification and effort-reward imbalance on the psychological health of professional drivers, a category particularly affected by this emergency.
The article is well structured and clear on the whole, but could benefit from some revisions.
Experimental design: The authors stress the importance of analysing the joint effect of effort/reward imbalance and work intensification among professional drivers, but the knot of a cross-sectional study and the absence of clear and explicit research hypotheses, briefly mentioned, remains. Listing the individual research hypotheses would help to better understand the contribution of the study and the potential impacts on the type of interventions to be suggested for the category under consideration.

Were inclusion criteria adopted for participation in the study? Were specific exclusion criteria adopted for the data collected? Please elaborate.

The section on statistical analyses and the procedures adopted could be described in more detail, specifying why certain analyses were adopted and not others, what they are used for and what requirements should be met when performing specific analyses.

In Table 3 it would be useful to present all the results of the hierarchical linear regression, including the adjusted R square.

From the results it would seem useful to discussion implications also in terms of significant (and not) control variables at step 1.
Validity of the findings: It would perhaps be useful to show the items used for the ERI-short scale, the 3 for effort and the 7 for reward and elaborate more on the content of these items in the discussion.

The work intensification scale was developed by the authors for the first time, taking inspiration from the work of Kubicek, Paškvan & Korunka (2015). First of all, it would be useful to compare the two scales, making it clear how the authors have adjusted the items for the purpose of the study.
Is there a reason why an EFA/CFA has not been done?
After that, it would be useful to describe in more depth the validity and reliability analyses adopted, specifying what was done, why those types of analyses were adopted and not others and the threshold values for which it is good to consider a scale developed ad hoc as acceptable or not. Possibly linking to previous literature.

Talking about introducing changes at an organisational level often requires time and resources, aspects not always available in the face of emergencies. The authors talk about adopting solutions at individual level in combination with organisational interventions whereby working conditions are changed. It would be interesting to elaborate further on this point, reflecting on potential facilitating and hindering factors. At the moment, solutions seem to be suggested in a very concise and vague way.

In a longitudinal perspective, the present study could also benefit from data on the number of accidents or near-misses reported, so that the type of theoretical approach adopted could be given greater support.

Minor typos: Line 249 Table 1 should be changed to table 2.
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: INCREASED LEVEL OF FAM19A5 IS ASSOCIATED WITH CEREBRAL SMALL VESSEL DISEASE AND LEADS TO A BETTER OUTCOME
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: No comment
Experimental design: No comment.
Validity of the findings: No comment
Additional comments: Most readers will not be familiar with FAM19A5, so it is important to say that it is  an acute inflammatory factor after pathological brain injury.

You say you excluded patients with severe large artery stenosis. Do you mean you excluded patients categorized as having Large Artery Atherosclerosis according to a classification such as TOAST? In that case it would be defined as stenosis >50%  of a carotid or intracranial artery, not severe stenosis. There are problems with misclassification of LAA as ESUS or Unknown in TOAST; both  the SPARKLE[1] and CISS classifications include patients with a high carotid plaque burden as well as 50% stenosis; those classifications identify more LAA and have fewer Unknown cases compared to TOAST.[2] If you used TOAST you should mention it as a limitation.

You give a nice definition of lacunar infarction, but then you seem to include all white matter lesions in the WMH. There is a large blood pressure gradient in the brain; “with blood pressure in the brachial artery of 117/75 mm Hg, the pressure in small parietal arterioles would be only 59/38 mm Hg”.[3] This blood pressure gradient probably affects different forms of small vessel disease differently.[4] Small subcortical infarctions in the distal reaches of the cerebral vasculature where blood pressure is low are probably not true lacunar infarctions, which occur in the vascular centrencephalon,[5, 6] where blood pressure is high (Basal ganglia, thalamus, internal capsule, brainstem). This was illustrated in a study of symptomatic vs. asymptomatic WMH. [7] Can you say if FAM19A5 was related to the location of white matter lesions?

In table 2 you mention “heat controls” in the heading, and “health controls” in the table; probably you mean “healthy controls”

1.	Bogiatzi C, Wannarong T, McLeod AI, Heisel M, Hackam D, Spence JD. SPARKLE (Subtypes of Ischaemic Stroke Classification System), incorporating measurement of carotid plaque burden: a new validated tool for the classification of ischemic stroke subtypes. Neuroepidemiology. 2014;42(4):243-51.
2.	Zhang H, Li Z, Dai Y, Guo E, Zhang C, Wang Y. Ischaemic stroke etiological classification system: the agreement analysis of CISS, SPARKLE and TOAST. Stroke Vasc Neurol. 2019;4(3):123-8.
3.	Blanco PJ, Muller LO, Spence JD. Blood pressure gradients in cerebral arteries: a clue to pathogenesis of cerebral small vessel disease. Stroke Vasc Neurol. 2017;2(3):108-17.
4.	Spence JD. Blood Pressure Gradients in the Brain: Their Importance to Understanding Pathogenesis of Cerebral Small Vessel Disease. Brain Sci. 2019;9(2).
5.	Hachinski VC, Norris JW. The vascular infrastructure.  The acute stroke. Philadelphia: F.A. Davis; 1985. p. 27-40.
6.	Soros P, Whitehead S, Spence JD, Hachinski V. Antihypertensive treatment can prevent stroke and cognitive decline. Nat Rev Neurol. 2013;9(3):174-8.
7.	Valdes Hernandez Mdel C, Maconick LC, Munoz Maniega S, Wang X, Wiseman S, Armitage PA, et al. A comparison of location of acute symptomatic vs. 'silent' small vessel lesions. Int J Stroke. 2015;10(7):1044-50.


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: INCREASED LEVEL OF FAM19A5 IS ASSOCIATED WITH CEREBRAL SMALL VESSEL DISEASE AND LEADS TO A BETTER OUTCOME
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: Authors investigated the possible association of serum FAM19A5 levels with cerebral small vesicle disease. Their findings sound interesting. However, authors may need to add more clear information regarding results description and method validation for FAM19A5 determination.

Line 168- 169: Authors described Serum FAM19A5 in the RSSI and healthy control groups was 681.894±1225.014 and 432.582±777.871 ng/mL, respectively (Figure 2). In this sentence, authors may need to change “ng/mL” to “pg/mL”. Further, reviewer found significantly high variations of the levels. Therefore, they need to inform us whether the deviations are “standard error SE” or “standard deviation, SD”. Furthermore, this description is not correlated with the results shown in the Figure 2 where error bars show only ~ 20% variation. Authors may need to explain this discrepancy.

The authors used the ELISA kit provided by Jonln Biology (Wuhan) for serum FAM19A5 level determination. However, authors did not provide data regarding method validation. Reviewer would like to suggest adding more description on the issue in the Method section. In particular, considering the significant variations of FAM19A5 levels across individuals, they need to provide the inter-assay and intra-assay CV in the method section at least. Standard curve and dilution factor can be provided as well.

For Figure 3. Authors need to provide sample size (numbers) for each group. Again, reviewer found discrepancies between the described results and error bar size in the figure.

In addition, P values need to be provided in both Figures 2 and 3.

Figure 2 legends: the same sentence is duplicated.

References: “Shahapal A et al” is duplicated. Accordingly, author may need to revise citations in the main text, lines 6 and, 216
Experimental design: No more comment.
Validity of the findings: No more comment.
Additional comments: No more comment.


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: INCREASED LEVEL OF FAM19A5 IS ASSOCIATED WITH CEREBRAL SMALL VESSEL DISEASE AND LEADS TO A BETTER OUTCOME
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: Authors well addressed reviewers concerns to improve the manuscript.
I found that authors may need to correct Figure 2 legends by adding unit of FAM19A5 level eg “ng/ml”
Experimental design: no more comments
Validity of the findings: no more 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: GROWTH, MATURITY, AND DIET OF THE PEARL WHIPRAY (FONTITRYGON MARGARITELLA) FROM THE BIJAGÓS ARCHIPELAGO, GUINEA-BISSAU
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: Clear usage of scientific and professional English throughout the manuscript.
Straightforward reporting on the pearl whipray (Fontitrygon margaritella) growth, maturity, and diet parameters.
Sufficient background and references provided.
Experimental design: Research questions are well defined and within the scope of the journal.
Methodology is sound and replicable.
Validity of the findings: Findings are relevant to the conservation and fisheries management for the F. margaritella.
Additional comments: Material and methods
1. A geographical map of the sampling sites/location should be included to assist reader visually
2. Suggest the descriptions in table 1 to be simplified and incorporated in line with texts under materials

Discussion
3. Based on figure 2, How do you justify teleost as part of YOY but absent in juvenile diet?
4. Discussion on F. margaritella diets is polychaete and crustacean biased. What is the "unidentified" mainly composed of? Is it substrate or plant matters?

Supplementary data
5. I think it will greatly help readers to understand figure 2 if authors could provide raw data on the stomach content identified.


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: GROWTH, MATURITY, AND DIET OF THE PEARL WHIPRAY (FONTITRYGON MARGARITELLA) FROM THE BIJAGÓS ARCHIPELAGO, GUINEA-BISSAU
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: No comment.
Experimental design: Authors should reconsider the results on size at first mature due to limitation of sample size.
Please check and add citations (see my comments in the manuscript file).
Please provide photos of food items of this species.
Please provide a Table presenting detail of fish collection in four sites.
Validity of the findings: Please find comments in the manuscript file.
Additional comments: Please find comments in the manuscript file.


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: GROWTH, MATURITY, AND DIET OF THE PEARL WHIPRAY (FONTITRYGON MARGARITELLA) FROM THE BIJAGÓS ARCHIPELAGO, GUINEA-BISSAU
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: Accepted
Experimental design: Accepted
Validity of the findings: Accepted
Additional comments: My previous comments were fully addressed by the authors and I believe the manuscript has been greatly improved. Thank you for the modifications.
However, authors should refine the overview map of the study area (Figure 1) which is missing orientation indicators and scale, and prepare it following the journal's standard format.
I would like to recommend acceptance after the matter is 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: GROWTH, MATURITY, AND DIET OF THE PEARL WHIPRAY (FONTITRYGON MARGARITELLA) FROM THE BIJAGÓS ARCHIPELAGO, GUINEA-BISSAU
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: No comments
Experimental design: No further comments.
Validity of the findings: No further comments.
Additional comments: Please check the citation for Figure 2, Figure S1 and Table S1 as I cannot find them in the text.


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: SEA URCHIN HARVEST INSIDE MARINE PROTECTED AREAS: AN OPPORTUNITY TO INVESTIGATE THE EFFECTS OF EXPLOITATION WHERE TROPHIC UPGRADING IS ACHIEVED
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: The manuscript addresses an important topic, how cumulative effects of harvest and predator-driven impacts (resulting from harvest restrictions inside MPAs) can facilitate the control of sea urchin grazers. The manuscript is nicely written and draws on relevant studies. Nonetheless, I would suggest that the authors explicitly address, wherever relevant, all possible alternative explanations for the observed differences in total counts of urchins, such as differences in refuge availability between sites (i.e., sites with greater refuge space may hold more urchins), potential variation in recruitment success among sites, exposure (i.e., larger urchins are more susceptible to dislodgement at wave-exposed sites), etc. This could take the form of either an added sub-section within the Discussion, or brief explanations throughout the current Discussion text. Additionally, many of the implications of the study related to increased predator abundance inside MPAs are correlative and could be improved by providing specific examples where possible. While this study does not analyze predator diversity or abundance inside and outside of MPAs, the authors cite a few examples of other studies that do. The overall rationale for the cumulative effects of predators and harvest as drivers of urchin abundance could be improved by explicitly providing examples of known urchin predators that have increased inside of MPAs. I think this could be done relatively briefly without compromising the most parsimonious explanation of the patterns and processes driving observed changes in urchin abundance.
Experimental design: General comments on data collection: it would be helpful to know the general landscape rugosity within and across sites because if some sites are more rugose than others then those sites may be oversampled. For example, if the NH sites were more rugose and had more refuge space per quadrat sampled than the UH sites, then more available reef space would be sampled per quadrat within the NH sites. It would be nice to see whether substratum rugosity was consistent across all sampled sites. Moreover, MPAs are often designated around areas where habitat complexity (substrate type, rugosity, etc) is of interest, and this could potentially be a confounding effects if the non-MPA sites had a vastly different substrate type or complexity. The authors should specifically describe how sea urchins were quantified within each quadrat (e.g., by quantifying urchins from an ‘aerial’ view, or by searching in cracks and crevices within quadrats).

Lines 197-203 – the description of the sampling design could be improved by describing the spatial orientation of quadrat placement. For example, line 199 states that quadrats were “randomly placed meters of distance apart”. Were these quadrats haphazardly placed, or was selection criteria used to determine the quadrat placement?

Lines 198 – what is a sampling “site?” A figure could be helpful here to depict how quadrats were arranged and what other information was gathered at a single sampling site.

Lines 199 – The descriptions of the visual sampling methods could be improved by describing the criteria used for quantifying individuals. In other words, were all urchins of all sizes quantified? What about small (<2cm) and inconspicuous or cryptic urchins hidden in crevices?

Line 205 – “Methodology” is the study of methods. I recommend replacing “methodology” with “…consistency in the sampling methods used”

Line 206 – replace “75 could be” with “75 were ultimately…”

Line 15 – what is the rationale for using Euclidean distance?

Lines 216-220 – a brief table depicting the PERMANOVA design could be helpful.
Validity of the findings: The findings appear to fit within the scope of the study.
Additional comments: Line 253 – the first sentence of this section should be very impactful, based on the results. I would suggest editing this sentence to reflect the major take-home implications of this study.

Line 254-258 – these sentences are restating what is already in the results. I suggest the authors move the following sentence (line 259) to an earlier place in the paragraph because this is a major implication of the study.

Line 267 – “proved” implies absolute certainty. Given the observational design (rather than experimental) of this study, I suggest the authors replace “proved” with “evidenced by…” This is one place where the authors might consider incorporating alternative hypotheses.

Line 285 – what about behavioral responses? Is it possible that the pronounced increase at NH sites could be due to a behavioral shift, where urchins emerged from crypsis and became more detectible? Several physical and biotic factors are known to cue these types of behavioral responses.

Line 288 – the statement “harvest restriction remains the most relevant driver affecting sea urchins” requires a citation.

Lines 313-327 – this final paragraph introduces several important conservation and management concerns, but it diminishes the overall impact of the study. I recommend that the authors conclude the manuscript by revising the final paragraph to a short succinct statement that focuses on the one or two major implications resulting from this study.

Figure 2 – confidence intervals would be useful to visually identify significant differences.

Figure 4 – this is a really important figure. I suggest the authors depict the temporal trends as a line chart with a separate line for each harvest type, rather than a histogram. Additionally, the dramatic increase in total abundance at the NH site in 2019 is interesting. Why the increase in this year only?

Figure 5 – how the rate of variation was calculated is not entirely clear. Is this cumulative across all years? If so, is it possible that the 2019 increase at the NH sites could be driving the observed overall net increase in rate of variation?


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: SEA URCHIN HARVEST INSIDE MARINE PROTECTED AREAS: AN OPPORTUNITY TO INVESTIGATE THE EFFECTS OF EXPLOITATION WHERE TROPHIC UPGRADING IS ACHIEVED
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: This manuscript describes analyses performed on a series of long-term MPA data sets collected by the authors to assess whether a decrease in urchin populations has occurred within restricted harvest MPA zones. The authors make the case that urchins in restricted harvest zones are subject to double the predation pressure from both natural predators and human harvest; natural predators affecting urchins up to ~40 mm and humans harvesting those greater than ~50 mm. Indeed, this is cause for concern as MPAs are well-known for their ability to prevent kelp forest loss via halting harvest (White et al. 2020) rather than contributing to the further depletion of the stock. Consistent with that argument the authors go on to make the recommendation of changing the restricted harvest zones to no harvest, which is a large topic of conversation within the marine conversation literature (Abecasis et al. 2015; Murray et al. 1999). I do believe the study at its core can offer key management guidance; however, I believe some areas need to be addressed to make these contributions clearer. Below I have provided my comments and suggestions, in the appropriate sections, in hopes that they may help strengthen the manuscript.

Major Comments

1.	Clarity on the motivation of the research

While reading about the motivation of the study and throughout the discussion, I was confused as to why the underabundance of urchins is a concern for the focal area(s). Much of the literature on kelp forests is typically concerned with the overabundance of urchins in kelp forest ecosystems and what their impact on the ecosystem will be (Filbee-Dexter and Scheibling, 2014). I am familiar with the concern of urchin underabundance in coral reef ecosystems and how their lack of presence can lead to an overgrowth of algae in the coral dominated ecosystems (Nozawa et al. 2020), but was not entirely sure if that was the case here, aside from the brief mention on line 84. I believe the manuscript would greatly benefit from this background information and context being more explicitly stated.

2.	Additional information on MPA success

I am concerned by the lack of data (or cited information) on the success of the focal MPA zones in reviving the local predator population. Especially in the areas of restricted take, are key urchin predators also being fished? If so, would that then not make the urchin populations in restricted take areas only affected by human hunting, rather than the dual effect of both human and natural predator(s)? Given that the authors’ strong recommendation of changing restricted harvest sites to no take sites, it seems necessary to demonstrate that urchin predators have indeed increased in population within the restricted sites in the way that the manuscript presumes. I believe this could be demonstrated by either citing work that has been done in the focal MPAs (it appears Guidetti’s work may be appropriate to use if it includes the same MPAs), or by presenting data on the predator populations of the focal MPAs.

Minor comments

1.	Presentation of data

I found it unnecessarily difficult to comprehend Figure 4. I think readers may benefit if the information was presented as a continuous time series plot with data presented as points with error bars rather than a bar graph.

2.	Grammatical and spelling errors

There were grammatical and spelling errors throughout the manuscript. Some examples are:
•	Filbee-Dexter and Scheibling, 2014 is misspelled both for the in-text and full citation
•	Line 46: I believe “fasted” should be changed to “fastest”
•	Line 221 – I believe “PARMANOVA” should be “PERMANOVA

3.	Fleshed out figure captions

The figure captions could use additional detail explaining what data and analyses were used to generate the figure.

4.	Additional citations

The manuscript would be strengthened if additional citations were added to some lines in the introduction and discussion sections. Some examples are:
•	Line 69
•	Line 315

Cited papers from all sections in review

Abecasis, D., Afonso, P. and Erzini, K., 2015. Toward adaptive management of coastal MPAs:		The influence of different conservation targets and costs on the design of no-take			areas. Ecological Informatics, 30, pp.263-270.

Filbee-Dexter, K. and Scheibling, R.E., 2014. Sea urchin barrens as alternative stable states of		collapsed kelp ecosystems. Marine ecology progress series, 495, pp.1-25.

Hurlbert, S.H., 1984. Pseudoreplication and the design of ecological field					experiments. Ecological monographs, 54(2), pp.187-211.

Murray, S.N., Ambrose, R.F., Bohnsack, J.A., Botsford, L.W., Carr, M.H., Davis, G.E., Dayton,		P.K., Gotshall, D., Gunderson, D.R., Hixon, M.A. and Lubchenco, J., 1999. No-take		reserve networks: sustaining fishery populations and marine	ecosystems. Fisheries, 24(11), pp.11-25.

Nozawa, Y., Lin, C.H. and Meng, P.J., 2020. Sea urchins (diadematids) promote coral recovery		via recruitment on Taiwanese reefs. Coral Reefs, 39, pp.1199-1207.

White, J.W., Yamane, M.T., Nickols, K.J. and Caselle, J.E., 2021. Analysis of fish population		size distributions confirms cessation of fishing in marine protected areas. Conservation		Letters, 14(2), p.e12775.
Experimental design: Major Comments

1.	Potential pseudoreplication and clarity on statistical interpretation

I am concerned by the potential consequence of not having accounted for pseudoreplication (Hurlbert, 1984). In the analyses performed, the statistics were run on the site level, however inference is written on MPA zone type. This raises concern as there are multiple sites in one zone type within the same MPA which appear to have been incorrectly interpreted as individual statistical replicates. My suggestions are to either re-run the analyses on the MPA zone-level, where each zone within each MPA is a replicate (by having averaged quadrats and sites within each MPA or zone), or perform an appropriate hierarchical analysis (e.g., nested ANOVA if residuals are unbiased and homoscedastic) to permit inferences at the level of MPA zone.

2.	Repeatable analyses

I was confused on the naming convention of the data provided in the supplemental material. The data appears to be a version that might be ready to plug into PERMANOVA or another statistical analysis, but there are no formulas or complete data for the various sites that were monitored. The data are not “raw” (quadrat-level) data, as is implied by the filename.
Validity of the findings: Due to the potential consequence of not having accounted for pseudoreplication (see above section) I am concerned for how that statistical conclusion may have influenced the inference.
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: SEA URCHIN HARVEST INSIDE MARINE PROTECTED AREAS: AN OPPORTUNITY TO INVESTIGATE THE EFFECTS OF EXPLOITATION WHERE TROPHIC UPGRADING IS ACHIEVED
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 3

Output:
Basic reporting: This article should be reviewed by a person who is a native English speaker as English is very poor and the terminology used is ambiguous and not very technical.

Scientific writing needs to be seriously improved.

Authors confuse density and abundance in the manuscript, figures, and tables.

There is no information on natural predation to compare with harvesting.
Experimental design: The sampling methodology is vague.
Validity of the findings: The discussion is weak.
Additional comments: Specific comments have been included in the PDF


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: SEA URCHIN HARVEST INSIDE MARINE PROTECTED AREAS: AN OPPORTUNITY TO INVESTIGATE THE EFFECTS OF EXPLOITATION WHERE TROPHIC UPGRADING IS ACHIEVED
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: no comment
Experimental design: no comment
Validity of the findings: no comment
Additional comments: no comment


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: SEA URCHIN HARVEST INSIDE MARINE PROTECTED AREAS: AN OPPORTUNITY TO INVESTIGATE THE EFFECTS OF EXPLOITATION WHERE TROPHIC UPGRADING IS ACHIEVED
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: The manuscript has been improved but several points should be taken into account (attached pdf file).

Since you don’t have data on natural predation, I would not stress that in the discussion. I will recommend using it at the end as a potential factor influencing the sea urchins densities due to the larger number of predatory fish in MPAs compared with unprotected areas.

Why do fishermen prefer harvesting in RH compared with UH sites?
Experimental design: There are significant differences in the spatial-temporal variability but no significant differences among years. A statistical test will provide robust discussion and conclusions.

PRIMER V6 is mentioned in the references but not cited in the manuscript. PERMANOVA is an extension of PRIMER and was used in the analyses but is not mentioned in the references.
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: A NEW AMAZONIAN SPECIES OF ALLOBATES ZIMMERMANN & ZIMMERMANN, 1988 (AROMOBATIDAE) WITH A TRILLED ADVERTISEMENT CALL
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: Dear authors and editor.

Thank you for the opportunity to review this nice manuscript, which represents a standard description of another new species for the speciose Neotropical genus Allobates. The new species described in this manuscript inhabits southern Amazonia and, based on the results presented, I am fully convinced of the author's hypothesis that this sampled population actually represents a valid and yet undescribed species.

I start my considerations by congratulating the authors for this manuscript, where the effort expended since the gathering of data from fieldwork to the generation and interpretation of results is clearly visible. I consider that this manuscript is sufficiently illustrated, has an adequate structure and a good scientific background, the reference list is adequate and relevant to support this new species description, and raw data are also shared. I highlight the emphasis and the resolution that the authors gave to the acoustic repertoire of the species, something that is less frequent in recent descriptions related to the genus and is very welcome for the knowledge advance in this research line.

Nevertheless, I think that the language, fluidity and standardization of the text can still considerably improve. I made some punctual suggestions in this regard in the revised file that I attach in this review, but as I am not an English native, I did not scrutinize language adjustments. I also suggest a general improvement in figure and table legends, whose level of detail could be greater in some cases, as weel as in the figures of geographic distribution and phylogenetic tree.
Experimental design: No comments, topic already covered in other sections.
Validity of the findings: Following the standard currently required for a robust description of an Allobates species, the authors present quite diverse datasets to answer the question raised about the taxonomic identity of this population. These datasets included molecular, acoustic and morphological variation, which were analysed mostly in a qualitative way (as usual for this type of manuscript). Based on the robustness of the employed methods, I think the manuscript was able to efficiently fill the knowledge gap raised.
Additional comments: I present a quick overview, with some suggestions for the main sections:

Introduction - short but adequate enough and sufficiently presenting the research question.

Methodology - unfortunately, some important data about the species are still missing, such as data about its larval stage and its reproductive behavior, characters that are also very relevant in taxonomy of Allobates. But I understand that such data is more difficult to obtain, and I think the authors did their best to achieve a robust result based on the datasets they had. The reproducibility of the performed methods seem quite ok.

Results - The subsections and content are adequate. One major issue I found is related to the fluidity of the text in the acoustic comparisons section, where comparisons are often truncated and it is very important to clarify the definition of a trilled call in an Allobates species, as this is a very important diagnostic characteristic of the new species. The other major issue was the complete absence of citation and emphasis on a character that I consider very relevant for the diagnosis of this new species (the condition of the dark lateral stripe), but these are all issues that I believe can be quickly corrected, and I included these suggestions in the revised file attached.

Discussion - I believe that all the most relevant topics were sufficiently addressed, I just reinforce again that the fluidity of the text can be improved. Some suggestions are presented in the attached file.

All the best,
Leandro


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 AMAZONIAN SPECIES OF ALLOBATES ZIMMERMANN & ZIMMERMANN, 1988 (AROMOBATIDAE) WITH A TRILLED ADVERTISEMENT CALL
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: The paper “ A new Amazonian species of Allobates Zimmermann & Zimmermann, 1988 (Aromobatidae) with a trilled advertisement call pattern” provide a detailed description of a new species of Allobates. Authors describe the new Allobates species based in integrative taxonomic analyses and also reports new morphological and acoustic data for a previously recognized cryptic linage of A. tapajos.

The manuscript is clearly written and provide detail and relevant data and results.

Line specific comments:
L182-192: all species and authors should be present in a consistently way:  ex. A. species (authors, year). Also not all species are reported with the respective authors.

L268: a “n” is missing should be “ranging” instead of raging
L282: “ranging” instead of raging
Experimental design: No comment
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: A NEW AMAZONIAN SPECIES OF ALLOBATES ZIMMERMANN & ZIMMERMANN, 1988 (AROMOBATIDAE) WITH A TRILLED ADVERTISEMENT CALL
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 3

Output:
Basic reporting: There are a number of grammatical and tense issues throughout; thorough revision is recommended.  Introduction context is confusing and focuses too much on A. tapajos instead of the new species.

The manuscript particularly relies on genetic comparisons to sympatric A. tapajos, but presents none of the most relevant genetic results in the main document. There is no genetic matrix from the Mega analyses, and there is not a phylogenetic tree including this species. As a major part of the argument supporting the new species, some form of these analyses incorporating A. tapajos needs to be brought into the main text. There is also little use in comparing the genetic distance of all to all. In the main text, just compare to close relatives and sympatric/parapatric species.

The tables can be combined into far fewer tables for both the morphology and acoustics.

The 16S sequence for the new species in not in the provided alignment, and no genbank accession number is provided for it. This makes the results not reproducible.
Experimental design: There are no actual statistical analyses of acoustic or morphological data presented. Only the raw data is presented, and is not presented in comparison to other sympatric species. This is wholly insufficient. Statistical analyses comparing the new species to A. tapajos is required to support claims of cryptis.
Validity of the findings: The new species appears to be well justified and described (see statistical analysis note). However, the authors have spent much of the text focussed on a sympatric species, which negatively affects the manuscript.

There is no data presented that supports the authors assertions that the lineage they call A. aff. tapajos is a different species from A. tapajos. The mitochondrial divergences presented in the supplementary phylogeny shows A. tapajos to be monophyletic, and have a similar intra-specific divergence to species such as A. grillisimilis. There are many species in the world with highly geographically structured and deep mtDNA divergences. This alone is not sufficient evidence for the strength of the assertions provided here, particularly given the lack of morphological and acoustic comparisons within A. tapajos. I recommend removing all portions of the text suggesting this is a different species (including assigning aff.), unless further within A. tapajos comparisons are included, with additional geographic data. The case presented is not compelling: the very maximum the authors should suggest that further sampling is needed to assess structure in the species. It’s all a complete distraction from the genuine finding – a new species – and does not improve the paper. This will require a major revision of most sections of the manuscript.
Additional comments: Abstract: The Abstract in general has quite poor grammar and needs improvement. Some errors in tense. The acoustic results should make a statement about statistical support for differences from cryptic sympatric lineage

Line 44 – what is the relevance of the chromosome number statement? Either clarify or remove.

Line 48 – Unclear transition – which group is A. tapajos  part of? If the groups are important, then this should be defined. Why is A. tapajos a focus?

Line 51 – lower, not low

Line 65 – why is the cryptic lineage not being described? If it’s because there is not enough data, then remove all references as there is little to no evidence presented to show this to be correct.

Line 75 – euthanised, not killed

Line 78 – Collection, not collect. Also cite your animal ethics approvals.

Line 82 – Put the data in Appendix 1 in the main text. It’s only a couple lines.

Acoustic methods – what sort of analyses were undertaken on the call data?

Morphological methods – again, what sort of analyses were undertaken using the data?

Line 150 – Milli-Q

Genetic methods – How many times was Beast run? It should be run at least 3 times, and convergence of the runs on the same topology assessed using RWTY. The all-to-all genetic distance matrix should not be every individual to every individual, but major lineage to major lineage. But really you should only compare the new species to sympatric species/close relatives, and present that in the main text, for it to useful and interpretable.

Line 215 – familiar – do you mean familial?

Line 217 – Is medium the right word?

Line 235 – for cryptic species, best practice is to identify diagnostic molecular differences following Singhal et al 2018 (Systematic Biology; 10.1093/sysbio/syy026).

Line 237 – “centre of endemism” is not defined so unclear. Delete, or define in the introduction.

Lines 450-458 – remove all information that is not about the species being described.

Lines – 466-468 – “Agrees with” and “often overlaps” is insufficient for a scientific paper. Refer to (and do) statistical analyses.

Lines 472-477 – delete. This is insufficient evidence, and also does not belong in the actual description section of a different species.

Tables 2-6 should be combined into a single table. This would allow easy comparison of the call parameters between the two species, and reduce the space required.


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 AMAZONIAN SPECIES OF ALLOBATES ZIMMERMANN & ZIMMERMANN, 1988 (AROMOBATIDAE) WITH A TRILLED ADVERTISEMENT CALL
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: The writing is significantly improved in this version. I have provided further specific edits in the manuscript.

For some reason there are no results presented properly. A taxonomy section is not a result - it is an independent section. Actual results should be provided for each section of the methods.

The removal of a phylogenetic tree from the paper is a poor choice, as it is standard in taxonomy these days. The focus on p-distances is extremely unusual, so unusual that I've not seen it in a taxonomy paper in 10 years. Recommend removing the genetic distance and put in a phylogeny. You can do this extremely quickly with IQtree, using the command "iqtree -s alignment.fas -m TEST -st DNA -bb 10000 -alrt 10000 -nt AUTO redo".

The order of the taxonomic section needs revision. It compares to other species before describing paleci. You need to describe it first, so that you can compare.f

Further review of the literature on acoustics, particularly Kohler et al 2017 should be incorporated.

A table of all the individuals and genbank accession numbers is needed - for all individuals in the paper, not just the two primary species. The actual genbank accession numbers need to be put in the paper, not just a statement that they are on genbank.
Experimental design: Not only are the p-distances extremely unusual, but it is very unclear how they were generated. I generated a tree from the alignment file, but many species turn out not to be monophyletic. One example amongst many is the marchesianus is in the phylogeny in three separate places, but it is only represented once in the table. There are also a bunch of what maybe undescribed species, which are in the alignment but no in the distance table. Species such as conspicuus and subfolionidificans are not forming distinct monophyletic clades, but they are presented as separate species in the table.

The alignment is unclear because the individual that I think is the new species is called A. tapajos, and only has a field number. The individual data in appendix one has museum IDs. Remove all field IDs and put in the museum ID so individuals can be traced. Ensure names in the alignment make sense.

Essentially, p-distances hide the uncertainty and are an inappropriate way to present the realities of genetic data for this group. This paper needs a phylogeny, and the p-distances should be removed.
Validity of the findings: Other than the p-distances providing a false sense of a simple genetic result, the other results are good.
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: PERCEPTION, KNOWLEDGE, AND ATTITUDE OF MEDICAL DOCTORS IN SAUDI ARABIA ABOUT THE ROLE OF PHYSIOTHERAPISTS IN VESTIBULAR REHABILITATION: A CROSS-SECTIONAL SURVEY
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: Dear Dr Keogh
Vestibular rehabilitation is an important field where physiotherapists have been playing an important role and this study addresses the awareness of the same amongst doctors.
Experimental design: The Study is well designed and well executed
Validity of the findings: I am concerned about few issues with this paper which the authors need to answer.
1. On what basis where the hospitals chosen?  When you say randomly selected what do you mean ?
2. Why were dentists included in this study?
3. Ideally Vestibular Dysfunction cases are managed by ENT doctors, why was this study not restricted to ENT doctors ?
4. Out of the doctors recruited in this study only 50 % had the experience of managing Vestibular disease, in that case how will those who do not manage vestibular disease know about the role of a physiotherapist in vestibular disease ?
Additional comments: Overall the article is well writen.


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: PERCEPTION, KNOWLEDGE, AND ATTITUDE OF MEDICAL DOCTORS IN SAUDI ARABIA ABOUT THE ROLE OF PHYSIOTHERAPISTS IN VESTIBULAR REHABILITATION: A CROSS-SECTIONAL SURVEY
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: There are many grammatical and typo errors, and unclear sentences. This study should be proofread and edited before publication.
Some of the reported findings in the result section were not founded in the tables/figures.
The discussion section needs to be reorganized, rearranged, and rewritten clearly.

TITLE
L1
The title should be rewritten correctly. It might be written as: “Perception, knowledge, attitude of  medical doctors in Saudi Arabia about the role of physiotherapists in vestibular rehabilitation: A cross-sectional survey.”.

INTRODUCTION
L78
As I know that PTs are not required to study vestibular rehabilitation to retain license to practice physiotherapy, whether globally or at any other country. There is an important point in this paper that should be clarified which is that not all PTs are trained and have certificates in vestibular rehabilitation. Furthermore, not all clinics or hospitals have a certified PT in vestibular rehabilitation.
Experimental design: METHODS
L98
What about the specialty of doctors eligible to participate in the survey! What were their specialties? I see that there was a major limitation in this study that even doctors who are not specialized in vestibular or do not assess/treat those patients were also included in the study (n=188). So, how would they be involved in the study? I would see that excluding them because including them in the study will impact the results. If you already did that, please clarify it in the methods/results sections.

L118
Did the survey also included questions related to demographic factors?

L125-L134
Typo error! I think you mean “section” and not “session”.

L132
The seventh section is unclear! Do you mean therapeutic approaches? How many questions in this section? One (q no. 23) or more?
Validity of the findings: RESULTS
L151
I suggest using brackets, for example, (n=187 (49.15 %)).

L154
This sentence “those from Canada and America made up the smallest percentage (n=1,0.3%)” is unclear! Could you correct it? There is only one; I think it should be from Canada or USA!

L155
I suggest spelling out the abbreviation when it is first mentioned in the manuscript.

L159
This are some mistakes in this sentence that should be corrected.

L180
This sentence is unclear! Do you mean that they were ware of the role of PTs in assessing…..?

L182- L184
I suggest rewriting this sentence to be understood clearly.

L145
I see here there were only around 156 responses only! What about the rest of doctors participating in the survey?

L229
This sentence should be rewritten as it is unclear.

Table 2
I suggest writing the percentages in brackets.

Table 3
“Vestibular Conditions referred by medical doctors to physiotherapist (n=27)”…. Do you mean here number of referred cases or number of doctors who referred to PTs? Please, rewrite this sentence clearly.

DISCUSSION
L237
This sentence is repeated: “Less than a quarter of the medical doctors referred cases to physiotherapists.”; I recommend deleting it.

L241
I see that this result reported here is different from that reported in the results section which was talking about the referrals from doctors. Please, correct it.

L252
This paragraph is unclear! The authors talked in the beginning about the need to change the diagnosis/treatments, then they changed the scope of the paragraph going to talking about the effect of exercises in the management of vestibular disorders.

L275
I could not find the results reported here in the results section!

L284
I could not find the results reported here in the results section!

L316
One limitation is the low number of responses. Another big limitation of this study is including doctors who do not have any relation with vestibular disorders.

L319
The online questionnaire was only 10 mins! Do you think it is a long time?

L326
Why especially ENT and general physicians? The most referrals as I see in the results came form those doctors!
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: PERCEPTION, KNOWLEDGE, AND ATTITUDE OF MEDICAL DOCTORS IN SAUDI ARABIA ABOUT THE ROLE OF PHYSIOTHERAPISTS IN VESTIBULAR REHABILITATION: A CROSS-SECTIONAL SURVEY
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 3

Output:
Basic reporting: For the most part it was very well written. There were some anomalies where I was unsure what you were meaning. For example Line 61 'mushrooming'. I suggest rereading the document and removing or rewording any non academic wording or phrases.

I am also unclear what the paragraph starting on line 252 is trying to achieve. There are many great studies reported, but there is no discussion as to what those other studies add to this current study or how they are related to the findings of this current study. Further synthesis of the literature is needed.

Nice, clean, clear tables and figures.
Experimental design: Experimental question was designed well. The survey was designed well to answer the questions.
Validity of the findings: The findings are briefly discussed. The paper would benefit from discussing the implications of the findings and strategies to improve upon the poor referral to physiotherapists for vestibular disorders. It is not enough to say that physiotherapists  are under utilised, but a discussion about the implications of that would provide a greater insight into why these findings matter.
Additional comments: The Discussion should highlight more why it is important for physiotherapists to be involved in the care of people with vestibular disorders, assuming that is what you are trying to achieve? Do patients have better outcomes if they visit a physiotherapist versus a medical doctor? The why physiotherapist and not ENT doctor or other GP to treat this condition is unclear.


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: PERCEPTION, KNOWLEDGE, AND ATTITUDE OF MEDICAL DOCTORS IN SAUDI ARABIA ABOUT THE ROLE OF PHYSIOTHERAPISTS IN VESTIBULAR REHABILITATION: A CROSS-SECTIONAL SURVEY
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: Well Reported
Experimental design: Authors have clarified my concerns regarding the design
Validity of the findings: The findings can influence clinical practise in the field of vestibular rehab
Additional comments: The last reply to my question which is copy pasted below should be included in the manuscript

"Thanks a lot for pointing it out. if the medical doctors answered that they did not see the patient with vestibular patients. The questionnaire was terminated after collecting demographic information.  "


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: LOSS OF GUT MICROBIAL DIVERSITY IN THE CULTURED, AGASTRIC FISH, MEXICAN PIKE SILVERSIDE (CHIROSTOMA ESTOR: ATHERINOPSIDAE)
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: The manuscript reports on the gut microbiota of a freshwater carnivorous species from Mexico.  This species has potential for aquaculture

Abstract: it will be nice if the authors can insert the actual problem statement/hypothesis of their research.  Although it is mentioned at the end of abstract that this is potentially the first microbiota of a short-gut teleost, it will be proper to mention in abstract the status of gut microbiota studies in teleost, with regards to the different gut morphology or structure.

Introduction

-Paragraphs 1-4 should be edited into two paragraphs.  One should deal with the concept of gut microbiota.  The other should provide a good background on fish gut microbiota research- the trend, design, progress, leading to the reasons for this study.

I personally feel there are a lot of references cited in these 4 paragraphs but not enough information (important ones).  The authors should try and select the important ones and state them as part of the Introduction text
Experimental design: Ln 104-105: The fish samples had an average weight and a total length of 27 g (11-52 g) and 15 cm (11-18 cm), respective – which cohort are these? Wild from lake or biotechnology lab or ponds? Its not clear

Ln 119- please add `from the 3 different populations’
Validity of the findings: Discussion

Ln 298-299: it is not true that most studies on fish microbiota only report on phyla levels.  Please edit this sentence.  Even the authors compared their findings are genus level with a whole series of other studies in line 303 onwards, a list of citations were provided.

Ln 300: ‘Such studies report that fish present most abundantly Proteobacteria and Firmicutes phyla at different proportions’ – please edit this sentence

Conclusion
What about the novelty in terms of microbiota of short gut fish with other species? for example, comparison with herbivorous species. This is also not discussed in Discussion
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: LOSS OF GUT MICROBIAL DIVERSITY IN THE CULTURED, AGASTRIC FISH, MEXICAN PIKE SILVERSIDE (CHIROSTOMA ESTOR: ATHERINOPSIDAE)
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: The manuscript is structured appropriately and contains appropriate figures. The authors include relevant references and context.

The sequencing data is available through NCBI with metadata appended. It may helpful to add more specific metadata explicitly tying samples to the environment types (rather than relying on lat long) but that is not absolutely necessary.

The English language should be improved to ensure that an international audience can clearly understand the text. Places where the language could be improved include (but are not limited to) lines 54, 72-73, 109-110, 178-180, 313-317, 321-324 as your  current phrasing makes comprehension difficult. I would suggest you have a colleague who is proficient in English and familiar with the subject matter review your manuscript, or contact a professional editing service.
Experimental design: The authors profiled gut microbial communities from C. estor looking for variation between three environments and three gut compartments. It is an interesting addition to the literature on fish microbiota. I do have a couple of concerns about the presentation (discussed here) and analysis (presented in the next section) that could be addressed to improve the manuscript.

Presentation concerns
Environments:
The environment types are sometimes described as representing different domestication states (e.g. line 30) but the authors do not provide any information on the evolutionary history of these populations to support that claim. I believe it is interesting to analyze these three populations but they must be discussed appropriately. Unless you can demonstrate that the captive populations have been under selection for tameness and tolerance of captive environment, there is not cause to call them domesticated. I would instead present as wild or free-living and cultivated or captive.
Among the captive populations, the difference between intensive and extensive culture (e.g. line34) is unclear. I think this is mostly because “extensive” is not an intuitive word to use here. Maybe use “cultivated indoor” and “cultivated outdoor”?
Regardless of what you call them, it would be helpful to provide more information on the history of these populations in lines 99-104. For instance, how long have the cultivated populations been in cultivation for?

Gut sections:
You refer to the different gut sections as both components and compartments. Be consistent throughout. It would be great if you could provide a figure of the gut section breakdown to help reader understand order and relative size.

Language edits:
-It would be helpful if you were consistent in what you called the environments and whether you use abbreviations (e.g. line 243) or something else.
-line 128, 130, etc. these are more accurately described as amplicons rather than metagenome sequences since they are the result of PCR of a target region.
-line 178-180 It is unclear what you mean here. To be determined “common” must an OTU present in all samples or in 80%?
-line 235 what are overall samples?
-line 236, 238 etc. can you provide the exact p value instead of just <0.05?
line 237-239 does this mean wild is higher than both cultivated populations together or both analyzed separately?

Figures:
The Venn diagram should be scaled so sectors with more taxa included are larger, otherwise it is just a colorful table.
Validity of the findings: Analysis concerns

Differential abundance analyses:
You provide lefSe and edgeR analyses to do differential abundance tests but don't articulate what distinguishes them. If you can't say the strengths provided by both together, I would just include one. Since lefSe only compares 2 groups at a time and your variables have 3 levels, it seems best to not include it.
It may be interesting to add an analysis of what is differentially abundant between wild and cultivated (grouping intensive and extensive together) to see what the effect of the general environment is. This would allow you to more robustly say what is different about the wild population.
For any differential abundance analysis you should specify what sort of multiple hypothesis correction was carried out.
It appears differential abundance results are reported both in lines 227-233 and 265-277. Or was some other set of tests conducted for 227-233, if so why include both?

Other statistics:
For the analysis of gut sections, you should be controlling for individual since they are not independent if from the same gut. You can do this by stratifying in anosim or with a random effect in some differential abundance models.
You describe both ANOSIM and PERMANOVA In the methods (lines 152-154) but only ANOSIM appears in the results. They are mostly interchangeable so I see no need to include both.
Overall, it would be helpful if the analysis code, including the processing of sequencing reads, was made available in supplement or on GitHub or an equivalent server.
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: HYDROGEN SULPHIDE ALLEVIATES FUSARIUM HEAD BLIGHT IN WHEAT SEEDLINGS
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: The manuscript was well written in general.

In introduction, review of many others' papers was not cited. Please  add relevant literature citations when review others' reports.
Experimental design: Critical methods were not clearly described.
1. Was the experiment replicated? FHB is a difficult disease to be studied and usually people need conduct several experiments to repeat phenotypic data.
2. How the spike was inoculated? One spikelet per spike? How many spikes per treatment? How many rep? Were these inoculated spikes covered? If so how many days? These are important information for readers to justify if the experimental data support the conclusions or not, but they were missing in the manuscript.
Validity of the findings: The finding is novel and interesting.

But without detailed description of the disease evaluation, readers have no way make judgement of validity of the findings.
Additional comments: If the finding is real, how farmer can use the finding to control FHB? Can farmers   apply it with fertilizer or apply it with fungicide?  Please discuss possible method to use the finding in FHB control by farmers.


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: HYDROGEN SULPHIDE ALLEVIATES FUSARIUM HEAD BLIGHT IN WHEAT SEEDLINGS
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: The manuscript by Yao et al., describes the potential value of H2S in mitigating the adverse effects induced by Fusarium  graminearum and advanced the current knowledge regarding the molecular mechanisms in wheat.
The manuscript is well written with relevant comprehensive Introduction, Literature and Cited references throughout the manuscript. In addition to this, figures are relevant and well labelled having high quality and comprehensive legends. Raw data is also provided.
There is need to rephrase the sentences in the following lines to make them more clear:
Lines# 142-143, 207, 232, 288-290, 313-315.
Figure1: Please rephrase the figure legend to make it clear and attractive.
Experimental design: There are some points which should be addressed by authors(s) to make them more clear:
Line # 100-102: There is a need to describe the alterations in the methodology.
Line# 109: Please provide justification for using pre-treatment for 6h and not 5/4/3h…..
Line# 109: There is mentioned pre-treatment of seedling samples @ 0, 0.1, 0.3, and 0.5 Mm WHILE Line# 182:  on fungal growth, 2 different concentrations were applied @ 0.01 & 0.075. Please give justification to make it clear.
Line#203: The concentration 1.0 mM NaHS is mentioned in results but not in methodology. Why?
Validity of the findings: The manuscript by Yao et al., provides innovative as well as informative findings.
All understudying data have been provided which looks are robust, statistically sound, & controlled.
Conclusions are well stated, linked to original research question & limited to supporting results.
Anyhow, there is need to provide justification/reason why disease score is significantly lower in CK compared to 0 mM (without) NaHS concentration in Figure 2.
Additional comments: This present research work is innovative and informative. I have some observations which author(s) should need to be addressed in this study:
i) Fusarium graminearum is notorious due to DON toxin production besides impact on wheat growth related parameters, what is an impact of NaHS on DON toxin production?
ii) Please mention specific strain of Fusarium graminearum which was used in this study.
iii) Please mention the source from where authors obtained or isolated Fusarium graminearum used in this study.
iv) Please briefly describe the F. graminearum inoculum preparation method in the materials section.


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: HYDROGEN SULPHIDE ALLEVIATES FUSARIUM HEAD BLIGHT IN WHEAT SEEDLINGS
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 3

Output:
Basic reporting: No comments
Experimental design: Line 142:
Which house keeping genes were used as a control in qPCR as a control for detecting the relative quantity of F. graminearum on infected plants?

Line 189:
Why tukey test was used? If applied control treatment I think the best pairwise comparison test is Dunnett's test here. This must be checked because whenever you have a control treatment.
Validity of the findings: Lines 202-207
If correlation studies among biochemical traits like H2O2, POD, CAT, SOD, APX, etc. and seedling parameters or morphological traits  will be added it will provide a detailed understanding of how the relative expression of antioxidants effects the wheat seedling growth and its yield related parameters.

Lines 261-263
Why not the levels of H2O2 was determined in cell organelles for detailed understanding of the pathogen induced increased level of H2O2 inside the cell.
Additional comments: No 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: HYDROGEN SULPHIDE ALLEVIATES FUSARIUM HEAD BLIGHT IN WHEAT SEEDLINGS
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: All the queries have been successfully addressed  by authors and Manuscript was revised accordingly.
Experimental design: All the queries have been addressed successfully by authors.
Validity of the findings: Manuscript was successfully  revised and all quires  were addressed accordingly by the authors.
Additional comments: Needful has been done by authors and now this manuscript is acceptable for publication in the PEER J.


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: GROWTH REGULATORS PROMOTE SOYBEAN PRODUCTIVITY: A REVIEW
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: Basic reporting: The manuscript well described the role of different growth regulators on the productivity of different crops. The language is clear. Though the importance of soybean is mentioned well, however, little more emphasis on the role of growth regulators on soybean productivity should be given in the Introduction Section to make it more meaningful of targeting soybean as a crop in the review.
Experimental design: Study design: Followed standard procedures for presenting the information as a review article.
Validity of the findings: Validity of the findings: Some suggestions are given to improve the manuscript such as-
i. Line 53 – 54: “This has prompted its consumption as a staple food…… quality”. The term staple is not much appropriate for soybean as a food crop. Better to revise the sentence.
ii. Line 58 – 59: “Generally grain legumes are excellent source of energy but …………… still under rainfed”. The statement is not clear for the general readers, please make clear what do you meant for!
iii. Line 76 – 78. “In soybean production, higher yields obtained …………….timely germination of seeds and uniform emergence of seedlings from the soil”. Timely germination and uniform emergence of course important criteria, but the yield is not much attributed to the two criteria as those are not direct yield contributing characters. Please revise the sentence.

iv. Line 114 – 401: While discussing the general characteristics and role on crops of different growth regulators, a very little reference of soybean has been mentioned, though that for other crops are well described. More emphasis is required to place on soybean in this section.

References: Need serious improvement!! Just for example-
i.	L 1099 – 1101: There is no volume or issue number of the journal.
ii.	L 1102: It is mentioned Ahmad W et al. (2019). However, all the authors name should be mentioned. Similarly, L 1115. Many more also!!!!
iii.	 L 1157: chemical ecology should be Chemical Ecology; Line 1164: Trends in plant science should be Plant Science!! Many more of similar cases.
Additional comments: General comments: The manuscript is suitable for publication in PeerJ as a review paper after making necessary improvement as indicated.


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: GROWTH REGULATORS PROMOTE SOYBEAN PRODUCTIVITY: A REVIEW
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: The message of the review article is clear and easy to follow. However, the article could benefit from clarity in the writing style. The structures of the review should also be revised to elaborate more on the effect of PGRs with biotic environmental stress, especially with the majority of plant hormones being related to biotic stress that the authors mentioned in the review.

I have a concern regarding the usefulness of figures in this manuscript. In general, the figures are actually a list of the sections addressed in this review (accept Figure 2). I suggest that the authors prepare themselves, or work with a scientific illustrator to summary the different effects and targets of PGRs in  graphic illustrations that is easy to understand. A good place to start is lifeology.io where you can connect with illustrators who can help on this.
Experimental design: The literature survey method is clear, sufficient and easy to replicate.
Validity of the findings: no comment as this is a literature review article
Additional comments: The review is a thorough report of plant growth regulators on soybean production, reflected by the enhancement of crop quality, plant growth & development, abiotic stress tolerance. I commend the authors on the comprehensiveness of this literature survey. Although the review covered most of the aspects of PGRs in soybean production laid out in the abstract and introduction, there are several concerns that need to be addressed before this manuscript can be accepted.

1.	The review mentioned extensively about abiotic stress, while a lot of plant growth regulators mentioned in the manuscript is actually also related to biotic stress responses (JA, MeJA, SA, ABA, Polyamines, etc.). Section 3.1.3 also mentioned root nodulation by rhizobia, therefore, it would be of readers’ special interest if the authors could include a separate section to briefly discuss the effect of PGRs on biotic interactions and how they would influence soybean yield.

2.	Line 53: A summary table of soybean nutritional value would be very useful
3.	Line 80: please spell out “m” as “million”. I also suggest the authors to remove this methodology section as this is a quite standard approach in surveying the literature for review articles. In addition, I assume that all the surveyed studies were already cited, so there is no need to mention the amount of hundreds of publications retrieved in the search here.

4.	Line 124: what do you mean by “repair”? Can the authors provide an example of this effect as it is the only place where this effect was mentioned?

5.	Line 150-153: What is the purpose of mentioning anti-auxin compounds here? What are their significances and applications?

6.	Line 164: I suggest the author change “number of leaves per plant” to “leaf number”

7.	Line 195-203: Same point as #6. I understand that the focus of this review is plant growth enhancement (as stated in line 28-30: “In an attempt to expatiate on the topic, current knowledge, and possible applications of plant growth regulators that improve growth and yield have been reviewed and discussed”). The functions of GA inhibitors as plant growth inhibitors, therefore, are not relevant to the focus of this manuscript.

8.	Line 568: please spell out enzyme names if they are mentioned for the first time in the manuscript

9.	Line 698-700: the authors mentioned R1 and R5 stage without mentioning what these growth stages were. Please define all the growth stages, and use the definitions consistently for other places in the manuscript (line 719: flower-initiation, pod-initiation, flower initiation + pod-initiation). An illustration of different growth stages would be very informative.

10.	Line 722-725: These sentences are confusing. I suggest the authors re-write it to clearly convey the message coming from the results of the research cited.

11.	 Line 749: did the authors mean “flowering”?

12.	Line 751: it is not clear what the authors meant by “keen attention”

13.	Line 885: can the author elaborate on the relationship between JA and SA cited from Kim et al. 2007 and Wildermuth 2006 here. It is common knowledge that JA and SA pathways antagonize each other, so it would not make much sense when MeJA treatment could increase the production of SA. In addition, SA is a defense hormone and which can strongly inhibit plant growth and development. Therefore, one would expect that Sa treatment could reduce and not enhance yield due to abiotic stress. It would be great if the author can provide a clearer interpretation of these conflicting findings.

14.	 Line 932: Which group of PGRs does 5-aminolevulinic acid fall in to?

Some minor points:
1.	The authors should include an index page so that readers can capture the big picture and framework of this review.

2.	Italicize scientific names (Arabidopsis, Botrytis cinerea, Phakopsora pachyrhizi, Raphanus sativus L. var. longipinnatus Bailey, Glycine max (L.), etc.)

3.	I suggest that the authors place the Abbreviation list at the beginning of the article so that readers can easily refer to it.

4.	Although the majority of the manuscript is easy to follow, this manuscript can benefit greatly from some transparency in the writing style. I suggest that the authors work with the editor for some suggestions on editing services before re-submission of this manuscript.


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: GROWTH REGULATORS PROMOTE SOYBEAN PRODUCTIVITY: A REVIEW
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 3

Output:
Basic reporting: The manuscript submitted by Dede et al., is an interesting article. In this regard, the authors present an updated vision regarding the different investigations that demonstrate the effect of growth regulators on Soybean productivity. I believe that the manuscript will be of interest to researchers in the field.
Experimental design: Although, the manuscript is reasonably well written and has an adequate structure, the content in some sections looks superficial and lacks the critical insights that would make it a useful addition to the field.
Validity of the findings: No comment
Additional comments: Comments to the authors

Major comments:
1.	Section 2.0, describes the role of major growth regulators on plant growth and development. The section is lengthy and just lists the general functions of plant growth regulators and whether they add anything to the article needs to be considered carefully. This section needs to be shortened substantially by highlighting the role of plant growth regulators in improving the Soybean productivity. Further, authors should include information about the synthetic or chemical growth regulators, which also play a major role in Soybean growth.

2.	Table 1 reported the effects of different PGRs on growth and development of plants in general. Whether all the effects mentioned in the Table is applicable to Soybean growth and development is questionable. So, authors should change the Table 1 by highlighting the effects that are specific to Soybean.

3.	Cycocel is an antagonist of GA3. In lines 470-473, authors mentioned the role of Cycocel in retaining more leaves per plant and attributed the effect to various other factors but not to GA3. Authors should clearly justify this in the text.

4.	Line 474-475, authors mentioned the importance to Cytokinin in shoot development of plants. However, it’s role in Soybean shoot development is not reported in the section.

5.	Recently, it showed that different concentration of cytokinin’s have large impact on Soybean nodulation (Celine Mens et al., 2018, Frontiers in Plant Science). Authors should include that in the section 3.1.3.

6.	Full names of the abbreviated enzymes should be mentioned at first appearance in the text. For example, in the lines 556-557 the full forms of POD, CAT, SOD and GST are not mentioned.

7.	Jasmonic acid and Brassinosteroids are well known for their antioxidant capacity (ASA-GSH cycle). Refer Seteiwy et al., 2020, Journal of science of food and agriculture and Hasan et al., 2020, Journal of plant interactions. I suggest the authors to include the importance of those growth regulators in the section 3.2.2.

8.	Cross talk or interactions between various plant hormones has great effect on photosynthesis in plants. Authors should comment on the role of hormonal interaction on the rate photosynthesis in Soybean (refer Muller maren et al., 2021, Plant physiology). Further, Salicylic acid plays a major role in increasing the levels of enzymes (RUBISCO) and stability of subunits (PSII, OEE1 and OEE2) involved in photosynthesis (refer, Sharma et al., 2018 and 2019).

9.	In many countries, Soybean is used as source of nutritionally important fatty acids. In section 3.3.2 authors should mention the effects PGRs on the quality of oil and fatty acids of Soybean seeds (refer Golezani-Ghassemi et al., 2018, Russian journal of Physiology).

10.	ABA is a key hormone in water stress response. Shimamura et al., 2014, 2016 and Kim et al., 2015 showed that ABA negatively correlated with water logging tolerance. I suggested the authors to include the role of ABA in water logging tolerance in Section 3.44.

11.	Figure 2 looks generalized representation of antioxidant defense system. I suggest the authors to modify the figure 2, highlighting the examples of specific PGRs on each antioxidant pathway/reaction in relation to Soybean.

Minor comments:

1.	Format the references according to Journal guidelines. For example, Scientific names of the plants should be in Italics-line 1097, 1103 etc. The first letter of each word in the journal name should be written in uppercase-Line 1092, 1122 etc., Abbreviated journal names should be changed to Full form.


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: GROWTH REGULATORS PROMOTE SOYBEAN PRODUCTIVITY: A REVIEW
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: no comment
Experimental design: no comment
Validity of the findings: no comment
Additional comments: The authors have addressed most of my concerns and I recommend the manuscript for publication in PeerJ.


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 COMBINED ASSOCIATION OF SERUM URIC ACID, ALANINE AMINOTRANSFERASE AND WAIST CIRCUMFERENCE WITH NON-ALCOHOLIC FATTY LIVER DISEASE: A COMMUNITY-BASED STUDY
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: The authors investigated the association of serum uric acid, alanine aminotransferase and waist circumference with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease; this is a hot topic and the study is interesting; However; only minor comments:
=Introduction: You should illustrate more the importance of NAFLD; its association with metabolic syndrome; and extrahepatic manifestations as cerebral stroke or cardiovascular events.
=Methods: You should clarify more the sample size calculation; and the power of the study to confirm the validity of the study.
=Results: Well presented.
=Introduction and discussion: should be enriched with recent studies in the field.
 = References: some are old even returning to 1960s; So, I suggest adding more recent and relevant references:
-Diabetes Association with Liver Diseases: An Overview for Clinicians. Endocr Metab Immune Disord Drug Targets. 2019;19(3):274-280. doi: 10.2174/1871530318666181116111945.
-Overexpression of Hepassocin in Diabetic Patients with Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease May Facilitate Increased Hepatic Lipid Accumulation. Endocr Metab Immune Disord Drug Targets. 2019;19(2):185-188.
-Efficacy of a non-invasive model in predicting the cardiovascular morbidity and histological severity in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Diabetes Metab Syndr. 2019 May-Jun;13(3):2272-2278.
-Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease in patients with acute ischemic stroke is associated with more severe stroke and worse outcome. J Clin Lipidol. 2017 Jul-Aug;11(4):915-919.
-Relationship Between Helicobacter pylori Infection and Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) in a Developing Country: A Cross-Sectional Study. Diabetes Metab Syndr Obes. 2020 Mar 2;13:619-625
Experimental design: Research question is well defined, relevant & meaningful. The research fills an identified knowledge gap.
Validity of the findings: The findings are valid. So, I suggest accepting the article for publication.
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: A COMBINED ASSOCIATION OF SERUM URIC ACID, ALANINE AMINOTRANSFERASE AND WAIST CIRCUMFERENCE WITH NON-ALCOHOLIC FATTY LIVER DISEASE: A COMMUNITY-BASED STUDY
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: 1. Your introduction needs more detail. I suggest that you improve the description at lines 69-73 to provide more justification for your study. The authors should explain more, why to use WC, when the limitation of WC is inaccurate distinction between visceral and subcutaneous adipose tissue in the abdominal region.

2. As anthropometric parameter, waist circumference (WC) is usually treated as an indicator for central obesity…because they authors not use the Visceral Adiposity Index (VAI), an indicator of adipose distribution and function.
Experimental design: 1.	“SUA, ALT and WC were classified into categories defined by quartiles.”: The authors need to provide the rationale of conversion of SUA, ALT and WC from a continuous variable into quartiles.
2.	Tables 2 -4: The authors should show Comparison of characteristics according to the cutoff points for SUA, ALT and WC (dichotomic variable).
3.	Statistical analysis, described with sufficient detail.
Validity of the findings: The absence of a replication group makes the conclusions be taken with caution. Lines 252-255. I suggest softening the conclusions, and indicate…. in the Chinese population.
Additional comments: no comment


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 COMBINED ASSOCIATION OF SERUM URIC ACID, ALANINE AMINOTRANSFERASE AND WAIST CIRCUMFERENCE WITH NON-ALCOHOLIC FATTY LIVER DISEASE: A COMMUNITY-BASED STUDY
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 3

Output:
Basic reporting: The Authors of this manuscript aimed to determine the combined effects of serum uric acid (SUA), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), and waist circumference (WC) on early screening of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) in a community-based Chinese population. The manuscript is written clearly. The data justify the conclusions. Only some minor changes are recommended.
Experimental design: The Authors should describe in the Methods section how blood pressure was measured.
The units in Table 6 are redundant. Also, the units for SUA are not correct.
Validity of the findings: 'no comment'
Additional comments: English editing for some minor corrections 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: A COMBINED ASSOCIATION OF SERUM URIC ACID, ALANINE AMINOTRANSFERASE AND WAIST CIRCUMFERENCE WITH NON-ALCOHOLIC FATTY LIVER DISEASE: A COMMUNITY-BASED STUDY
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: The authors investigated   a combined association of serum uric acid, alanine aminotransferase and waist circumference with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in a community-based study ; the study is interesting and discusses a hot topic. The authors addressed the comments of the reviewers.So, I suggest acceptance of the article.
Experimental design: Methods were described with sufficient detail and information.
Validity of the findings: Conclusions are well stated and are linked to the original research.
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: A COMBINED ASSOCIATION OF SERUM URIC ACID, ALANINE AMINOTRANSFERASE AND WAIST CIRCUMFERENCE WITH NON-ALCOHOLIC FATTY LIVER DISEASE: A COMMUNITY-BASED STUDY
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: no comment
Experimental design: no comment
Validity of the findings: no comment
Additional comments: no comment


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 COMBINED ASSOCIATION OF SERUM URIC ACID, ALANINE AMINOTRANSFERASE AND WAIST CIRCUMFERENCE WITH NON-ALCOHOLIC FATTY LIVER DISEASE: A COMMUNITY-BASED STUDY
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 3

Output:
Basic reporting: The Authors have made corrections according to the Reviewer's suggestions.
Experimental design: The Authors have made corrections according to the Reviewer's suggestions.
Validity of the findings: The Authors have made corrections according to the Reviewer's suggestions.
Additional comments: No additional comments.