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: IMPACT OF EXTREME DROUGHT AND INCENTIVE PROGRAMS ON FLOODED AGRICULTURE AND WETLANDS IN CALIFORNIA’S CENTRAL VALLEY
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: Current article abstract is unstructured, and according to 'standard sections' instructions for authors, requires structuring as follows:

"Headings in structured abstracts should be bold and followed by a period. Each heading should begin a new paragraph.
For example:
Background. The background section text goes here. Next line for new section.
Methods. The methods section text goes here.
Results. The results section text goes here.
Discussion. The discussion section text goes here.
"

A standard heading used by the journal is "Materials & Methods"; the authors use "METHODS", which I presume is appropriate as the research required little in materials.
Experimental design: Re. “Methods described with sufficient detail & information to replicate.”

In general, the methods were well enough described.  In a few instances, additional clarity could improve understanding of the methods and study area leading to specific results (regarding which models/model parameter estimates were used to derive certain values, and defining regions and wetland protection status more clearly, defining years analyzed in figure captions).  Please see “General comments for the author” and the uploaded annotated pdf document for more details.
Validity of the findings: Re. “Conclusions are well stated, linked to original research question & limited to supporting results.”

In general, the author interpretations are supported by results.  In one instance, regarding the effect of rainfall, I did not fully agree with author interpretations.

There is some lack of clarity in text and results relating to table 5 and figures 4-5.

I think the authors could better and more directly focus conclusions on 2 objectives listed on lines 91-94, findings addressing these objectives, and how addressing the objectives advances our understanding for and the future of conservation.

For all of the above more details are provided in “General comments for the author” and the uploaded annotated pdf document for more details.
Additional comments: Dear authors,
Thanks for your contribution!

I think the subject research will add greatly to the current information (or lack thereof) about drought impacts on waterbird habitats and to inform conservation in the Central Valley.

Below are specific comments that I hope will improve the quality of your article.

I inserted additional minor edits directly in the downloadable annotated manuscript text, tables, and figures document to accompany the comments below.

Sincerely,
Elliott Matchett

Abstract starting on line 14- Abstract lacks subheading structure; please review journal’s abstract subheadings-structural requirements to ensure compliance.
Line 27- “non-drought years 2000-2011”- at least 2009 can be identified as a time of drought during this period, so you should probably reword this as something like “a relatively wetter period including years 2000-2011”.
Line 61-62- Because the Cascade Range supplies Shasta Lake (largest surface reservoir draining to the Central Valley) and the upper Sacramento River, I suggest you Identify it here as well.  Also, use “ranges” or “mountain ranges” following their names to clarify that the Sierra or Cascades are mountains.
Line 70- reference spelling “Synder” doesn’t match spelling “Snyder” for reference on line 489.
Lines 73-76- Sentence is difficult to read; please reword.  Maybe something like “The effects on the distribution of surface water caused by water restrictions, increasing water costs (Howitt et al. 2014), and lack of precipitation, needs to be assessed to understand impacts on waterbird habitat availability.

Lines 83-84- Can you provide info. on depth of flooding for WHEP as you did for BirdReturns? Also, please briefly (in a few words if possible) explain “staged”.  I think this means that timing of draining and depth is staggered among fields, but clarification would be nice.

Line 98- Re. “Central Valley Joint Venture planning region (Dybala et al. 2017)”- thank you for providing the citation; however, I suggest that you briefly describe the CVJV, it’s “planning region”, and each’s significance (addressing their importance for conservation and reason for using the subject region as your study area).

Lines 99-101- Typically the San Joaquin Valley is used to refer to the region extending from below the Sacramento-San Joaquin Rivers Delta to the bottom of the Tulare Basin. Therefore, it is very important to rename the region you are calling San Joaquin Valley as “North San Joaquin Valley” or something else.  Similarly, change Figure 1 to reflect any renaming change you make.  Line 64, text “southern Central Valley (San Joaquin Valley)” also would imply the full southern (below Delta) extent of the Central Valley.  Therefore, persons who are familiar with the Central Valley but who do not carefully read lines 99-101, would misconstrue results for your study to pertain to “San Joaquin Valley” and “Tulare Basin” combined.  If region names you are using are identical to terminology in Dybala et al. 2017, and thus, you would prefer to maintain current region names, then I still think you should explain in text the distinction between what you are calling San Joaquin Valley from the alternative area extending to the bottom of Tulare Basin that is commonly known as the San Joaquin Valley.

Line 103- Please include “Cascade Range” as well.

Lines 105-107- Although pretty intuitive, you probably need to define water transfers or reword for readers that are unfamiliar with water management, e.g., “often rely on water being transferred for use from the north through contractual agreements (“water transfers”)”.

Line 113- instead of satellites, would it be more accurate to say “satellite imagery” or “imagery from satellites”?

Lines 114-115- Sentence seems awkward as worded with the “5’s” and “8’s”; can you drop the “’s”?: “We used Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper for the period of 2000 – 2011 and Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager and Thermal Infrared Sensor for the period of 2013 – 2015.”

Lines 126-130- please simplify language here and throughout  re. “open water” or “water” for crop types, with area/proportion of crop types that were “flooded”, because aren’t your estimates of open water a measure of the flooded area/proportion of each cover type?

Lines 134-138- You present results solely for differences between Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys (I assume this is only the region above Tulare Basin and doesn’t include Tulare Basin).  Are these the only regional differences you investigated?- I assume that they are not based on the literal meaning of region as pertaining to Figure 1.  If these 2 regions were the only two compared, then please specify this here and in Figure 5 caption too.

Lines 141-142- good idea weighting by cloud “freeness”; I would guess this would improve the model performance (considering 50% range would include large variation).

Lines 155-156- unclear what is meant by “included estimates of total precipitation within the last two and four weeks”.  It becomes much clearer on lines 161-163.  Consider deleting “within the last two and four weeks”, or reword to clarify the relationship b/w precip. variables and Landsat data intervals to indicate how they correspond.

Lines 181-184- It is unclear about what is being compared and is differing here: “within year temporal availability of open water might differ in…”. I think within-year availability is differing among year types, but this should be clarified.

Lines 187-188- I think it would be helpful to be more specific actually being compared about “dynamics” in “we compared the dynamics of open water”; and similarly
lines 191-193- “seasonal wetland data” in “We fit separate GAMMs to seasonal wetland data from each region”.  You might be alright to leave lines 187-188 as is, while following up with specifics about the data in 191-193.

Lines 213-216- Reword for clarity.  Suggested revision: “To account for habitat (>0cm of water) remaining in rice fields upon termination of incentivized flooding, we used data from another study in rice (Point Blue unpublished data) to estimate the average duration that water remained in fields during the period that fields were drained (i.e., drawdown).”

Lines 244-245- “declines in rice (25 and 46%), corn (77 and 81%), and other crops (64 and 71%) (Fig. 2).” Add Table 3 to citation (Table 3, Fig. 2).  I see that these values for the 3 crop classes come from Table 3; however, they come from varying models in the table.  How did you determine which values to cite here? E.g., for each crop type, are values from the models explaining the most variation, or some other criteria?  You should explain your logic in that decision making, and if there isn’t consistent logic, then reevaluate and then briefly explain models and values selected; also, you may wish consider some kind of model-averaging of values to derive single estimates.

Lines 245-247- I don’t completely follow this logic.  I agree that average differences between recent drought and other year types is weakened (and is not “statistically significant”, and by the way, should be interpreted with caution) by the positive modeled (additive) effect of seasonal precipitation on open water (10 to 11% more; Table 3, models 2 and 3 vs. model 1).  I still think this could be reworded in the context that the positive effect of rainfall is intermittent/transient/periodic to make it more clear about what the rainfall effect means.  You don’t model the interaction between year type and precipitation (it’s not shown in either Table 3 or Figure 3) to show support for variable effect of precipitation by year type, so I think the statement “…precipitation…was prominent in non-drought years” must be excluded from text.  Here and throughout, I suggest including P > or P< values after using the word significant when regarding statistical significance, so it’s not interpreted otherwise (or alternatively you could state in the methods “significant” refers to statistical significance, so that text is not littered with “P levels of significance.

Lines 251-254, 254-259- see comment for Lines 244-245 relating to selection of model estimates.

Lines 265-268- I don’t understand why estimates of open water in Figure 5 don’t correspond well with the declines cited for Table 5.  Figure 5 declines assuming a trend “line” centered within bands would be much closer than the 63-69% (Sac. Valley) and 85% (San Joaq. Valley) difference between recent drought and the other periods.  As I read further, also lines 276-278 seem to be in conflict (“In seasonal and semipermanent
wetlands, the nearly 50% reduction in water was largely observed between October
and March (Fig. 4).”). Lines 251-254 (“While seasonally flooded managed wetlands showed significant declines in open water in the recent drought (47 – 59% declines) compared to historic non-drought and average years (Fig. 4; Table 4), changes in semi-permanent wetlands were not significant, though all drought variable coefficients had point estimates that were negative.”), suggest yet another set of values and potential discrepancy with the above and which may need to be put into the appropriate context as well.  Perhaps you can reword or clarify to avoid this confusion or prevent persons from making inappropriate comparisons between table 5 and figure 5/figure 4.

Lines 275-276- Re. “The reductions in water in all crops were particularly pronounced October to March and then again in May.”  Figure 2 appears to show that except for corn, crops (i.e., rice and “other crops”) tended to comparatively lack open water in recent drought during Nov.-Feb. (corn during Oct-Feb).  Sentence in lines 327-328 also seems to be consistent with this idea.  Please revise accordingly.

Lines 286-288- I think you can delete sentence “Our model…”.  I question whether it adds any additional info. to what follows.

Lines 298-299- awkward structure; reword: “and while between 1 February and 7 March, WHEP provided 31% (min = 15%, max = 48%)”. Perhaps “and WHEP provided 31%(….) during February-7 March.”

Lines 350-352- I think you mean 70% of the available habitat on rice land (not all habitat), right?

Lines 389-402- Please better and more directly focus your conclusions on your 2 objectives listed on lines 91-94, your findings addressing these objectives, and how addressing the objectives advances our understanding for and the future of conservation.  I think much of the text (especially lines 390-397) in your conclusions might better fit somewhere within the discussion leaving more space for refocusing your conclusions.

Lines 401-402- Re. “where water management needs to focus in the face of additional, and potentially more extreme, drought events.”, please be more specific about what is meant by “where” because I don’t think that you mean exclusively regional.  Thinking about study results you could point to habitats, times of year, and Sac. Valley and/or San Joaquin Valley.

Table 1- in caption, specify the units for accuracy and bias (e.g., percentage of locations accurately classified and percentage difference between ground-verified observations and model predictions of open water).  If you are trying to reduce width of the table as implied by the wrapped text for wetland, can you simplify the 3 words for wetland to just “wetland” and accurately define type(s) of wetlands (which I thought was seasonal and semi-permanent) in the caption.  Also, you should probably define “other” too as you did in Table 2, so the table can stand alone.

Table 2- in both the caption and in footnote 3, you have “The protection variable was not included in crop type models.” or similar text.  You should probably include it in only one of these.  I think you could describe the protection variable slightly more so the reader understands what constitutes being protected to allow potentially more flooding of these wetlands. The “**” before this text in the footnote appears to be out of place.

Table 3- You’re missing a value for %, model 2, corn.  Although in text line 244, you state “yearly declines”, you should state that models are estimating variable relationships and changes on an annual time scale in tables 3 and 4.

Table 4- Are you able to fit “Protected*Recent Drought” on one line (you only have 2 land cover classes in this table and I see a fair amount of empty space b/w columns).
I think you should add a superscript and footnote for “Covariate” indicating what “Protected*Drought” and “Protected*Recent Drought” represents (i.e., which level of Protected is indicator = 1 that is being expressed).

Figure 2- Figure caption: “Estimates were derived from separate models for each year group…”.  You do not indicate which model(s) (of 1-3) or model effects that were used to estimate the relationships presented; please do so.  Comments below regarding drought terminology and related text apply to all parts of the manuscript.  You classify drought for years 2013-16 as “Extreme Drought” in caption (also in Figs. 4 and 5), but in Tables 2-5 you classify this period as “Recent drought”; be consistent in your terminology of drought periods and I suggest using “recent drought” throughout because “extreme drought” suggests that it was a worse drought than periods of drought during 2000-11 despite providing no such evidence (which I believe exists).  If you want to make comparisons based on relative severity of drought because you think that it would help in making conclusions then consider providing supporting information on drought severity to indicate 2013-15 is more severe than drought during 2000-11.

Figure 3- I find the 3 color bands a bit confusing.  To resolve this, I have some suggestions. Figure caption: indicated what the bands represent (95% confidence intervals?). Figure legend: if possible, add a third category to the legend that represents the intermediate color where precip. and no precip. bands overlap and indicate as region of overlap between precip. and no precip.

Figures 4 and 5- I think you need to be explicit about the models that these estimates are from; too little info. is provided on the models/model variables.  It is unclear which model of 1-6, or if separate models (and what variables) were run just for figure presentation.

In figure 5, if possible please explain the other colors for overlap of the 3 periods, or even perhaps experiment with and different line types for boundaries instead of colors for each year type; different line types may make it easier to see areas of overlap among year types.  I think it would be helpful to specify the model variables in the caption.  As stated in an earlier comment, if region in the model only compared these two regions and not all 4 regions indicated in Fig. 1 then I think this should somehow be specified; or, if results are actually for Sac. Valley and the combined region of the “San Joaquin Valley” and “Tulare Basin” in Fig. 1(as typically these regions combined is called the “San Joaquin Valley”), then San Joaquin Valley should be defined as such for this figure and in text.  This also would imply that you should redefine regions and boundaries in Fig. 1 to reflect this combined southern region.

Figure 6- Clarify which years these data represent.

Review of R script and raw data files:
I was able to open all R script and data (csv) files.  R scripts were well documented with extensive comments and identifying the data files that are used in R script code for analysis.  Variables in each data file were clearly labeled and variables appeared to be full populated with meaningful values.


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: IMPACT OF EXTREME DROUGHT AND INCENTIVE PROGRAMS ON FLOODED AGRICULTURE AND WETLANDS IN CALIFORNIA’S CENTRAL VALLEY
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: This paper is clear, concise, and very well written. Most data are clearly referenced. Figures highlight the data well and are easy to understand. Some minor adjustments can be made to improve both background context for the study as well as transparency.

For readers not familiar with Central Valley water and habitat management, additional information in the introduction regarding habitat management programs and water supply can provide valuable context for later interpretation of results. For example, lines 51-54 could include additional background information regarding the complexity of Central Valley water infrastructure and water allocation, and lines 78-80 could include additional information about the size and scale of incentive programs compared to protected habitats.

There are instances, such as lines 128-130, and lines 214-216, where there is mention of use of unpublished data. While I did not review supplemental material to determine whether those data were provided, I recommend including a reference to supplemental materials or an alternative way to access the data. This will increase the reproduce-ability and transparency of the research.
Experimental design: Most of the methods are well described and appear to be reproduce-able, with some minor exceptions presented here.

There are several instances where additional detail is needed to understand and reproduce analytical methods:

It is explained in lines 114-116 that a change in LandSat sensors occurred between the base period and the drought period, and suggested that ground-truth validation was use to bias correct. However, additional explanation is needed regarding how these sensors differ, and if additional methods were used to avoid step trends in the data.

It is explained in lines 139-141 how images with cloud cover were handled. However, additional information is needed regarding validation procedures to assess these methods. For example, how were random effects and individual observations used?

In lines 207-209, more information is needed to describe how habitat days were computed from bi-weekly open water estimates.

Estimates of open water that overlies various base landcover datasets were used to determine whether areas are considered to be waterbird habitat or suitable for waterbird use. However, in lines 216-218, clarification is needed regarding whether depth and saturation elements of rice habitats were computed as part of this study, used from another study, or whether other assumptions were made to presume presence of these conditions where open water intersects certain landcover types.
Validity of the findings: Most of the conclusions are well stated, and clearly linked either directly to supporting results, or by a combination supporting results and other referenced research. Several instances were noted where discussion did not have a strong backing from statistical results. In other areas, additional discussion of model results would provide benefit, even if negative or inconclusive.

Lines 238-240 describe the criteria for a "reasonable fit" for the GAMM model being indicated by an adjusted R-squared value of 30 to 79 percent. However, in terms of predictive power, adjusted R-squared values of less than 50 seem questionable. This is not a critical issue because a.) these models are mainly used for explanatory power rather than predictive power, and b.) because each model has at least one coefficient with statistical significance (but rarely more than one). However, additional discussion of why low adjusted R-squared values are considered a reasonable fit, because of the study objectives and use of the results (for example), would improve the validity of this claim.

There are several instances in lines 247-263 where interpretive meaning is assigned to coefficients with "marginal significance" (p-value <.1 but >.05). I would urge caution and recommend avoiding any conclusion that these co-variates can explain variation of the dependent variable, or have significant meaning.

Lines 376-379 include a good discussion on the wetland findings in terms of overall declines from drought and between study regions. However, I think there could be additional discussion in this paragraph about what the model results are saying about other driving forces for wetland variability. I saw that several of the models showed that protected status was the significant factor for explaining variation of semi-permanent wetlands, but had a negative coefficient. Is there a meaningful explanation for this result? If there is not, I recommend mentioning this in the discussion.
Additional comments: I greatly appreciate the opportunity to review this paper. This paper presents important findings for improved understanding driving forces behind variability in availability of habitat across the Central Valley, especially given the recent drought. The finding that precipitation drives rice habitat variability in spite of a complex water management system that has time delays from climate events was surprising, and shows that this type of analysis can serve to greatly improve our knowledge in this area. The findings regarding the changes in habitat timing under drought conditions is incredibly informative for inter-annual strategic planning by conservation managers when preparing for future droughts. The findings regarding the contribution of incentive programs are promising and provide evidence for success for potential adaptation strategies in the face of increased drought duration and intensity.

In addition to the review comments above, I have made additional minor comments in the annotated pdf that is attached with this review. Most of these comments are requests to clarify terms and ensure understanding of terminology by broader audiences, as well as some minor suggestions to improve figure and table explanation or content.


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: ACHILLES AND TAIL TENDONS OF PERLECAN EXON 3 NULL HEPARAN SULPHATE DEFICIENT MICE DISPLAY SURPRISING IMPROVEMENT IN TENDON TENSILE PROPERTIES AND ALTERED COLLAGEN FIBRIL ORGANISATION COMPARED TO C57BL/6 WILD TYPE MICE
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: Writing:
The abstract is not very clearly written. Also in the introduction are some errors

Abstract
Abstract overall not very clearly written and not well structured
Line 31: Please explain all abbreviations. Eg HSPG2 = Heparan Sulfate Proteoglycan 2
Line 35: tenocytes isolated from where?
line 36. If you have measured mRNA you should call it mRNA instead of gene expression
lin37: …Fbn1 protein or mRNA expression? Unclear
line 41. Changes in UTS/TM biomechanics? Do you mean a reduction in UTS? Please spiecify
line 44: UTS measured how long after tenotomy? Also and more importantly, your data do not support a slower recovery of UTS in the HS deficient mice at all!
Line 46: again, your data do not show impaired material properties in deficient mice at all! If anything, HS deficiency improves stiffness and UTS!

Introduction
Line 56: That is not correct ,collagen isn’t a PG
Line 60: you named VEGF twice, and again please explain abbreviations (eg. VEGF, PDGF, SHH, BMP….)
Line 72: That is not correct, tendons are extensible, and they are more like a tough rubber band than like a cable.
Line 73:That is not correct,  the connection between bone and bone is called a ligament, not a tendon!
Line96: Explain abbreviation AFM
Line97: …” which may be cryoprotective”. And? I am not quite sure how to deal with this information. What/why does it matter that it is cryoprotective. Please explain.
Line 109: very sudden appearance of FGF-2 here. You should elaborate a bit more on why you think FGF-2 has an essential role in the tendon healing process

Article structure:
Line300-309: These are not your results, but a description of the tendon structure. Thus, this does not belong here
Line 314: First time you mention that you used the ACL as positive control. This should have been stated in the methods
Experimental design: The research question itself is well defined. However, it is not clear why you are focussing on tendon
Line 63: Why tendon? Did you make the mouse and the only tissue showing measurable changes was the tendon, or did you aim for the tendon to start with? And if the latter, why? What about other tissues?
Line 111-113: since TGF-ß has an important function in the tenocytes response to mechanical stimuli  and in the healing process, couldn’t any changes in tendon biomechanics not be an indirect effect of the HS deficient mice, being  attributed to the missing TGF-ß?

Regarding the Methods there is some information missing. Also, I would highly recommend a description of the study design to start with, briefly outlining all experiments that are done
Line 139: why was perlecan isolated from skeletal muscle?
Line152-159: What was the distance between the clamps? Why didn’t you use the actuator displacement instead of video footage to determine tendon deformation? How did you determine tendon cross-sectional area?
Line 190: n=?
Line 198: n=?
Line 210: it is indeed debatable if GAPDH is a good housekeeping gene for tendon tissue. In my opinion, there exist better ones. I would prefer 18S, topo-1 or EIF4A2.

Regarding the experimental design, I very much like that data on gene expression, mechanical properties and histology are combined. That is very well done. However, I doubt that the stress deprivation works and I do not understand why the experiment with the sheep annulus fibrosus monolayer cultures was performed.
Line 167-170: n=?. Apart  from being stress deprived, tenocytes are also exposed to all sorts of other changes to their natural environment. E.g exposing them to 10%FBS means far more nutrients and growth factors than they are usually exposed  to.

Line 179-188: I do not quite understand what the immunolocalisation of type XI collagen in sheep annulus fibrosus monolayer cultures has to do with the rest of the experiments with mouse tail and mouse Achilles tendons?
Line 291-298: I still do not understand how these results fit in with the rest of the shown data
Validity of the findings: Statistics:
I have serious concerns regarding your statistics and recommend that you consult a statistician. You cannot use a T-Test if you are comparing more than 2 groups (e.g. mechanical properties at 3,6 and 12 weeks  you should have used an ANOVA instead)
Also If you have a very small sample size such as n=3 your data cannot be normally distributed, thus you cannot use a parametric test (e.g. fibril diameter n=3)
Figure  3 b: I very much doubt that the # indicating a difference in ADAMTS4 compared to untreated control in the WT is correct

Results:
Line 289: I do not agree at all with the statement, that the Achilles tendon of the knockout mice did not recover to the same extent as the wild type. The UTS mean values in the HS deficient mice are higher. Also this statement is not supported by statistics. There is no significant difference between genotypes.
Line 320-322:  not exactly, expression was lower at some time points, e.g. Fbn1 expression was reduced at 6 weeks only, and given that there is no “box” for the HS deficient sample at 6 weeks I assume this might be a result of a very small sample size (n=3?)

Discussion:
Line362: Your data do not show detrimentally affected tendon material properties. Modulus and UTS are higher in the knockout mice, which means if anything, tendon properties are better in the deficient mice.

Line 383: how/where do you see a destabilization of tendon properties over time? Your data do not show that!

Line 386: Again, there are no deleterious changes in material properties

Line389: again, poor repair response is not supported by your data
Additional comments: I very much like that data on gene expression, mechanical properties and histology are combined. The authors have performed a range of very good experiments, which deserve to be published. However, I do not agree with the interpretation of the mechanical data and the statistics.

Also structure and writing style of the article could be improved and there is some information missing in the description of the methods. However,  I think this could be fixed easily.


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: ACHILLES AND TAIL TENDONS OF PERLECAN EXON 3 NULL HEPARAN SULPHATE DEFICIENT MICE DISPLAY SURPRISING IMPROVEMENT IN TENDON TENSILE PROPERTIES AND ALTERED COLLAGEN FIBRIL ORGANISATION COMPARED TO C57BL/6 WILD TYPE MICE
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: 1. The manuscript is clearly written overall, but I think the meaning of ‘stress deprivation’ should be more clearly explained. I suggest including a sentence such as  ‘Tendons were cultured in vitro in the absence of the physiological mechanical strain experienced by tendons in vivo. This is referred to as strain deprivation’.
2. Figure panels could be improved by labelling at the top left of each panel rather than at the top right.
Experimental design: Further characterisation of these previously generated Hspg2-deficient mice is of interest and has the potential to increase our understanding of the physiological role of perlecan. As such, the research described is of interest to the field.

Data showing that tendons from these animals exhibit altered mechanical properties (Figure 1d-i) are interesting, but I think should be discussed in more detail – see General Comments (point 2) below.
Validity of the findings: The authors conclude that tendons from mice with a Hspg2-deficiency were (line 418) ‘less responsive to FGF stimulation in terms of synthesis of matrix components (collagen, GAG)’ and that they (line 390) ‘demonstrated a disturbance in the ability .. to signal through FGF-2. FGF-2 failed to elicit an anabolic response.’ I think the results require more careful interpretation:

1. Since Figure 1i and Figure 3a and show no reduction in hydroxyproline content or expression of Col1a1, I assume the reduced collagen synthesis the authors refer to is shown in Figure 2? Is this really showing that less type IV collagen is synthesised, or does it reflect disturbed morphology of the Hspg2-deficient tendon?

2. I see no data that Hspg2-deficient tendons are ‘less responsive to FGF stimulation in terms of synthesis of matrix components (.. GAG)’. They exhibit less GAG with age (Figure 1h), but this is a reduction in in vivo levels, and cannot be attributed to altered responsiveness to FGF-2.

3. The implication is that FGF-2 signalling is impaired in Hspg2-deficient tendons. But Figure 3b show a much more complex picture. Basal expression (no added FGF-2) of Mmp2 is higher in Hspg2-deficient tendons, but there is no difference between the genotypes in Mmp2 expression in response to exogenously added FGF-2. Basal expression of both Mmp3 and Mmp13 is increased in response to FGF-2 in WT animals and this response is increased further in the Hspg2-deficient tendons. This suggests that responsiveness to FGF-2 is increased in these cases, not that it is decreased.
Additional comments: 1. Line 265: The molecular weights of perlecan isolated from wild-type and Hspg2-deficient animals is referred to but not shown – these data should be included.
2. Line 272 and Figure 1d-i: Tendons from the tails of Hspg2-deficient animals lost GAG with age (Fig 1h), but exhibited increased ultimate tensile stress (Fig 1d) and tensile modulus (Fig 1f) with age compared to those from wild-type animals. Does this mean that Hspg2 deficiency increased the mechanical strength of the tendons? It would be useful to discuss the biological implications of these data in the Discussion.

Minor comments:
1. Line 180: The abbreviation ‘AF’ should be defined.
2. Line 180, 306: Please correct ug/ml.
3. Line 187: The abbreviation ‘diln’ should be written in full.
4. Line 190: The abbreviation ‘wk’ should be written in full.
5. Line 256: Should ‘micropthalia’ read ‘microphthalia’?
Line 257: Please include a reference to describing previous observation of microphthalia in Hspg2-deficient mice.
6. Line 298: Spelling of ‘localisation’ requires correction.
7. Figure legend 1: The meaning of the open boxes is not clear – see after ‘male WT’, ‘Hspg2 (D3-/D3-) mice’, and ‘MAb 3G10 to the’.
8. Figure legend 2: Please correct text to specify that ‘Perlecan C-terminal interaction with the a2b1 integrin and the a1 chain of type XI collagen’ – Greek symbols currently show as open boxes.
9. Figure legend 1: With reference to panels j-m, should the text rather read ‘normal contralateral (j, l) and surgical tenotomy (k, m)’ i. e. does the text refer to incorrect panels?
10. Figure 4: Please specify on the Figure that panel C refers to tail tendon, and D to the Achilles tendon (if this is correct).


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: ACHILLES AND TAIL TENDONS OF PERLECAN EXON 3 NULL HEPARAN SULPHATE DEFICIENT MICE DISPLAY SURPRISING IMPROVEMENT IN TENDON TENSILE PROPERTIES AND ALTERED COLLAGEN FIBRIL ORGANISATION COMPARED TO C57BL/6 WILD TYPE MICE
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: ok
Experimental design: ok
Validity of the findings: ok
Additional comments: Most of my concerns have been sufficiently addressed. The remaining minor points should be quick and easy to fix.
•	I am still missing a brief description of the study design at the beginning of the methods. This would make it easier to understand what you have done.
•	Also, you still have not added the information on the number of animals, tails or tissues to the methods description. This is important information which needs to be there. n= X should be added for every single experiment to make it transparent on how many samples the experiment was performed. Eg. “Tail tendons from 3, 6 and 12 week old mice“…. how many tail tendon fascicles from how many mice?
•	Regarding the description of the mechanical testing, information on the distance between the clamps needs to be added to the text, as this has an effect on your results (the size of the end effect affecting strain)
•	The section you now start the discussion with (line 289- 312), describing the function of certain proteins, seems utterly misplaced here and would better fit into the introduction. I would recommend to start your discussion with the section starting with  “This study uncovered some surprising findings regarding…. “
•	This section contains several errors, please delete: “Ultimate tensile strength (UTS) is a measure of a tissues maximum ability to withstand forces which attempt to elongate it while the tensile modulus (TM) is the ratio of stress (force per unit area) along a loading axis.  UTS and TM are both measures of the stiffness of a material.“


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: ACHILLES AND TAIL TENDONS OF PERLECAN EXON 3 NULL HEPARAN SULPHATE DEFICIENT MICE DISPLAY SURPRISING IMPROVEMENT IN TENDON TENSILE PROPERTIES AND ALTERED COLLAGEN FIBRIL ORGANISATION COMPARED TO C57BL/6 WILD TYPE MICE
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: Experiments are clearly described overall. Conclusions and Discussion requires more clarity - see General Comments below.
Experimental design: Clearly described.
Validity of the findings: 1. Fig 2C concludes that UTS of Achilles tendons is not significantly changed by deletion of exon 3 of Hspg2, while Fig 3A concludes that UTS of Achilles tendons is significantly increased in these mutant mice. Please explain the discrepancy.

2. Line 231 - “ No notable differences were evident between the two mouse genotypes” in mechanical strength after tenotomy - does this mean there is no significant difference between the genotypes? Fig 3B shows comparisons with contralateral and between samples, but significance between genotype is not indicated.

3. Fig 4E and F are out of focus and low dpi, and thus not of publication quality. I am not convinced that Fig 4 adds anything to the manuscript.

4. Line 257: To improve clarity, the sentence could be reworded as “Adamts4 gene expression was significantly decreased by increasing concentrations of FGF-2..”

5. Fig 8 does not add to the manuscript - this is a text book representation of collagen fibril organisation and does not summarise the results obtained.
Additional comments: 1. The manuscript can be more concisely written throughout. In particular, the Discussion requires significant truncation - a 12 page discussion is completely unwarranted, especially since the majority of the text is not relevant to the data or its interpretation. I would keep lines 390-413, 430-449, 550-571, and 611-624.

2. Despite the long Discussion, the results are not discussed or interpreted clearly and so the conclusions of this study are murky - deletion of HS chains from perlecan had no effect on tendon repair. Why does this deletion make the tendons stiffer? What is the reader supposed to conclude from the changes in mRNA levels shown?


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: ATTENTIONAL DEMANDS ASSOCIATED WITH AUGMENTED VISUAL FEEDBACK DURING QUIET STANDING
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: Overview
References are appropriate and sufficient background is provided to allow the reader to understand the rationale for the study. The article structure is appropriate. All results relevant to the hypotheses are presented.

Major revisions
1.	I believe that the data shared are not sufficiently raw’. The shared data is a database of calculated variables, with one observation per participant per trial. The raw centre of pressure time series files that were used to generate these derived variables should also be shared.

Minor revisions
2.	The paper is generally well-written, but there is some unclear language in places; specifically:
a.	Page 7, Lines 37-38: unclear what is meant by “the inability of participants to a conscious reduction of body sway”.
b.	Page 7, Line 40: I think there is a word missing between ‘Ambiguous’ and  ‘are’ – maybe ‘results’/’findings’?
c.	Page 7, Line 48: replace ‘evidenced’ with ‘have provided evidence’.
d.	Page 11, Line 176: replace ‘significance’ with ‘significantly’.
Experimental design: Overview
The authors compared reaction time and various centre of pressure based measures of balance control between two conditions: no feedback (reference) and with visual feedback of the centre of pressure. The research question is well defined. There is a statement that institutional research ethics approval was received, and that participants provided written informed consent.

Minor revisions
3.	Please clarify how many reaction time stimuli were presented within each 20 s trial. Please also comment on the possibility that sway (and consequently COP motion) could have been influenced by the movement required to press the button (independent of any cognitive/attentional influences).
4.	Please clarify the size of the items visible on the feedback monitor. On Page 8, Line 75, it seems that the diameter of the circle is 4 pixels. Note that a pixel is not a standard unit of measurement, and the width of a pixel will vary based on the resolution of the screen. Additionally, on most modern monitors, 4 pixels will be very small; is this actually the diameter of the spot rather than the diameter of the circle? A to-scale Figure depicting the visual feedback screen might be helpful.
Validity of the findings: Overview
These findings will be of interest to other researchers in this field.

Minor revisions
5.	Data were log transformed prior to analysis. Therefore, I believe the log-transformed data should be presented in the Figures rather than presenting untransformed values. Additionally, since parametric analyses were conducted, please consider presenting means and standard deviations rather than medians and interquartile ranges.
6.	In the Results section, please confirm that there were no significant interaction effects (with supporting statistics) prior to presenting main effects. Also, the manner of presentation of the main effects is somewhat confusing and seems to be repetitive. For example, I believe both sentences on Page 9, Lines 119-121 would be clearer written as “SD was lower in the VFB condition for both ML (F(1,114)=68.24, p<0.0001) and AP planes (F(1,114)=62.47, p<0.0001); there was no significant main effect of trial”.
7.	Discussion around the sample entropy findings assumes that sample entropy provides information about attentional investment in balance control. While the sample entropy findings are consistent with those of Donker and Lakhani & Mansfield, this finding is somewhat surprising; i.e., one would assume increased attention devoted to balance control when feedback is provided. Perhaps the authors could also speculate on alternative interpretations of sample entropy of COP that would explain previous dual-tasking studies, the feedback studies, and their own findings.
8.	Please define MPF in the caption for Figure 2.
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: ATTENTIONAL DEMANDS ASSOCIATED WITH AUGMENTED VISUAL FEEDBACK DURING QUIET STANDING
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: The article has been written in clear professional English, although there are some minor points that may improve the clarity of your work.
1-	At lines 35 and 41, you should explain briefly about some of those positive effects, using the references that you have mentioned.
2-	At lines 37 and 38, you have referred to the previous works that have been done by specific authors. You should only put the date in the parenthesis, like so: “Results of Danna-Dos-Santos et al., (2008) indeed demonstrated …”, or “... whereas in Boudrahem & Rougier (2009)…”.
3-	At the beginning of line 62, it seems that a verb has been missed.
4-	In addition, this will make it clearer if you add SD (standard deviation) in parenthesis after the mean age: “(mean age (SD): 22.9 (1.1) years)”.
5-	 It seems that some references have been missed, at lines 157, 164, and 169.
Experimental design: 1-	At lines 36-51 the knowledge gap or shortcoming(s) of previous works have not been clearly pointed out. I suggest that you support the knowledge gap and importance of your work by adding more details about the previous similar studies, this way you will make the importance of your work stand out even more.
2-	In the method part of your study, you should add more details about the characteristics of your sample in terms of their sex/gender, height, weight, or their BMI to give your readers a clearer picture of the population of your study.
3-	At lines 85 to 102, I suggest that you add a brief description of your signal preparation methods (e.g., the filters that you have used, the method of extracting the frequency content of your COP signals, and the frequency range that you have measured MPF in that range).
4-	That would be very helpful, if you could elaborate more on all of the dependent variables, especially about the frequency and entropy measures. For example, you did mention that the MPF reveals postural strategy, but what is exactly the MPF? Or, what is COP-SD?
5-	At lines 104 to 110, it is not clearly mentioned that why you have chosen a mixed effect model to analyze your dependent variables. Obviously, visual feedback has two distinct levels (with, and without VFB). In terms of the trial as your other fixed factor, it is not clear that why you have considered it as a categorical variable with different levels. So, I suggest that you elaborate more on that to make it clearer.
Validity of the findings: No comment
Additional comments: The article is an interesting work on the contribution of visual information into the ability of controlling posture, from both linear and non-linear perspectives.
The most important issue is to add more details to the introduction and methods sections of your paper to clarify the gaps, importance of your study, and the methods and measures of your work.


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: DIRECT AND LEGACY EFFECTS OF PLANT-TRAITS CONTROL LITTER DECOMPOSITION IN A DECIDUOUS OAK FOREST IN MEXICO
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: 1) The English language should be improved to ensure that an international audience can clearly understand the text. Some sentences are not well structured and are difficult to comprehend.

2) In general, the introduction should highlight more the importance of this research to litter decomposition studies and ecosystem function in a micro and/or macro scale. It is not clear why your hypotheses are important to test the effects of decomposition rates in the temperate oak forest.
I suggest you to provide more details about what are the direct and legacy effects that control the decomposition process in this specific site. Also, give more examples from recent literature in the similar forest.
Specific comments:
Line 50: Fresick et al 2012 is not in the literature cited.
Lines 58 – 59: Explain the meaning of the “legacy” effect.
Lines 59 – 62: Improve this sentence with more recent literature, and give more details about the site and what these studies discovered. For example, the climate (i.e. temperature and/or precipitation) is an important factor in the regulation of litter decomposition for many ecosystems.
Lines 81 – 83: I cannot understand the sentence.
Lines 92 – 95: You should improve this sentence; I cannot understand why your study system is interesting.
Line 194: Riley & Murphy 1962 is not in the literature cited.
Line 280: StatSoft, USA is not in the literature cited.
Line 442: Baldrian et al 2012 is not in the literature cited.
Line 515: Baldrian et al 2014 is not cited in the text.

3) The structure of the article follows the author instruction, except the abstract. Please, correct your abstract as suggested in the author instruction: “Headings in structured abstracts should be bold and followed by a period. Each heading should begin a new paragraph. For example:
Background. The background section text goes here. Next line for new section.
Methods. The methods section text goes here.
Results. The results section text goes here.
Discussion. The discussion section text goes here.”

The figures and tables agree with the results.
Please, see some suggestions below:
Figure 1 A – Add 270 days in the legend of the figure.
Figure 2 – Which site was the litter residues decomposing? Close the parentheses in the last dotted line.
Figure 3 – Which site was the litter residues decomposing?
Figure 4 – Explain in the caption of the figure the meaning of Qc, Qd and Qx.
Figures 5 and 6 – Did litter decompose after 30 or 270 days of decomposition? Please, increase the resolution of the words in the axes x and y, and explain the information on axis y in the legend of the figure. One suggestion: you can use just the abbreviation in the axis x and explain them in the legend.
Table 2 – Please, add the meaning of the abbreviations in the first column and the 30 days in the legend, you wrote just 270 days.
Where is the statistical analysis of this result?
Table 3 – Please, add the meaning of the abbreviations in the first column and the second line (QcL, QxL….F(p)). Add in the legend the type of statistic test you did.
Explain in the statistic section why you did not perform this analysis in 270 days of decomposition.
Table 4 – Explain in the legend what type of statistic test you did and the different letters inside the table.
Table 5 – Why are some parameters in bold inside the table? Explain that in the legend.
Explain in the statistic section why you chose to perform this analysis in 30 days of decomposition and not in 270 days of decomposition.

I thank you for you providing the raw data, however why did you not use the results of 60 and 120 days after field exposure? You calculated the Home Field Advantage Index (HFAI) proposed by Ayres et al. (2009), this is an important result of your data because it is part of your objectives and hypotheses. It does not matter if the results are positive or negative for this index, you should explain how you calculated it and highlight the importance of this results to your study site and to the future research about this ecological theory.

4) The hypotheses B (substrate matrix interaction, SMI) and C (functional breadth hypothesis, FB) are consistent with your results, but it looks like you do not give the same importance to your first hypothesis (HFA). Consider my comments above about HFAI, and explain it in your methods (e.g. show how you calculated the HFA index based on Ayres et al. (2009) and then show the results and discussion about this parameter).
Experimental design: 1) The research is consistent within the Aims and Scope of the journal.

2) You were interested to know if the litter decomposition is regulated by the direct effect (litter quality) and the legacy effect (specialization of the microbial community). Why did you not give the same importance to the home field advantage? As I mentioned above, it is not clear in your text what the relevance of your research and the knowledge gap that you want to address are. What is the advantage to test the “home field advantage theory” in your study? Finally, I suggest you to develop more arguments in your introduction based on your objectives and highlight the importance of your findings to the ecological process.

3) Your methods about chemical and nutrients parameters were described with sufficient detail and information to replicate the experiment. One suggestion is in the section 2.4 “Laboratory analysis”: add where the analyzes were conducted. However, you should provide more details about your study area. For example, the characteristics of the species in this area, the characterization of the climate (precipitation and temperature) and the soil type are important for decomposition studies, even you cited in the lines 108 and 109 that the description are in your two previous studies (Chavez-Vergara et al. 2014; Chávez-Vergara et al., 2015). Add the climate conditions of the year of your field experiment and the historical mean of annual precipitation and temperature.
You need to provide an explanation about how you performed the chemical and nutrients analyses from Quercus mixtures treatment. Did you separate the two species for these analyses? Or did you do together? What is the explanation to perform a mixed treatment?
Lastly, the experimental design is confusing, you need to improve the section 2.3 “Litterbags experiment”. See the specific comments bellow:

Line 105 – 106: Explain “oak forest fragment with low disturbance”. How big is this fragment? Are there some boarder effects in this fragment or some kind of anthropogenic pressure/activities near this area?
What do you mean by “low disturbance”? Does this area suffer some kind of management? If so, for how long? How many years ago?
Line 128 – Explain what five-select trees are. Are all five the same species and have similar structure like diameter breast height (DBH)?
Lines 126 – 132: Explain better this design. It is confusing to me about how many litterbags you harvested in 30 and 270 days after the bags were placed. How many replicates do you have for each collection?
Line 143: The exponential decay single parameter model was originally proposed by OLSEN, J. S. 1963. Energy storage and the balance of producers and decomposers in ecological systems. Ecology, 44: 322–331.
Validity of the findings: 1) Statistical comments:
Provide an explanation about why you chose two different statistical analyses (lines 260 – 263), and complete the statistic section with the comments I mentioned above for tables 3 and 5 in this review.

Lines 273 – 275: Explain why you analyzed the relationship between the chemical quality of the litter and microbial metabolism variables in the remnant mass at 30 days of decomposition but not at 270 days. The labile compounds are degraded at the beginning of the decomposition, while the most recalcitrant are left to the end, so a change in the chemical composition is expected during the decomposition time (as shown in Figures 2, 3 and 4). This change could be mainly due to the specialized microbial communities that degrade the recalcitrant compounds.

Results Comments:
In the result section, do not use cited literature; use them in your discussion. Where is the result that indicates HFA?

Lines 373 and 375: Correction – NH4+ and NO3-

Discussion Comments:
All the results and discussion should answer the three hypotheses. Having that in mind, the discussion should be improved with more recent study cases found in the literature. The direct and legacy effects on decomposition of Quercus spp. should explain the research findings. For example, what results support this conclusion? You did not discuss about HFA. Since it is one of your hypothesis, you should discuss and explain it.

Lines 412 – 415: Give more details about what results show the confirmed hypotheses.
Lines 419 – 428: You will need to develop better this paragraph, I was not able to understand. The lines 419 to 423 seem to contradict the sentence bellow in lines 423 to 428. In the first sentence, “Q. deserticola showed a greater mass loss when being decomposed under individuals of this same species…than in the other two sites”, but later in the last sentence (lines 426 and 427) – “Q. deserticola (QdL) loses more mass independently of the site where it decomposes” and finally you conclude: “but it is in the sites of Q. castanea (QcS) and in the species mixture (QxS) where more mass is lost regardless of its origin.”
What species had benefits from the home field advantage, substrate-matrix interaction (SMI) and the functional breadth hypothesis? And where did the species Q. deserticola lose more mass?
Lines 437 – 439: This sentence is the opposite of the sentence above in lines 419 to 422 and lines 426 and 427.
Line 474: What site and what species?

2) This conclusion will be in accordance with your findings if you improve the discussion as I mentioned above and explain what happened with your first hypothesis about HFA.
Finally, in lines 485 and 486: why is this knowledge about the mechanisms that regulate the decomposition important in oak deciduous forests?
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: DIRECT AND LEGACY EFFECTS OF PLANT-TRAITS CONTROL LITTER DECOMPOSITION IN A DECIDUOUS OAK FOREST IN MEXICO
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: The paper explores a very interesting question, and the dataset included is impressive, using methods that have been relatively rarely used in the field of litter decomposition. This is very promising, and no additional data is needed, but the paper need a lot of rewriting before being suitable for publication.
Major comments:
1 - As it stands the links between the three tested hypotheses and the data is not explicitly presented, which makes the understanding really difficult. In the introduction, you should explicitly explain, for each hypothesis, what is expected with your dataset.
For example, something like: "If the HMI hypothesis is true, then we expect that decomposition of litter X decomposed under the cover of Y should be higher that  litter X decomposed under the cover of Y". At the same time, the figures should be designed to directly show if the expectations presented in the introduction are validated.
2 - The statistics are not clear to me (see more detailed comment below) , and in particular it is unclear what you consider as your response variables and what you consider as your explanatory variables. This is particularly true for nutrients, which could be considered a response variable (nutrient loss, therefore statistically treated in the same way as mass loss) or an explanatory variables.
3 - Some of you variables (13CMNR and DSC) are perfectly relevant, but not classical in the field (in particular for DSC), and should be presented with more detail, not technically, but to explain qualitatively what kind of information it provides.
4 - I did not read all of them, but I had a look at many of the cited references, and, for some of them, the relevance seems doubtful. Please see my detailed comment below, and check content for each reference.

Detailed comments:
L 43 : I had a look at this publication Fanin et al. 2013), and found no figure explicitly linking soluble compounds to decomposition.
L 45: Are you sure that youdid not wnt to cite Talbot 2012 rather than Talbot 2014?
L 45: you directly go into a high degree of details here, with these fine data on the structure of lignin. I would begin with something more general here. See for example the recent papers by Handa 2014 Nature or Garcia Palacios 2015 Funct. Ecol.
L 41 – 48: Although you do not test it here, you should also mention the strong impact of litter physical traits (such as water holding capacity) for decomposition –see for Example Makkonen 2012 Ecol. Let.).
l 46: again, this paper explores the effect of plant-neighbor interactions on afterlife, but it is not at all the "historical paper" on this concept. See for example papers like Grime 1996.
 L59: I dont understand to what extent these recent studies apparently contradict (as suggested by the term "however") the legacy effect presented in the previous sentence. At the reverse, they rather appear quite consistent the one with the other. If I am wrong, I suggest to explain why with some more details
L 82: There is a typo here, you should write “In previous studies…”
L 100: the previous sections explaining the scientific issue tackled here are clear. However, you suddenly add the mixture of litter as a new effect you want to test. This new effect hasn't been presented at all in the introduction. You should justify why you need this treatment.
L 114: It is quite unclear on how many samples you did all you analyses. You had 15 trees producing the litter. Did you characterize each of them? Did you pool them for the analyses?
L 119: It is not perfectly clear to me how you dried the litter used for the litterbag experiment?
L 122: it is interesting to have two sample dates (30 and 270 days), but you should explain why. Why did you aim at capturing short vs. longer term decomposition? This is a good idea, but needs to be justified.
L 123: Another important point that requires justification is the use of 1mm mesh size litterbag. This choice is relevant, but should be justified. By doing this, you exclude macrofauna, but not mesofauna. A brief paragraph on the actors of decomposition should be added in the introduction, leading to a justification of the choice of this mesh size.
L 129: why changing terminology here? It is not a big problem, but I don’t see the point.
L 138: Detail: the use of “remaining” seems me more common than “remnant” in this context…
L 143: Was k calculated from litter mass at t = initial, 30 days and 270 days, or with at initial and 270 days? In the latter case, with only two points, is it useful or informative to use k values? I think it is perfectly relevant use two points, but in this case, shouldn’t you rather calculate mass loss, instead of k?

L 146: although increasingly classical, I suggest to briefly introducing the main goal and objectives of 13C NMR. What does it say about litter quality? Just one sentence at the beginning of the paragraph would be helpful for a naive reader.
L 170: my previous comment is still relevant, even in a stronger way, for this paragraph on DSC. For example, this method is not presented in the classical book “Graça et al. Methods to study litter decomposition”. It does not mean at all that it is not relevant, but the use of this technic should be explained. You could add, here or in the introduction, a few lines on the “philosophy” of the technics, to what extent it might help characterizing litter quality. As it is now presented, you need to already know this not-so-classical method to really understand why you used it (for example, instead of characterizing carbohydrates, phenols, lignin, etc through classical .
Similarly, in figure 3, you should explain in the caption what is the meaning of the presented variables (Q'; Q1, etc...).
L 260:in line with my previous comment: how many repetition did you have, for example, for the characterization of the initial nutrients. Five (one for each tree)?
L 266: I don’t understand why the data on nutrients are present both line 262 and line 266. More generally, I don’t understand why data on remaining mass, nutrient concentration and dissolved nutrients are analysed in a different way than data on enzymatic activities or example. All these factors seem to have been analysed at t = 30 days and t = 270 days. In other terms, why using RMANOVA for some variables and ANOVA for others? Why including site as factor for some variables and not for others?
Moreover, these ANOVA tables are not presented  in the current version. This would help in particular to understand the number of replicates.
L 273: Here, you are looking for the relationships between quality traits and a process (decomposition), which is good. However, here again, this is not clear to me, for several reasons:
1)	Why did you  use remaining mass at t = 30 days as a response variable, and not at t =270d?
2)	Why didn’t you include all initial quality traits as explanatory variables, including variables from the 13C MNR and DSC?
I think that this part should be strongly modified or explained, but as it stands, it is really confusing. You should clearly state which your response variables are, and which your explanatory variables are.

L 284: you refer to decomposition rate in the text (which means “k”), whereas figure 1 shows remaining mass. Please clarify. If you want to present data at t = 30 and data at t = 270 separately, I suggest, again, to use mass loss as variable.

L 412 and next: the main problem of the discussion is that you validate or not some hypotheses, but since you did not explain clearly in the introduction what exactly is expected in terms of restults to validate each of you 3 hypotheses, it is very hard to understand why you state, for example, that your SMI hypothesis is validated.
l 419: wouldn't it be easier to "when decomposed under its own canopy" instead of "when beeing decomposed nder individuals of the same species"?

L 440 - l 443: you should explicitely link it with one of your 3 hypotheses.
Experimental design: As stated above, the research question is meaningful and the design seems suitable to understand the questions raised. However, the link between the question and the data is not clear enough, and should be largely improved.

The methods are described with enough technical details but information on replicate number used for each analysis is unclear.

Note that the raw data provided as supplementary material is absolutely not formatted in a suitable way. This is a working version.
Validity of the findings: Again, the results seem valid, and probably answer the question, but results should be explicitly connected to the hypotheses.
See my comments above on the raw data presentation and on statistics.
Additional comments: No additional 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: DIRECT AND LEGACY EFFECTS OF PLANT-TRAITS CONTROL LITTER DECOMPOSITION IN A DECIDUOUS OAK FOREST IN MEXICO
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: The authors considered all reviewer’s suggestion.
English was improved and the introduction highlights the importance of this research with clear hypothesis and objectives.
There is no more confusion about tables and figures legends.

Please check again if the in-text citations match the “Literature cited” section.

Specific corrections based on PDF file attached.
Line 47: The correct year is: Makkonen et al., 2012. Please correct it in the “literature cited” section as well.
Line 53 and 54: Grime and Anderson, 1986 and Grime et al. 1996 are not referenced in the “literature cited” section.
Line 54: The correct name is: Baas et al., 1989.
Line 166: The correct name is: Olson, 1963. Please correct it in the “literature cited” section as well.
Line 201: The correct year is: Angehrn-Bettinazzi et al.,1988.
Line 229: The correct citation is: Murphy & Riley, 1962.
Line 427: Correction: NH4+ and NO3-

See specific comments bellow about the “Literature cited” section:
Line 588 and 598: Baldrian and Lopez-Mondejar 2014 is not cited in text, and it is repeated in the “literature cited” section.
Line 654: The correct name is: García-Palacios.
Line 718: Talbot et al., 2014 is not cited in text.
Experimental design: The experimental design was performed and better explained, according to reviewer’s suggestions.
Validity of the findings: The results and discussion were improved and well connected to the hypotheses.
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: BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF RESEARCH ON THE ROLE OF INTESTINAL MICROBIOTA IN OBESITY
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: Clear and unambiguous, professional English used throughout
Literature references, sufficient field background/context provided
Professional article structure, figs, tables. Raw data shared.

The paper generates should include following kinds of data (Especially fort the Results section
*Did you investigate correlations were between the number of publications
about  “gut microbiata” and population number (PN), gross domestic
product (GDP), gross domestic product per capita (purchasing
power parity, PPP), gross domestic product per hour worked
(GDP2), human development index (HDI), Internet users
(IU), percentage of individuals using the Internet (PIUI; according
to total population of a country), EF English
Proficiency Index (EF EPI), and productivity (P) development
indicators of the countries.This will make your work more unique
*Citations analysis of active organizations in
publishing articles can be done
Experimental design: Original primary research within Aims and Scope of the journal.
Research question well defined, relevant & meaningful. It is stated how research fills an identified knowledge gap.

Rigorous investigation performed to a high technical & ethical standard.

In methods section:
* The keywords regarding obesity were: obesity, bariatrics, corpulence, fatness, and overweight. bariatrics is a definition of obesity treatment not obesity.I think that you should be removed from the keywords.
* why you should use the SCOPUS database more clearly. We know that, WoS database is the most reliable service for publications and citations.
Validity of the findings: *The discussion was only made up of the introduction paragraphs and the repetition of the results.Present results should be evaluated and discussion should be rewritten.
The introduction paragraphs should be shortened.
Additional comments: A very up-to-date and valuable topic was discussed in the study. But the data must be expanded a bit and the discussion should be rewritten in the light of this data.
You can see the article in below for an example:
Ozsoy Z, Demir E. The Evolution of Bariatric Surgery Publications and Global Productivity: A Bibliometric Analysis. Obes Surg. 2017 Oct 31. doi: 10.1007/s11695-017-2982-1. [Epub ahead of print]


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: BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF RESEARCH ON THE ROLE OF INTESTINAL MICROBIOTA IN OBESITY
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: INTRO
This study makes a bibliometric analysis on the topic of intestinal microbiota in obesity. Authors find that this field of research is rapidly growing, that English is the most common language, USA the most prolific country, most prolific journals and authors are identified.

BASIC REPORTING
The paper is well written and the context of the study is well described in the introduction paragraph.

Structure of the study is consistent with journal standards.

Figures are high quality. In our opinion, labels should be reconsidered. Indeed, labels should rather introduce the figure than make a comment of it or describe the methods. For instance, in figure 2, the sentence “Gordon J. I. ranked the first with the citations of 21177”, could better appear in the text and not in the label; in figure 3, the text “by using ArcMap 10.1 software” should appear rather in the methods section. And so on.
Palette colors of figure 3 should be reconsidered. The color nuances should represent the degree of the measure, if you radically change color for each category, the message is much less clear. Try to consider moving from color 1 to color 2 with different nuances corresponding to different categories.

Raw data are supplied.
Experimental design: EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
The topic is original and relevant for the journal.

Methods are clear with sufficient detail to replicate.

We think that authors should better explain bibliometric indicators used in the paper. In fact, this is not a bibliometric journal, and the auditory may not be familiar with this field. We think that it would be of great help to better explain Price’s and Lotka’s law, etc.

We think that this bibliometric analysis would benefit from a better contextualization. This means that data should be reframed in a larger context, for instance: the growth of scientific publications should be compared to the general scientific production (or the scientific production on obesity, or whatever could be relevant as a frame).
Same thing for the number of papers per country. In whatever fields, USA would be probably first for the absolute number of publications, followed by a bunch of the same countries close to each other. So this is of little interest. We think that data should be weighted to better reflect the real interest of a national scientific community on a topic. Data could be weighted on the national population or, in this case, on obesity prevalence (or else).

If data 2017 are not complete, they should be omitted.

Please note that rounding at the second decimal does not add any capital information and make the text heavier to read.

Application of the H-index to articles and not to a researcher is unusual. This indicator was not conceived to describe top-rated papers. Please reconsider the paragraph.

The distribution of citation per paper is not gaussian (but rather hyperbolic), so reporting the mean citations per paper has little interest and, on the contrary, can be misleading, as that could suggest that each paper has 37 citations, which is false. Please reconsider the paragraph.

We think that in bibliometric analysis a compromise should be found between comprehensiveness and “noise”. Authors include papers from any language, any type of publication (even conference papers, notes, letters etc…), any journal in any field. They want to be comprehensive. The counterpart is that they retrieve a great number of papers of a questionable interest. For instance, they included papers in other language than English (which will probably have only a local public), conference papers that are available on Scopus (which is not freely accessible) but not on Pubmed (which is freely accessible), and so on. We think that these criteria add a “background noise” to the study.
Validity of the findings: VALIDITY OF THE FINDINGS
This is the first bibliometric study on intestinal microbiota in obesity, by consequence results are original.
Authors apply clear and well-known bibliometric indicators to data.
We think that criteria of inclusion (as discussed above) are too large, so that could possibly
make the results less reliable.
Conclusion are well stated.
Additional comments: GENERAL COMMENTS
This study is well written. Graphics is high quality. Topic is interesting. No major flaw is present. Bibliometric indicators could be better explained. Selection of articles is questionable (“background noise”). Analysis could go deeper.


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: BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF RESEARCH ON THE ROLE OF INTESTINAL MICROBIOTA IN OBESITY
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: BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF RESEARCH ON THE ROLE OF INTESTINAL MICROBIOTA IN OBESITY
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: This is a second reviewing after corrections.
Authors considered most but not all reviewers’ remarks. The overall quality of the manuscript has increased.
The paper is well written and the context of the study is well described in the introduction paragraph.
Structure of the study is consistent with journal standards.
Authors have modified figures as suggested.
Raw data are supplied.
Experimental design: Authors calculate the growth trend of accumulated documents. The trend of publication growth has been theorized by Price theory and is a weel-established bibliometric indicator.  Nevertheless the exponential growth should not be calculated on the accumulated number of documents, but on the absolute number of documents per year. The reported equation on accumulated documents has no interest and is not a commun bibliometric indicator. Please check this for instance in García-García P, Eur J Obstet Gynecol Reprod Biol. 2005

Concerning the number of publications per country, authors considered reviewers remarks. Nevertheless they do not report (event in supplemental data) the adjusted country ranking (adjusted for GDP or/and inhabitants number or else). Please check Daby Y, Obes Surg 2016
Validity of the findings: This is the first bibliometric study on intestinal microbiota in obesity, by consequence results are original.
Authors apply clear and well-known bibliometric indicators to data.
Conclusions are well stated.
Additional comments: Authors improved the manuscript quality after initial reviewing.


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: BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF RESEARCH ON THE ROLE OF INTESTINAL MICROBIOTA IN OBESITY
Review round: 3
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: Third round of reviewing. Manuscript has improved
Experimental design: Corrections were done according to reviewers' remarks.
Validity of the findings: Consistent
Additional comments: Final version is suitable for publication .


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

Input:
Title: THE IMPACT OF THE WENCHUAN EARTHQUAKE ON EARLY PUBERTY: A NATURAL EXPERIMENT
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: The Introduction to this paper is succinct and nicely sets the stage for the work presented. But it is surprising that in lines 61  and elsewhere, psychosocial acceleration theory is referred to, but there is no direct reference to it, so the following MUST be cited in several places:
Belsky, J., Steinberg, L., & Draper, P. (1991).  Childhood Experience, Interpersonal Development and Reproductive Strategy:  An Evolutionary Theory of Socialization.  Child Development, 62, 647-670.
When reference is made to the possibility that war is another harsh environment that might affect pubertal timing on line 70, the following reference should also be cited, as this is where that hypothesis is first advanced, building on the preceding citation:
Belsky, J. (2008). War, Trauma and Children’s Development: Observations from a Modern Evolutionary Perspective. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 32, 260-271.
One final comment, especially given the results: It is never made clear that Belsky et al. (1991) hypothesized that it was the first 5-7 years of life that would prove especially influential in shaping reproductive strategy and thus timing of puberty. That developmental viewpoint should be highlighted in the Introduction and discussed in the discussion. I also think that  in the Introduction and/or discussion, it should be made clear what the evolutionary foundations of the adversity-puberty hypothesis was: That in the face of risk of early death or compromised development, accelerated somatic development was adaptive because it increased the chances of reproducing before dying.
Experimental design: The design of this epidemiological work is sound, but I was surprised to see the effort to measure first ejaculation in boys, as I have never seen this measured before. THe authors appropriately note that such self-reported data have been criticized, but if they are also referring when they say this to timing of first period/menarche, I would encourage revision of the wording, as there is plenty of good evidence that age of menarche is quite accurately recalled--even decades later. The same is by no means true of first ejaculation.
Validity of the findings: Findings prove both original and interesting.
Additional comments: This paper indisputably extends the literature and makes, with noted revisions, a solid contribution to the literature.


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

Input:
Title: THE IMPACT OF THE WENCHUAN EARTHQUAKE ON EARLY PUBERTY: A NATURAL EXPERIMENT
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: Clear and unambiguous. Only couple of observations regarding comprehension of what the authors try to say.

1. Line 106-107 and Line 163-165 (last one regarding analysis in boys).
Experimental design: Hypothesis is ambiguos. It is talking about prediction of early puberty, but in fact is giving information about RR. Then, should be stated in terms of "increased RR".

Methodology is limited. No information about how the data was collected. It indicated that was a survey. But, no information about the contend of that survey; or about when, how, who took the survey. Was only regarding age of puberty?. Seems to be very unlikely.

Also, there is not analysis of confounder factors. What about information of early puberty in their parents?. What about BMI?. Despite authors said that socioeconomical status would be not a big confounder, I would like to insist about this possibility. Many other confounders can be listed. Then, article will improve including multivariable analysis.
Validity of the findings: Results are novel. Accordingly, information is valuable. But it needs more analysis.

Statistics are fine. Please check again Table 4. Statistics in children < 7 years seems to be wrong.

It is required to include sample size for Table 4.

Discussion is fine. It may be improved including analysis of potential confounders.
Additional comments: It is a nice work. But, seems to be preliminary analysis. Since, crude RR is given, but it should be analysis in terms also of confounder factors; therefore adjusted RR is more precise.

As written, It should be OK if authors decide to published as short communication.


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: PERIOPERATIVE MANAGEMENT OF ANGIOTENSIN-CONVERTING ENZYME INHIBITORS AND/OR ANGIOTENSIN RECEPTOR BLOCKERS: A SURVEY OF PERIOPERATIVE MEDICINE PRACTITIONERS
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: clear and umabigous, professional English used throughout.
Experimental design: design of the survey is very good.
Validity of the findings: restricted to limited area (UK only) and based on relatively small number of responders (however acknowledged in limitation section) - and so far the largest available
Additional comments: Review: „Perioperative management of angiotensin-converting
enzyme inhibitors and/or angiotensin receptor blockers: A survey of specialists in perioperative medicine”

Interesting survey study in an important topic for the perioperative medicine.
I have some comments that I would like the authors to respond:

1.	Several metaanalyses have been performed in the withholding/continuing ACEI/ARB. Many of them cited by the authors. There is one, most recent in Aensthesia Analg 2018 by Hollmann et. al, that the authors may consider to add to their thorough background introduction – as it is the most recent.
2.	Abstract and Conclusions – it is maybe too much to say that ‘these data reinforce recent meta-analyses that support..... need for a mechanistic blinded randomized controlled trial’. I would be cautious getting these conclusions based on such a small sample sized survey limited to one geographical region (acknowledged by the authors in the limitation section).
3.	Results
-	It would be interesting to see the exact numbers of participants from each group (i.e POQI conference, PIs of ISOS, and open invitation) who responded to the invitation to fill the survey
-	As the results for ACEI and ARB are almost identical, the authors may consider to show them together, and be consistent in it throughout their paper (example fig 1 with division whereas figure 2 without)
-	Probably there are too many figures in this study. Some of them do not make much sense to the Reviewer. I am not sure it is of an importance to show the comparison of restarting ACEi/ARB between the groups of responders that stop vs do not stop them before surgery. Those that do not stop them – do not have to restart them? Perhaps enough to show when those who stop them restart them after the surgery (no need for statistical comparison)


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: PERIOPERATIVE MANAGEMENT OF ANGIOTENSIN-CONVERTING ENZYME INHIBITORS AND/OR ANGIOTENSIN RECEPTOR BLOCKERS: A SURVEY OF PERIOPERATIVE MEDICINE PRACTITIONERS
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: 1. References: good reference for differences in actions of ACE-I and ARBs (see text below)
2. Flow diagram of participants would be desirable.
3. Please split figures 1a and 1b into figures 1 and 2 (see reasons in text below)
4. A PICO question is needed to frame the survey question (see text below)
Experimental design: 1. Within the scope of the journal
2. The PICO for the survey should be added (in text below)
3. The internal consistency planned analyses should be added to statistical methods (in text below):
Validity of the findings: 1. I am not convinced that the Q6-11 adequately determine consistency with Q1-5 (please see text below).
2. Q6-11 do show that the decision to proceed/ manage ACE-I/ARBs is complicated and not easily generalisable to simple clinical guidelines.
Additional comments: Dear Colleagues

Thank you for the opportunity to review the paper; ‘Perioperative management of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors and/or angiotensin receptor blockers: A survey of specialists in perioperative medicine’. This is an electronic survey of the view of physicians with an interest in perioperative medicine, and their management of ACE-I and ARBs in the perioperative period.

The objective of this paper is to establish the current practice of perioperative medicine physicians and then to determine if the actions in a clinical scenario are consistent with declared practice. The findings of this study suggest that the proposed standard clinical practice, and the actual practice of the perioperative physicians shows little correlation i.e. little internal consistency.

A major limitation of the paper however, is that the survey respondent options available to determine i) normal practice, and ii) the scenarios to determine internal consistency, were not the same. Therefore, in normal practice questions (Q1-5), the questions implied that the patient was going for surgery (no option for postponing), but in the clinical scenarios the option to postpone surgery was allowed. It appears therefore that the difference between the two, may be more pronounced (significant) because of the structure of the possible responses allowed i.e. it would have been less different if ‘postponing’ surgery had been an acceptable response in Q1-5.

I do however, believe that this survey illustrates that the clinical decision whether to withhold, or administer ACE-I/ARBs is very dependent on the clinical scenario that the physician faces, as opposed to a standard perioperative regimen.

Specific comments:
1.	Title: I don’t believe one can state; ‘specialists in perioperative medicine’, as the majority of respondents are not accredited ‘specialists in perioperative medicine’, and not all respondents were ‘specialists/ consultants’. Maybe; ‘perioperative medicine practitioners’
2.	Abstract:
a.	Line 33: Please put the denominator for the responses.
3.	Introduction:
a.	Line 50: Editorial manager has given the author name as ‘Group’.
b.	Line 52: You need to address the type of surgery; i.e. non-cardiac, or all surgeries.
c.	Line 72: Please add a PICO (population, intervention, comparison, outcome) question for the survey. It would clarify for the reader the objective of the survey, and clarify the surgical focus of the survey. (I see that this is clarified in the survey as major noncardiac surgery; https://www.rcoa.ac.uk/rcoa-presidents-news-june-2017.)
4.	Methods:
a.	Line 90: Please add, that it included three questions about the respondents.
b.	Line 109: What is the membership of the Royal College of Anaesthetists? Please state the number of members that the open invitation went to.
c.	Statistical methods, Line 117 onwards: Please define what were the pre-planned internal consistency analyses were in the study.
5.	Results:
a.	Line 125: The open invitation to the RCA is not adequately addressed. I realise it makes it difficult to determine the real denominator, as there is overlap between the 3 groups, and one has no idea of the number of RCA members actually read the newsletter. But we do need a better idea of where the 194 responses came from. A flow diagram with all three groups canvassed would be desirable.
b.	Line 129 and 136: I would recommend putting the question number in brackets in the title, as you have done in line 143.
c.	Line 143: My main concern with these questions as tests of internal consistency is that;
i.	They now include a description of a patient with a low AT in a patient for elective surgery i.e. heart failure in addition hypertension. The scenarios in Q1-5 were essential focussed on blood pressure, and not heart failure.
ii.	Now, the respondent can also postpone the surgery. In Q1-5, the respondent could not.
iii.	As a result, I am not convinced that these responses actually determine internal consistency with Q1-5. Rather I believe that they demonstrate that clinical practice is far more complicated when determining practice for an individual patient, than general principles of how to manage a drug in the perioperative period (i.e. a simple practice guideline).
d.	Line 150: I would contest that untreated heart failure (low AT) was possibly also a strong driver to postponing surgery, than untreated hypertension alone.
e.	Line 165: This suggests that ‘perioperative physicians’ are uncomfortable at initiating these drugs. This is an interesting finding.
6.	Discussion:
a.	Line 176: I would suggest leading into this discussion, that there is widespread uncertainty regarding the management of ACE-I and ARBs, and that this may be partly due to the different indications for the therapies.
b.	Line 188: Again, I believe this is also partly due to the different indications for the therapies.
c.	Line 191: A good reference for this sentence would be good.
7.	Figures
a.	I would suggest splitting figure 1a and 1b into figures 1 and 2, as figure 1b does not represent the entirely identical cohort i.e. there are no patients who have continued their therapy in figure 1b.
8.	Supplementary files
a.	For the questionnaire, I would suggest adding the preamble, that one can see if you click on the survey monkey link.

Thank you for the opportunity to review this study.

Regards
Bruce Biccard


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: PERIOPERATIVE MANAGEMENT OF ANGIOTENSIN-CONVERTING ENZYME INHIBITORS AND/OR ANGIOTENSIN RECEPTOR BLOCKERS: A SURVEY OF PERIOPERATIVE MEDICINE PRACTITIONERS
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: clear
Experimental design: original research suitable for the journal
Validity of the findings: conclusions well stated, rather new information.
Additional comments: the authors have addressed all my 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: PERIOPERATIVE MANAGEMENT OF ANGIOTENSIN-CONVERTING ENZYME INHIBITORS AND/OR ANGIOTENSIN RECEPTOR BLOCKERS: A SURVEY OF PERIOPERATIVE MEDICINE PRACTITIONERS
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: Acceptable
Experimental design: Acceptable
Validity of the findings: Acceptable
Additional comments: Dear Colleagues

Thank you for the opportunity to review a revision of the paper; ‘Perioperative management of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors and/or angiotensin receptor blockers: A survey of specialists in perioperative medicine’. This is an electronic survey of the view of physicians with an interest in perioperative medicine, and their management of ACE-I and ARBs in the perioperative period.

The objective of this paper is to establish the current practice of perioperative medicine physicians and then to determine if the actions in a clinical scenario are consistent with declared practice. The findings of this study suggest that the proposed standard clinical practice, and the actual practice of the perioperative physicians shows little correlation i.e. little internal consistency.

I believe that the authors have largely addressed my concerns raised in the original submission. I have some very minor comments on this revision.

Minor comments:
1.	Introduction:
a.	Line 45: Editorial manager still gives the author name as ‘Group’.
2.	Results:
a.	Line 120: Please change ‘Supplementary data’ to ‘Supplementary Figure 1’
b.	Management of preoperative hypertension, on the day of surgery (questions 6, 7, 8): As you transpose the results of questions 6 (line 145) and 7 (line 143) in the reporting of the odds ratios (i.e. question 7 is presented before question 6), I would suggest highlighting which question each odds ratio refers to.
3.	Figures
a.	I am not sure what the titles are for the figures, as they merely reproduce the text from the results. A simple title/ legend for each figure is needed.
4.	Supplementary files
a.	When referring to ‘supplementary data’ in the manuscript, it would be preferable if you were specific e.g. Supplementary Figure 1.

Thank you for the opportunity to review this revision.

Regards
Bruce Biccard


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: WOLF SPIDER BURROWS FROM A MODERN SALINE SANDFLAT IN CENTRAL ARGENTINA: MORPHOLOGY, TAPHONOMY AND CLUES FOR RECOGNITION OF FOSSIL EXAMPLES
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: The submitted manuscript Wolf spider burrows from a modern saline sandflat in central Argentina: morphology, taphonomy and recognition of fossil examples
complies with the standards of the journal. In addition, it adjusts to the indicated
the “Editorial Criteria” of PeerJ (Basic Reporting, Experimental Design and Validity of the findings).
Experimental design: The submitted manuscript Wolf spider burrows from a modern saline sandflat in central Argentina: morphology, taphonomy and recognition of fossil examples
complies with the standards of the journal. In addition, it adjusts to the indicated
the “Editorial Criteria” of PeerJ (Basic Reporting, Experimental Design and Validity of the findings).
Validity of the findings: The submitted manuscript Wolf spider burrows from a modern saline sandflat in central Argentina: morphology, taphonomy and recognition of fossil examples
complies with the standards of the journal. In addition, it adjusts to the indicated
the “Editorial Criteria” of PeerJ (Basic Reporting, Experimental Design and Validity of the findings).
Additional comments: The article is a very good descriptive work of a theme little known worldwide and in particular in South America and presents an unusual perspective on the knowledge of the behavior and life habit of ancient spiders allowing to make parallels with the current species.

The work has a solid and updated bibliographic support.

I strongly suggest that the authors review the text in detail and conform to the characteristics of the journal.


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: WOLF SPIDER BURROWS FROM A MODERN SALINE SANDFLAT IN CENTRAL ARGENTINA: MORPHOLOGY, TAPHONOMY AND CLUES FOR RECOGNITION OF FOSSIL EXAMPLES
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: This a good, orginal paper on rarely undertaken topic, i.e. on spider burrows from ichnological side.  It contains new data and should be published. I encountered only some minor problems, which are indicated in the text. The refrences need some adjustment to the journal style

Alfred Uchman
Experimental design: The paper is based on standard field research, whcih are sufficient for ruch a paper
Validity of the findings: this one a a few papers dealing with spider burrows, with application ichnological approach
Additional comments: as above