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: SEX DIFFERENCES IN THE USE OF SOCIAL INFORMATION EMERGE UNDER CONDITIONS OF RISK
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 3

Output:
Basic reporting: 1. The study presents an experiment exploring the relationships between risk preference and preferences over social or asocial information sources. As such present tense is appropriate. The use of past tense is unnecessary.  For example line 108 could be rewritten as: Eighty eight participants are recruited, … give consent… are reimbursed…” etc.  I checked several experimental papers on my desk and all follow this convention. Although this is a relatively minor point.

2.  Given that the payments are small and deceptive I suspect that wording is very important. I would have found a box listing the choices in full useful. Something like the following but with the actual wording given to subjects.

Conditions

Asocial information source “consisted of viewing up to 10 previously unseen items in the scrapheap, of which up to three items could be kept for use in the next building Phase.”

Social information source: “viewing 3 completed space ships ostensibly built by ‘other participants’ along with the associated scores. These spaceship designs had actually been generated by the experimenter prior to the study using randomly selected tiles, and three out of 12 completed spaceships were presented at random as social sources.  The scores for these space ships were also randomly assigned. Participants could choose up to three items from one of the three ships, and these items were automatically added to the participant’s spaceship template in the next phase and could not be removed.”

AR Asocial Risky
     Asocial option “their score could markedly increase or decrease if they visited the scrapheap “some of these items may be broken and useless, but some may greatly increase your ship’s score… your score could go up or down”.

     Social option:  participants were informed heir score could slightly increase or would remain the same “the ships will have the same score as your ship or slightly higher… you will be guaranteed at least the same score as your current ship”.

Social risky (SR)
       Asocial option ““all of these items will help your ship to fly and some of them can slightly increase your ships score … you will be guaranteed at least the same score as your current ship”.

       Social option ”the ships may have a much worse or much better score than your current ship’s score… your score could go up or down.”

Control:  (C)

Asocial “the ships will have the same score as your ship or slightly higher… you will be guaranteed at least the same score as your current ship”.

Social  “the ships will have the same score as your ship or slightly higher… you will be guaranteed at least the same score as your current ship”.

3. Results in economics papers typically reproduce the various models in a table. It took some time to adapt to this method but the verbal description is sufficiently careful that a close reading is rewarded and the use of a weighted average fit does reduce the sometimes tedious descriptions of various models.

Therefore the article as written could benefit from yet another rewrite but meets the basic requirements of clarity, references and organizational structure.
Experimental design: The research question clearly fits within the aims and scope of PeerJ.  Human and animal studies on risk, social behavior and gender may ultimately provide clear guidance as to which features of humanity are cultural and which stem from more basic evolutionary pressures. Therefore, the goals are clear and address an identified knowledge gap. The procedures are mostly clear although I would need the precise wording given subjects before attempting a replication. The use of deception is within the norms of psychology but not economics.  The researchers are psychologists though and therefore conform to the ethics of their field.
Validity of the findings: Unfortunately, I do not trust the findings. Given subjects in an experiment for 20 minutes with little at stake, it may well be that decisions are based on small differences. For example, the description of the social and asocial conditions have one obvious difference - length and complexity. Perhaps the reason both genders prefer the asocial option in the control is because it is simpler. For the social option they have to decide if they believe the scores given spaceships are relevant and which features account for score differences. In the asocial option they have to decide which of 10 items to include. Notice that the social option is social only in the description of information and not any actual social interaction and does not in fact embody any wisdom based on group decision making.

On the other hand, there is a significant interaction effect. Women, but not men, prefer the social information source when the asocial information source is described as being risky. I do not see how this can be attributed to complexity. I suspect there is some other small effect I have missed but I do not know that.

I do trust the result that those told their spaceship is substandard are more willing to take risk. I would at least mention this is consistent with Kahneman and Tversky's prospect theory.
Additional comments: As an economist I find the use of deception difficult to defend. I have tried hard to keep this out of the review but believe you should be aware of the economists' position. Debriefing means subjects eventually learn of the deception and may well participate in a later experiment where they will know not to trust the experimenter. I am not sure why deception is needed here. It seems to be used to save money and time, not inconsiderable motives but not particularly convincing either. If you want non-psychologists to pay attention, you may want to put in a little effort defending why deception is sufficiently useful in this study to outweigh the objection above.


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

Input:
Title: SEX DIFFERENCES IN THE USE OF SOCIAL INFORMATION EMERGE UNDER CONDITIONS OF RISK
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: Errors from the previous version were fixed.
Experimental design: Design is good.
Validity of the findings: Now that the authors, in their rebuttal letter, have clarified the bounded risk model, the findings make more sense. However, I would prefer to see this model be introduced earlier in the manuscript, perhaps in the introduction. This model initially confused both myself and a prior reviewer, suggesting this information needs to be highlighted in a better way in the manuscript.
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: SEX DIFFERENCES IN THE USE OF SOCIAL INFORMATION EMERGE UNDER CONDITIONS OF RISK
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: As before, I am happy with the reporting.

Sorry for being annoying about the raw data file, but it still doesn't display correctly for me, regardless of whether on home or office computer, in Excel or R. I still get values such as 18-25 appearing under "Edu", and Undergraduate Degree appearing under "Country". It would definitely be helpful if the Editor could also check whether it displays OK. Sincere apologies if I am just doing something weird with the file.
Experimental design: As before, no problems to report.
Validity of the findings: I think the handful of new additions to the text help to make the authors' interpretation clearer and more explicit.
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: SEX DIFFERENCES IN THE USE OF SOCIAL INFORMATION EMERGE UNDER CONDITIONS OF RISK
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 3

Output:
Basic reporting: See previous review.
Experimental design: See previous review.
Validity of the findings: See previous review.
Additional comments: I have checked the responses to my earlier remarks. Adding the screen shots subjects actually see describing the four fold decision greatly facilitates reading and removes many of my objections.

I was hoping the authors would defend the use of deception in the article, not just the reply to me. It is as I suspected, it saves time and money.  For support you could have used Kahnenman - I forget which article right now - but he defends use of unpaid questionnaires because they are faster. He was able to do a new set each week. Made me jealous.  Another possible defense is that the number of experiments in a given location is so small that contaminating the subject pool is unlikely.

I recommended minor modifications before and did not demand to see the article again. Glad I saw the screen shots. Seeing more of the program might remove the comments about complexity as well.  I believe paper should be accepted.


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: HETEROASSOCIATIVE STORAGE OF HIPPOCAMPAL PATTERN SEQUENCES IN THE CA3 SUBREGION
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: In this study de Camargo et al. investigate whether a simple learning rule is sufficient to explain the features that make the hippocampus a suitable candidate for memory formation, storage and retrieval. The authors state that they have used a biologically plausible network model of the CA3 hippocampal subregion consists of 10,000 pyramidal cells accompanied with fast and slow inhibition in a feed-back manner. The authors have found that a network with synaptic weights determined by a heteroassociative learning rule can store and retrieve patterns and also renew the set of already stored memories with new ones. In addition, combining the heteroassociative learning rule with a homeostatic mechanisms, i.e., synaptic scaling, have permitted the storage of new memories while forgetting older ones. The motivation and the findings of this work are interesting. The network they used consists of 10,000 neurons which means that is biologically plausible in terms of neuronal numbers. This work is an accurate exploration mainly three parameters: the sparsity, the connectivity extent and the use or not of the modified STDP rule. Overall, this work seems to me that it is very interesting and well explained. In addition, it is well written and its structure meets the rquirements of this journal. However, I have some concerns about the modelling approach and the findings presentation.
Experimental design: The Methodological part is in general very informative, however it is hard to replicate this network as some critical parameters are missing (see below for details).
Validity of the findings: The findings are clear presented and the figures are in the majority of the cases accurate and correct. However, if there is a weakness, it is in the lack of any statistical analysis of the results. I suggest that you provide all the statistical tests you have used and also you should report their results (p-values, statistical values etc.). Finally, the conclusions are very informative and they give insights of the significance of this work.
Additional comments: Generally, I suggest that you define in the Introduction more clear the difference between hetero- and auto-association memories. If anyone is not familiar with this topic it would find it difficult to follow.
In addition, in my point of view it is of high importance to provide the code that is used on ModelDB or any relevant website.
Also, Figures 4a and 4b never mentioned in the text either explicitly or as Figure 4 in general.
Finally, it is better to use a larger line-spacing while you are in a review process as it would be easier to read.

Following are specific comments on methodology part (not in order of significance or appearance in the text):

1. It is widely known that CA3 receives two major inputs from DG via mossy fibers and from EC LII and their role have been studied (Treves, Rolls, 1992). The authors should justify why the do not simulate explicitly the inputs.

2. Related to my previous concern, the authors state that their model is "a biologically plausible model". However, they do use a very simple form of inhibition in the network. I am wondering if by using fedd-forward inhibition as well would eventually change their findings.

3. Using integrate and fire neurons, it is necessary to report the voltage threshold as well as the reset voltage after a spike.

4.  NMDA receptors are very important in pyramidal cells and they play a crucial role in memory procedures. There is no justification of the reason they are not simulated in the network.

5. I would like to know how many OLM cells are in the netowork and how many the Basket cells. In addition, in Figure 1 the name Basket appears but there is not in the main text.

6. Justification on the parameters choice is missing. In addition, the reason that the authors have chosen such a large refractory period is not explained.

7. Line 147-148: It is not explained how the difference is subtracted from the rermaining synapses. Randomly? Uniformly?

8. Critical simulation parameters and information should be provided, such as the total simulation time, the programming language and/or the simulator that use.

Following are specific comments on the results validity (not in order of significance or appearance in the text):

1. Although Figure 6 is one of the key finding of this work, I believe that the way the findings are presented in this graph is somehow confusing. I highly suggest this figure to be re-made.

2. In Line 251, they say that "retrievable patterns increased significantly", however there is no reference to any statistical test in the whole paper. I highly encourage the authors to report the statistics af any comparsion they have done, as well as to report which test is used in every case.

3. Typo in sparsity legend in Figure 2 (right side, on the top)


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: HETEROASSOCIATIVE STORAGE OF HIPPOCAMPAL PATTERN SEQUENCES IN THE CA3 SUBREGION
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: de Camargo et al. studied the performance of a heteroassociative coding scheme, combined with synaptic scaling, in pattern sequences storage in a biologically plausible model of the hippocampal CA3. They looked into pattern learning of the network, the ability to retrieve stored pattern sequences upon presentation of a partial cue, as well as the renewal of stored sequences as new memories are learned. The objectives of the research article are sound, and the report of the findings is also clear.

While the authors discuss a lot about the pros and cons of heteroassociative and auto-associative networks, it would be good if more background on their definition and their network architectures could be provided. It is unclear to me how “to combine the 30 properties of auto- and heteroassociative networks” (line 29-30), and why “feedback connections from CA3 to Dentate Gyrus or between different CA3 areas would store sequences of memories in heteroassociative connections, and recurrent connections within single CA3 areas would work as auto associative connections” (line 32-34).  On the other hand, the authors want to show that a heteroassociative coding scheme would suffice to account for the features that make the hippocampus a reliable network for memory.

In line 36, it is not clear what the authors want to say with "representing sequence of neuronal ensembles which are sequentially activated bounded by theta cycles”.

In line 71, it is better to use the term "oriens lacunosum-moleculare” once and then O-LM later as abbreviation.

In line 190, STDP-induced LTD is abbreviated as SS-LTD, but in the context SS-LTD seems to refer to synaptic scaling combined with STDP-induced LTD. Please clarify.
Experimental design: The design of the model fits well to the aim of the study. Most part of the network model is clearly described. However, the authors shall verify the model scheme and the use of parameters.

Why are NMDA conductances not considered in the model? Earlier work on CA3 suggested that CA3 exhibits attractor dynamics due to the abundance of recurrent excitation, and NMDA conductances are needed to support attractor dynamics.

In line 67, "The network has two kinds of feedback inhibition, mediated by fast and slow GABA channels (Pearce, 1993), modeled as direct connections between every pair of pyramidal neurons.” There is basket cell in Figure 1 but the inhibition is implemented as direct interaction between pyramidal cells. It would be helpful to the readers if you add a model scheme of how exactly the model is implemented, and include all kinds of inputs the CA3 circuit receives.

In line 75, does “neuron” refer to pyramidal neuron?
In line 77, a membrane time constant of 2ms is a bit small. Can you justify it?
In the equation below line 79, is the negative sign missing in the exponent?
In line 83, the step size is set to 0.1ms, which is a bit big compared with a membrane time constant of 2ms. Have you verified that the simulation results converge?
In line 106, is the external noise between neurons independent?
In line 109, a rate of 0.8 Hz during pattern retrieval in the simulations seems to be slow, compared with the firing activity in Figure 4.
In line 115, as the computational demand is not that high for point neurons, it will be interesting to check the memory capacity and performance as the network size is varied.
In line 144, could you add one or two sentences to describe what heterosynaptic long-term depression is?
In line 145, is the additive synaptic scaling rule the same as the usual normalization? Why the rule is applied after 100 sequences, not after every sequence?
In the formula below line 172, what if all neurons o_i(t) are active? Shall it be normalized by sqrt(n_p*n_o) instead?
Validity of the findings: The report of the findings is clear in general. There are a few minor issues that the authors should address.

In line 185, "storing a pattern sequence increases the total synaptic weight of each neuron, which is compensated by the synaptic scaling rule”. Is it true only if you have no or weak LTD?
In line 258, the connectivity extent of 0.4 to 1 looks a bit high. What is the biological range?
In Figure 4 right column, there are 10 peaks in 4(e) but 7 patterns are used. Could you explain?
What is the function and advantage of theta rhythm in the model, does it work without theta rhythm?
In line 211, "the benefits of using less neurons per pattern” are stated. How about the disadvantages? The benefits come with expenses.
Additional comments: I think the article by de Camargo et al. could be accepted after addressing the comments above.


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

Input:
Title: HETEROASSOCIATIVE STORAGE OF HIPPOCAMPAL PATTERN SEQUENCES IN THE CA3 SUBREGION
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 3

Output:
Basic reporting: The language of the article as written is mostly fine and understandable, but there were some sticking points for me as a reader that confused me until I was able to infer the intended meaning much later in the paper. (My annotated copy details my struggles as I read through from the beginning.) A major ambiguity for me was “connectivity extent”, as I thought at first “extent” was used as “level” or “value”, in which case I would drop “extent” altogether and just refer to “connectivity”. However, it became apparent that it meant the initial connectivity of the network, specifically the initial fixed fan-in connectivity fraction per neuron. Since “final connectivity” is referred to later in the paper to indicate connectivity after learning, I would strongly suggest replacing “connectivity extent” with “initial connectivity” and expand the methods definition to make the distinction more explicit.

Another major ambiguity was “sequence completion” versus “pattern completion”: this paper deals only with sequence completion yet uses the term interchangeably with pattern completion. I take “pattern completion” to indicate autoassociative dynamics that retrieve a full pattern based on a degraded cue, so for much of the paper I was waiting for the authors to demonstrate autoassociative processing in their model. I marked instances in my annotated copy, but Lines 116, 294, 296, 383, 388 are examples. You’ll note I figured out this was a purely heteroassociative model at Figure 4 where the full cue pattern is not itself retrieved (the overlap curve is flat for the cue patterns in Figure 4e).

The abstract and introduction refer to the “coding scheme” being studied (Lines 11 and 51), but to me this is a very ambiguous phrase and I didn’t understand what was being referred to. It seems that the authors meant to refer to heteroassociative processing as a whole as a “coding scheme”. Under that interpretation, the main hypothesis of the paper translates to whether heteroassociative learning (with homeostatic synaptic scaling) suffices to account for the role of the hippocampus in memory, with the implication that the alternative “coding scheme” of autoassociative dynamics may be unnecessary. If that is the case, the results of the simulation study fall far short of supporting the stated hypothesis. This is not an issue with the scope of the simulation study, more that the hypothesis interpreted this way is, I believe, overly and unnecessarily broad. I would like to see “coding scheme” replaced with a more specific and clear phrase and the hypothesis narrowed down to the more specific questions addressed by the study.

Another ambiguous term was “renewal” used in the context of “renewing the set of stored sequences”. I did not understand what was being “renewed” in this usage, but came to sense the authors meant the abstract set of currently available (or “stored”) sequences was “refreshed” or “updated” as new sequences replaced old sequences. I originally thought “renewal” meant that old sequences were somehow reinforced, which I believe is the opposite of the intended meaning. Given its key place in the abstract and introduction (Lines 49 and 52), I would suggest replacing “renewal”/“renew” with clearer terminology (whether “updating”/“update” or similar would suffice I’m not sure).

A number of sentences do not follow the scientific logic of the results and seem to editorialize unnecessarily. For instance, in arguing for “heteroassociative” processing, the authors seem to go to lengths to argue against autoassociative dynamics, for which there is substantial evidence and which do not need to be repudiated to discuss heteroassociative effects in sequence learning. This is further reinforced by the broad and dichotomous hypothesis in the abstract as I mentioned above. There are autoassociative effects of hippocampal memory that cannot be explained by the sort of heteroassociative network studied here (cf. the flat cue pattern retrieval in Figure 4e).

“Biologically plausible” (in abstract and Line 59). I really do not like this phrase, it is overused by modelers (including me in the past!) to the point it doesn’t mean anything; I much prefer to see specific language supporting why the details of the model constitute an appropriate approach to the scientific question under study rather than this blanket assertion of “plausibility”.

I object to the consistent description of LTD throughout the paper as “STDP-induced” or “STDP-based” LTD. There is no STDP in the network training. The authors describe a time-windowed learning rule perhaps inspired by STDP as indicated by the citations to the STDP literature, but it is not an actual implementation of STDP, and it is wrong to describe the LTD rule that way. The optional LTD in the learning rule is simply a time-windowed heterosynaptic LTD.

The breadth of literature references is generally fine, if overly dependent on John Lisman’s work. I would suggest that W. B. Levy’s studies of hippocampal sequence learning would provide additional valuable and instructive background, particularly his 1996 paper (Hippocampus 6, 579-90).

The structure of the paper is fine. However, the abstract does not do enough work. In addition to my comments above on the abstract, it seems to end at the point where the results of this study should be summarized and put into context for the readers. As it is, the abstract provides (too much) background, an overly broad hypothesis, and a simplistic description of the “biologically plausible” model. The entirety of the results are captured by the phrase “these hypotheses hold”, but there is no elaboration of actual results, how they support the hypotheses, any problems, or what the take-away conclusion of the study should be. This abrupt end to the abstract is a disservice to potential readers of the paper.

Given the above caveats with the scope of the hypothesis, the study is self-contained, relevant to the questions posed, and constitutes an appropriate unit of publication.

Minor points of language:

- Line 17, the definition of “autoassociative memory” is wrong, referring to “association between different memories” when it should be “association between the features of a given memory” (or similar)
- Lines 42 and 425, I believe “temporally” was supposed to be “temporarily”
- Line 36, the phrase “Different from” should be “In contrast to” in idiomatic English
- Line 28, “representing” should be “represented by” unless my understanding is wrong
- Lines 230 and 238, “bifurcation” is the wrong word, maybe “transition” or “maximum”
- throughout, “less” is used when “fewer” is correct (with discrete noun plurals), I’ve marked most instances in the annotated copy. Ibid. with “smaller” and “lower” for numerical values
- Line 42, “third feature”. It is unclear how the authors are counting the features of the hippocampus being introduced; I didn’t realize there was a “first” or “second”
- Line 48, “acceptable”. Saying an effect is “acceptable” for CA3 is presuming fundamental knowledge of the actual purpose and role of CA3; this is tautological and teleological. One could say it is “consistent with” a “hypothesized role” of CA3.
- Lines 205 and 207, the authors never define “crosstalk”. Is it a form of memory interference? Does it mean anything beyond “memory pattern interference”?
- Line 253, “neurons per pattern” doesn’t make sense to me, did the authors mean “connections per neuron”? I don’t think the pattern size was changing there.
- Lines 413-415 and 426-428, I’ve highlighted these sentences in the discussion as being vague and unclear. They should be elaborated more clearly or dropped.
- Line 345, missing noun after “autoassociative”
- Line 422, missing noun after “heteroassociative”
- Line 435, missing “are”
Experimental design: This a primary research manuscript pertaining to Biological Sciences, which is appropriate to the Aims & Scope of the journal.

I do have concerns with the statement of the research question, as I discussed in the Basic Reporting section. It is overly broad and dichotomous, forcing an unnecessary counterpoint to autoassociative learning when the history of research in this area suggests that these dynamics are not mutually exclusive. I would like to see a narrowing of the scope of the research question in a way that makes it more specific and attuned to the subtleties of homeostasis, synaptic modification, and temporal interactions in sequence learning that are actually probed in the simulation studies.

After reviewing the methods descriptions and a shallow review of the source code, the technical standards for the simulation study are in-line with the typical research output in this field of study (spike-based networks of sequence learning with various synaptic modification rules).

For a simulation study like this, the only route to reproducibility is source code release and it appears that the source code is available (or will become available) on figshare with a DOI.

However, the authors’ methods descriptions have a number of minor issues. My annotated copy is complementary to the points below.

Network model:

- The Figure 1 caption refers to the inhibitory “neuronal populations” but the description and figure graphic suggest that a single global interneuron (basket cell) is used to control activity. Line 71 mentions “O-LM” cells for inducing theta oscillations, but not how many are in the model, or why more than one are needed since they would presumably have the same activity. All of this should be clarified.

- Line 68 describes the feedback inhibition as “direct connections between every pair of pyramidal neurons”, but that would constitute feedback excitation. Something is wrong here, unless it was implied that the “direct connection” was through the global interneuron, which is something that should be made explicit.

- Figure 1 shows the O-LM interneuron driven by the pyramidal neuron output, but it is described in the text as a spike generator. The figure should be fixed to remove those pyramidal/O-LM connections if they don’t actually exist.

- Line 72. It is unclear what “intrinsic” firing rate means or why the theta frequency of 5 Hz was chosen. That would be considered atypically slow theta in rodent hippocampus

- Line 72, “It” (referring to one or multiple O-LM cells) is said to “modulat[e] the generation of the theta rhythm”, but it IS the theta generator, so it is unclear what modulation is being described here

- Line 79, “neural adaptation” is too broad and should be specified as, I believe, “spike frequency adaptation”

- Irep equation should have exp(tspk – t) instead of exp(t – tspk), otherwise the hyperpolarizing current would be exponentially increasing with time

Synaptic model:

- Ik equation should have a halfwave-rectified \Delta{t_s} otherwise it would be negative after the spike but before the delay has finished

Pattern sequences:

- Line 111, the authors should specify whether pattern sampling is with or without replacement. The patterns should be orthogonal, which would be sampling without replacement. If not orthogonal, justification will be needed

- Line 113, the definition of “sparsity” is actually a definition of “density”. Sparsity should be defined as the fraction of inactive cells in the pattern (the authors define it as the fraction of active cells). Instead of changing the numbers and figures, it would be easiest to change “sparsity” to “input density” (or similar) throughout the paper to convey the meaning correctly.

- Line 124, typo “s1-s2-s2-…”

- Lines 115-118, the authors justify a higher input density than de Almeida’s 2007 estimates for their 10,000-neuron simulations, but it would be nice to see an analysis of larger simulations (e.g. 30K neurons) that may allow sequence learning with more “realistic” input densities to see if network size was the limiting factor

Learning rule:

- Line 132, 15-ms presentations for off-line training seems to presume that the sequence has already been learned, in order to compress events into gamma cycles. I suppose the authors are considering an ordered set of place cells that fire in sequence within a theta cycle due to phase precession. However, this should be clarified in text and made explicit to readers with and without background knowledge of theta sequences

- Weight update equation is unclear. How is the initial ± supposed to be interpreted? Is there a forward pass for LTP followed by a backward pass for LTD?

- Also, weight update is clearly not based on spike-timing differences. As I mentioned above: it is not an STDP rule, it is only a sequence-adjacency rule. This approach is valid for studying the parameters of sequence learning, but it is not valid to refer to this as “STDP-induced” LTP/D throughout the paper. STDP can have complex consequences and effects that are not accounted for with this rule.

- Line 142, I think this is the beginning of my “connectivity extent” problem described above. I did not understand why the authors related the initial connectivity to that of a “highly connected developing nervous system”. New episodic memory sequences are not learned from an initial state corresponding to a developing nervous system. The authors should clarify that they train these networks from a highly connected state with many sequences until stabilizing at a lower connectivity, effectively simulating a “lifetime” of episodic sequences until maturity. More clarity about this training regime would help.

- Lines 153-154, “by anatomical or physiological reasons” is confusing. I’m not sure what it means since the model only contains synaptic connections
Validity of the findings: The findings of this simulation study have high face validity: I believe the results are relevant to the research question(s) that the authors aimed to study. Further, the paper as presented demonstrates substantial content validity: Many of the parameters most relevant to the narrow scope of “pure” heteroassociative learning in a network model are studied in an interesting and inter-related way that helps to bridge a knowledge gap in the combination of homeostatic and experience-dependent forms of synaptic modification in a cognitive neural system. The authors’ lack of consideration of autoassociative processing in this system reduced the potential content validity, since there may be critical interactions (e.g. with other hippocampal inputs or subregions) that contribute to sequence learning as such and were not addressed by this work. However, it is good for the field to have studies like this that explore particular dynamics of interest.

The data, consisting mostly of static network analysis and network simulation outputs, appear to be robust and statistically sound within the standards of the field.

As with the abstract, which ended abruptly, the paper does not conclude in a way that summarizes the results or relates those results back to the specific research questions. The authors should consider trimming some of the vague discussion and adding a strong conclusion that ties specific results back to specific knowledge gaps revealed by the research question. Given my concerns about language and structure above, to make this possible the research question will need to be reframed and better specified throughout at least the abstract and introduction in any subsequent revisions.
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: HETEROASSOCIATIVE STORAGE OF HIPPOCAMPAL PATTERN SEQUENCES IN THE CA3 SUBREGION
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: The language is clear and not ambiguous. After revisions the authors have taken into account my comments and more specific, they give a clear definition of auto- and heteroassociative networks. In addition, the authors have given a link of a webpage where anyone can download the source code.

The only disagreement with the authors is that even if the learning process is performed online, in my opinion, NMDA current should be included in the model as it is widely know that plays an important role in dendritic integration in pyramidal cells in CA3 and CA1. However, for the specific questions that the authors have tried to answer it is valid to ignore this parameter in order to reduce the parameter space. It would be interesting though to see if any change would arise by incorporating the NMDA component to this model.

Taken all into account, I think that this project is almost ready for publication.

However, I have some minor comments about the construction of the figures. In my opinion it is better to produce graphs without top and left axes  (Figure 6 axes are nice) for consistency and clarity.

Moreover, in Line 197, where authors refer to MATLAB I think that you should include also the version and also the computer specifications (CPUs, RAM) where the code has run. Typically, MATLAB (R2016a, The Mathworks, Natick, MA) form is used.

Additionally, some minor suggestions are given below:

Line 33: missing noun in "autoassociative"
Line 78: "send connections ..." with "is connected with every pyramidal neuron via GABA synapses..."
Line 84: "is dependent" with "depends"
Line 125: "to mean that" with "to refer to"
Line 219: "would be performing" with "would be"
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: HETEROASSOCIATIVE STORAGE OF HIPPOCAMPAL PATTERN SEQUENCES IN THE CA3 SUBREGION
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: The authors have updated the manuscript according to reviewers' feedback on language use. The manuscript is in general well-written. However, there are still some issues with the use of words.

In line 26, replace “the cell preferred place” by “the cell’s preferred location”.

In line 51-52, for “since an increase in the number of stored memories leads to a catastrophic interference effect”, do you mean an increase beyond the capacity limit?

In line 155, “We decrease all synapses from each neuron by a fixed amount”. I guess the authors mean to reduce all synaptic weights.

In line 279-280,  “For the initial random weights, we used the values of 2.5, 280 3.0, 6.0 and 4.0 for the initial connectivities 1.0, 0.8, 0.6 and 0.4, respectively” is confusing.

In line 301, “larger then” should be “larger than”.

In line 329, “latter” should be “later”.
Experimental design: In the METHODS, the authors reported the learning rule first and then connectivity. It seems more natural to describe the network connectivity before the learning rule. The readers want to know how the network is like before what changes to make.

In line 92, shall it be for all t > ts + tdelay?

In line 194, what are the combinations of parameter values?
Validity of the findings: In line 266-268, "If we consider the estimated connectivity of 20%, which full connectivity we would have to use an initial weight of 2.0, resulting in about 1400 retrievable patterns.” Did the authors mean “with full connectivity”? Also in line 268-271,  the description is not totally clear. Are the readers supposed to look for the initial weight corresponding to 20% connectivity from Figure 3A given the initial connectivity, and then figure out the number of retrievable patterns from Figure 3B with the corresponding weight and the given initial connectivity? If so, it would be helpful to indicate the 20% connectivity and mark the values used for comparison in the figures.

In line 411 and 413, what are errors refer to?
Additional comments: There are some very long sentences in the article. For example, in line 15-19, “Based on these models, Rolls et al. (1997) proposed that the CA3 subregion could work as an autoassociative memory, where neurons from the same pattern have recurrent excitatory connections between them, which enable associations between features of a memory, retrieval of stored memories from presentation of partial cues, and noise tolerance during memory retrieval.” Could the authors consider breaking them down to improve readability?

It seems that the authors dropped “extents” following the feedback from Reviewer 3, but there are still a few occurrences (e.g. in line 347).


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: HETEROASSOCIATIVE STORAGE OF HIPPOCAMPAL PATTERN SEQUENCES IN THE CA3 SUBREGION
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 3

Output:
Basic reporting: The authors substantially improved the clarity of the text and the results. The revision and letter demonstrated a comprehensive treatment of points from the initial review. The arguments about auto- vs. hetero-association have been smoothed out and provide better context, including additional references, and the central question of the study was more prominent and more clearly defined. The abstract and discussion now have proper conclusions that will certainly help readers. I believe the manuscript now meets the journal’s criteria for publication.

There were a few places where “extent” was still used instead of the new “initial connectivity”. There were also some minor typographical issues that I have marked in my review copy that should be fixed prior to publication.
Experimental design: The model design, especially regarding the implementation of interneurons and inhibition, has been given appropriate detail and clarified in the network figure. The expanded details about the number of simulations, means, and standard deviations in the figure legends has increased the transparency about the study design and findings.
Validity of the findings: As in my initial review, the modeling study has both face and content validity for the central question of the paper. The additional language about the relationship with auto-associative processing established a narrower focus that helps to allay my prior concerns about overly broad claims.
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: BIOTEA: SEMANTICS FOR PUBMED CENTRAL
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: I enjoyed reading the manuscript. The presented work is sound and highly practical. The manuscript is well written.

I commend the authors for semantically processing articles from >7K journals and making all the data and software code available. In my opinion the submitted manuscript should be accepted for a publication after suggested minor revisions:

-	‘the NER service provided by  the NCBO Annotator’ The accuracy of many other NER tools is higher than of this one, see for example tools provided by NaCTeM. Those other tools also are using ontologies. Please explain your choice.
-	Overall, there is no discussion of text mining (TM) as a closely related area of research. Of course, there are principle differences with what the authors are producing, but many TM steps can be re-used by Biotea.
-	I would prefer to see more examples and discussion o how Biotea can be used.
-	Line 64: the first mentioning of Biotea – you need to provide more explanation what it is. The same about hypothes.is
-	Proofread the manuscript, examples: Lines 48-49: add missing gaps; Line 65: “representation, idem. that “, etc. etc.
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: BIOTEA: SEMANTICS FOR PUBMED CENTRAL
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: The authors do an excellent job of explaining what they mean by their term "RDFize".  However, I do not see the need to coin a new verb, especially considering the authors later turn the this new verb into a noun: RDFization.  I think it best editorial practice if they refrain from coining a new term and instead refer to RDF generation or RDF creation as is appropriate.

Suggested grammatical changes:

Lines 280-281.   "We are using hierarchical ... using the cosine distance as the metric"
Line 409. "The resulting dataset is over 150 Gigabytes in size"
Line 421. Parameterize (actually suggest rewriting this sentence - it's not completely clear)
Experimental design: No comment
Validity of the findings: No comment
Additional comments: Just a suggestion.  You note several software dependencies for using Biotea - Maven, Java and Eclipse.  These particular programs tend to have very specific versions for various OS platforms.  I think it would be helpful to your audience and potentially increase the usage of Biotea if you were to provide a preconfigured Virtual Machine image using Ubuntu.  Virtualbox provides such customized VM's for various purposes (http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/community/developer-vm/index.html), as well as Bitcurator (https://www.bitcurator.net/)


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: BIOTEA: SEMANTICS FOR PUBMED CENTRAL
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 3

Output:
Basic reporting: The subject of the manuscript is one that is important  to the future of science, an one that is close to my heart: the improved reporting of scientific knowledge through the use of semantic technology. There is a clear and urgent need to improve the reporting of scientific knowledge, and it is scandalous that so much public and charitable money is spent on science that cannot properly be used because it is inaccessible to computers.

The Introduction and background are clear, and the literature is well referenced and relevant. Clear, unambiguous, professional English language is used throughout. The figures are relevant, high quality, well labelled and described.
Experimental design: The models, services, software and datasets are available.
Validity of the findings: The authors demonstrate the utility of Biotea in two examples.  This is the weakest part of the manuscript:
•	Example 1 concerns the retrieval and clustering of papers annotated with the SNOMED CT term ‘renal
cell carcinoma’.  Unfortunately, the three papers investigated have little to do with ‘renal
cell carcinoma’, although it is true that this phrase occurs in all of them.  However, the authors do a good job of describing why papers 3862691 and 3862582 are more similar with each other than with 3899087.
•	Example 2 involves the creation of a very long SPARQL query, but the results of the query are not described.  The SPARQL query would be very hard for a domain scientist to generate without the use of some tool.
I recommend that two other examples are used to demonstrate the utility of Biotea.

Around line 255 the manuscript describes the mapping between Biotea and SIO concepts: ‘encapsulating the original data type property value; thus, a bibo:pmid with the value “28300141” is
mapped to the object property sio:has_identifier, this is linked to the class sio:identifier
that is related by means of sio:has_value to the actual PMID “28300141”.’ I don’t see how this mapping captures the key information that the identifier comes from PubMed .
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: SATELLITE TAGGING HIGHLIGHTS THE IMPORTANCE OF PRODUCTIVE MOZAMBICAN COASTAL WATERS TO THE ECOLOGY AND CONSERVATION OF WHALE SHARKS
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: The paper is clearly written and concise. Background information provided are relevant, the paper is relatively well structured, except in the abstract. Specific comments are provided below.

I did not identify issues with the figures, tables and raw data. However, I made some comments (general comments) for Fig. 1 that remains difficult to read. Results and hypotheses are relevant.
Experimental design: I have no comments here, except for the description of the methods that are lacking, particularly for aerial surveys.

There is a temporal mismatch between aerial survey and satellite tagging data. Since artisanal fisheries are dynamic in time and space, and that prey availability (influenced by the complex oceanography of the Mozambique Channel) also greatly varies between years, you need to clearly show how comparable both datasets are.

I know the authors cite Cliff et al. (2007) for details on the sampling for aerial survey data. However, more (even brief) information would be needed to enlighten the reader. You also need to refer to a map with the sampling design.
Validity of the findings: I have reservations on the use of gillnet data, and about the compatibility of aerial survey and satellite tag data. More details are provided in the "general comments" section. Movement data are robust and statistically sound, and conclusions are well stated. However, conclusions on the overlap between gillnets and whale sharks are speculative and should be identified as such.
Additional comments: Abstract

The abstract lacks of structure. The first sentence should be removed, and I would rather include one more sentence on aerial survey methods. A justification of why you combined aerial survey and satellite (even very brief) tagging methods would be good to add too. A better presentation of the question(s)/hypothesis is critically needed here too.

Introduction

L. 59-61: this sentence (last of 1st §) seems to be out of place. Should be removed.

L. 66-67: “ecological drivers of their movements is poorly understood” might be better.

L. 67-71: very general statement here, which also seems to be incomplete (how about predation risk?). General statements like this one should be in 1st §. 2nd § should keep focusing on whale sharks.

L. 81: “in review” paper should be removed (replaced by unpublished data), same for Normal et al. (l. 84, 89)

L. 96-106: anthropogenic threats might explain the observed decline. However, oceanographic conditions and changes in productivity (and prey availability) at feeding aggregations might have affected whale shark abundance. It should not be ignored here, and I think anthropogenic threats are obvious in this region (particularly bycatch in drift gillnets), but other drivers in abundance should be mentioned, even briefly.

L. 123: and “underlying environmental drivers” would be (a bit) better.

Materials and methods

There is a temporal mismatch between aerial survey and satellite tagging data. Since artisanal fisheries are dynamic in time and space, and that prey availability (influenced by the complex oceanography of the Mozambique Channel) also greatly varies between years, you need to clearly show how comparable both datasets are.

L. 140-141: I know you cite Cliff et al. (2007) for details on the sampling. However, more (even brief) information would be needed to enlighten the reader. You also need to refer to a map with the sampling design.

L. 227-228: what are net dimensions and where are they set? What is the mesh size? What kind of gillnets are used? It looks like these are bottom set since their location is very coastal. Unless you prove otherwise, I doubt whale sharks can get entangled in these, whereas large meshed drift gillnets can.

L. 232: “boat-based” surveys? Looks like these net locations were recorded opportunistically. More information on sampling is needed here. How representative this sampling is? Not sure if the sampling really reflects the distribution of gillnets in the study area.

Results

Fig. 1: very few gillnets were recorded, so I wonder how relevant it is to link their distribution and whale shark distribution and movements. You also mention in the methods that gillnets were recorded during “boat-based” surveys, but it is not clear whether gillnets on the map were recorded during flights or at-sea surveys.

L. 286: How did you find the animal?

L. 295: I think “range” would be better than “band”.

L. 366-367: sounds speculative. Any reference supporting this? What about thermoregulation?

L. 396-397: speculative. This statement needs to be.

Discussion

L. 325-332: it doesn’t look like you are really discussion the spatial overlap between gillnets and whale sharks. It really convinces me that this dataset might not be relevant for the scope of the paper.

L. 347: “in revision” papers should not be cited, same for submitted (l. 422).

L. 433: analyses that were performed do not clearly show the overlap between gillnet fisheries and whale sharks.


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: SATELLITE TAGGING HIGHLIGHTS THE IMPORTANCE OF PRODUCTIVE MOZAMBICAN COASTAL WATERS TO THE ECOLOGY AND CONSERVATION OF WHALE SHARKS
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: the manuscript is well written and easy to read. I'm uncertain if PeerJ allows "in revision" articles to be cited.
Experimental design: The limited aerial survey effort combined with diving behavior limits the utility of these surveys.

The short track duration and resulting data set on movement of tagged whale sharks limits the ability of this research to determine anything other than short term movement and habitat use. While the data are presented well and used to interpret selection of inshore habitats there is limited discussion on long term habitat use combining satellite and visual observations. By addressing the limitations of the short term data and acknowledging some of the issues around gaps in movement data for ~ half the year I think the manuscript would be greatly improved.

Methods of random models was not adequately addressed and I could not view figure 2 in the supplementary material. More detail on how the models were generated including the code used to generate these models would be useful.
Validity of the findings: See previous comments on limitations of aerial survey data as well as limitations of whale shark movement data due to short track duration and no data on movements for ~ 5 months of the year.
More could be done to determine level of overlap with gillnets sets along the coast.
The analysis would benefit from a seasonal component to movement analysis - did sharks occupy different areas at different times. The horizontal movements are very descriptive and while data are limited, more should be done to try and determine any patterns related to season or environmental conditions.
Additional comments: Introduction
Line 70 – there are more relevant papers on reproductive movements than the one cited. Please provide additional examples.

Line 84 – does the journal allow manuscripts in revision to be cited (Norman et al. in revision)?

Line 137 – 139: the amount of aerial survey effort is very limited and amounts to ~2 flights per year over 5 years. Furthermore the survey area is incredibly narrow. It is difficult to see how such a survey could provide data relevant on abundance given the variability in whale shark ‘availability’ to aerial surveys. It is well known that Whale Sharks spend considerable time in deep water (even when close to shore) making them impossible to see from the air. The variation in the number of sharks visible during any one flight makes it difficult to reconcile abundance estimates.

Line 243 – the large number of sharks seen on one day highlights the variability in whale shark abundance/sightability which do not always reflect true population size.

Line 291 – 297: that temperature data obtained from SPOT tags is limited to days when temperature histogram data were recorded and while there is a nice range of data presented, the authors need to acknowledge that these data are not reflective of the total range of temperature experienced by the sharks. The number of time at temperature messages received per day should be presented in a table to illustrate over what time period these data were recorded.

Figure 2: it is unclear from this figure whether the duration of the tracks influenced offshore movement. It would be good to colour code days since tagging to illustrate whether sharks that moved off the shelf were tracked for longer or whether this just represents individual variation. Most offshore movement seem to have occurred in summer suggesting some seasonal shift.

KUD estimates from satellite telemetry of whale sharks is problematic given low detection rates combined with periods of limited or no detections over multiple days. It is therefore important to present detection data in terms of number of fixes per day to enable the reader to interpret KUD estimates which will be biased by periods when the sharks were detected more frequently either due to favourable environmental conditions or because the sharks were spending more time at the surface swimming at slower speed resulting in more fixes.

Figure 2. the end of the track of shark MZ471 appears to be from the tag floating on the surface.

Figure 4 is misleading as the total number of transmissions will be a function of how many tags were deployed as well as weather conditions. The number of transmissions should therefore be an average per tag not the sum of all tags.

Figure 5: it would be good to see a figure of the randomised tracks to determine how realistic/unrealistic they are compared to recorded track.

 Line 309-321: the fact that tags didn’t record depth limits the use of these data and this section appears to be overly long. I suggest shortening this section to focus on the main point - It is clear from the temperature data that sharks that moved off the shelf experienced a wider range of temperatures most likely due to vertical movements into cooler waters. It would be nice to try and match these temperatures with known depths if there are any oceanographic data available for this region.

Line 334-347: the short duration of the tracks and the fact that combined tracks do not span more than 7 months is a major limitation of the research. This limits the ability to make overarching comparisons and management implications need to be taken into context. While it is clear that sharks spend a disproportionate amount of time close to shore for some part of the year and return to the region over multiple years there is still uncertainty over where the sharks go and more needs to be done in the discussion to piece together this research combined with previous work.

Line 363-364: the limited time animals were tracked for needs to be acknowledged here. This statement should include the period animals were tracked.

Line 387-390: the lack of temperature stratification in relatively shallow coastal waters limits the ability to determine diving behaviour from temperature alone. The statement that little diving took place is therefore not supported by the data as there isn’t any data on diving behaviour in shallow coastal waters. It should also be acknowledged that data on temperature is not collected frequently by SPOT tags (how often temperature data were obtained is not presented so I’m assuming that the transmission of these data was limited as is often the case when prioritising location transmission over temperature data).

Line 401 – 404: given that there is very limited data on vertical movement that is inferred from temperature data it seems a long bow to claim that these data support a hypothesis that vertical movements in whale sharks relate to foraging behaviour. I suggest removing this statement.
While there is limited evidence to suggest that whale sharks are occasionally captured in gillnets the numbers captured per year or the frequency of these events are not presented or discussed (although it appears that efforts are underway to quantify this). Gillnets are usually highly size and shape selective and designed to mesh certain sized sharks/fish. The shape of a whale sharks head would make it virtually impossible to be meshed in a gill net and while there is the potential for entanglement the likelihood of this occurring is small. It is also not clear how much overlap there is between where the nets are set (what is the average net length) and the habitat whale sharks use. Data from satellite tracks could be used to determine the average distance offshore and therefore to determine overall overlap with gill nets. It would be good to see this attempted given that data are available. Furthermore this coastline is not protected and setting gillnets up to 500 m offshore in swell and over reef would be very difficult.   I acknowledge that even low levels of fishing mortality could be unsustainable, however given that no data on the probability of capture are presented the link between population declines and gillnets appears over-stated. A more detailed explanation of how the gillnets are set (e.g. are they set from boats, are they set offshore in mid water, are they anchored or set as tangle nets, what mesh size is used and what water depth of water they are set in) is required to enable the reader to contextualise this information.

Overall, this manuscript is well written and the analysis are sound. The short track duration is problematic and at times the conclusions in relation to habitat use, diving and temperature profiles are over-stated given the limited track length as well issues with how much data are obtained from satellite tags.


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: SATELLITE TAGGING HIGHLIGHTS THE IMPORTANCE OF PRODUCTIVE MOZAMBICAN COASTAL WATERS TO THE ECOLOGY AND CONSERVATION OF WHALE SHARKS
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: The paper is really clear and unambiguous. Background information provided is sound and sufficient, and the paper (including the abstract) is well structured.
Experimental design: The research is suitable for the scope of the journal. The research question is well defined and relevant, and the results fill an identified knowledge gap. The investigation is rigorous, methods have been greatly improved.
Validity of the findings: Data is robust and sound, and conclusions are well stated.
Additional comments: The paper has been clearly improved and the authors have addressed 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: SATELLITE TAGGING HIGHLIGHTS THE IMPORTANCE OF PRODUCTIVE MOZAMBICAN COASTAL WATERS TO THE ECOLOGY AND CONSERVATION OF WHALE SHARKS
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: The authors have done a good job responding to the reviewer comments.
Experimental design: no comment
Validity of the findings: see comment below regarding gillnet mesh size and implications for whale shark entanglement
Additional comments: Overall the authors have done a good job addressing reviewer comments.

There is still a lack of understanding about gillnets and this needs to be addressed.

8-10 cm (3-4 inch) mesh is not large. This size gillnet is used to target small - medium sized fish (~30 – 50 cm TL) depending on the body shape. Nets this size are not even used to target small sharks and these nets do not have the capacity to regularly entangle sharks > 1 m TL. They certainly do not have the capacity to regularly entangle whale sharks unlike large mesh tangle nets (mesh size 20 – 40 cm) which have been implicated in whale shark capture in other parts of the world. I acknowledge that these nets may entangle the occasional whale shark and that this could have long term consequences but these nets simply will not results in frequent entanglement.

It is unclear whether observations but S. Pierce relate to mortality/entanglement along the Mozambique coastline or other parts of the world. It is also not clear if sharks were entangled in similar/same sized mesh nets. This needs to be made clear as entanglement and injuries reported by Speed et al. are not specific to Mozambique.

I suggest changing "large mesh" to small or medium size mesh to better reflect mesh size and the selectivity of different sized mesh.


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: EFFECTS OF PERCEPTUAL SIMILARITY BUT NOT SEMANTIC ASSOCIATION ON FALSE RECOGNITION IN AGING
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: The crucial summary of the design in Experiment 1 appears to have a grammatical error (line 100); also what is a list lure? If it was in the list is it a lure or a target? We only find out at line 109. The method may benefit from a design section that is self-contained. I found the method very hard to follow and I feel that it would benefit from figures depicting each of the three conditions.

I am unfamiliar with the way that interactions are reported intertwined with main effects and cannot discriminate between original analyses, follow-up analyses and analyses based on different dependant variables.  Nested parentheses caused further confusion.

The y-axis is not labelled on the Figure. All four panels on the Figure have different maximum y-values, which hinders comparison.
Experimental design: I could not fully follow how words were placed into each condition and into study and test list in the 2nd paragraph of the material section in Experiment 1.  Is the word ‘novel‘  being used to label non-studied words on line 113 or does this refer to the fonts? There seems to be sufficient detail to replicate if one was prepared to devote a significant amount of time to unpack the information.

I did not see any control for the degree of congruency between fonts and words, which could have differed between study and test items and between conditions.
Validity of the findings: My lack of comprehension of what was actually being measured restricts my comments on the validity of the statistics although individual F-values appear to have been reported correctly. The Bayes factor analyses were a good way to account for multiple tests. The general discussion is fairly long and is therefore not always closely linked to the results.
Additional comments: In some respects I feel that I may have missed parts of the article due to my lack of understanding, particularly of the results sections. However, I likely made more effort with the paper as a reviewer than would a normal reader and the lack of clarity in the article prohibits my recommendation for publication.

It seems as though the main point of interest is age differences in perceptual (font) versus semantic (associative strength) lures.  However, Experiment 1 had the same perceptual presentation across all 3 manipulations of semantic relatedness. Experiment 2 controlled for this by also manipulating font uniqueness and the take home message is that perceptual lures can lead to greater age deficits than semantic lures. As far as I understand it, this could be conveyed in a much briefer write-up that excludes a full statistical exploration of the data and that has a shorter discussion.


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: EFFECTS OF PERCEPTUAL SIMILARITY BUT NOT SEMANTIC ASSOCIATION ON FALSE RECOGNITION IN AGING
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: The paper is generally very well-written and structured.

Minor issues:
- The authors could expand on the relevance of remember/know judgments in the introduction (l.64).
- Figure 1, together with its caption, should be more self-explanatory; please add Y-axis labels.
- l. 173-174 missing p-values
- l. 183 incorrect p-value
- l. 315 should be table 2
- Table 2: How was false recognition to font only lures in older adults computed/corrected? Shouldn't this value be closer to .38?
Experimental design: The study seems carefully designed. Yet, for the author to fully understand the design the clarity of reporting the methods of Experiments 1 and 2 could be improved (e.g., how many lists and items of each type were used and how exactly were they combined to create the materials for each condition; perhaps a table could more easily illustrate the construction of materials; an appendix could be addedd that provides the full list of words and fonts to increase replicability).
Validity of the findings: My major concern is that, instead of false memory, the results might reflect strategic differences between age groups in how they (mis)understood the recognition instructions. There was no instructions regarding the role of fonts at test. Did age groups differ in their understanding of the relevance of fonts to recognition judgments? I.e., older adults may have understood the similarity between studied and test fonts as relevant (instead of to-be-ignored) for the recognition test. If so, their recognition of lures would no longer be interpretable as "false" memory.

A perhaps related puzzling finding is that, in Experiment 2, older adults had increased perceptual false memory (font only condition), as well as increased semantic false memory (unique font condition) - but when both factors were combined (correlated font condition) the age-related false memory increase was eliminated. This needs to be discussed, perhaps with the differences in true recognition in mind.

A third issue concerns statistical analyses. To interpret null results, the authors report Bayes Factors in some cases, which is helpful for interpretation. In other cases, however, they still interpret null findings without reporting BF, especially for ANOVA analyses. I would recommend to add the missing BFs that are easily computed from JASP (or to avoid interpreting the respective null findings).
In interpreting BF values, the authors unfortunately decide that a BF > 3 represents strong evidence, but that a BF < 3 only yields inconclusive evidence. I believe there are two problems with this interpretation: first, there is little agreement that BF > 3 is strong (e.g.,  http://www.nicebread.de/grades-of-evidence-a-cheat-sheet/). Second, the BF value is a continuous measure of evidence (or relative belief updating), and lends even less support for introducing arbitrary cutoffs or decision criteria than the p value; we all know that the difference btw significant and non-significant is itself not significant, and analogously (but for different reasons) a small difference in BF (e.g., between 3.3 and 2.1) is itself not (strong) evidence for a difference in support for two hypotheses - but such a difference might be directly tested by targeted model comparisons in some cases.
Finally, the authors report that they used robustness checks to test whether their result patterns depend on the choice of priors. They do not, however, report detail on these analyses or their results.
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: EFFECTS OF PERCEPTUAL SIMILARITY BUT NOT SEMANTIC ASSOCIATION ON FALSE RECOGNITION IN AGING
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: Improved (see below)
Experimental design: Same as original submission.
Validity of the findings: Same as original submission.
Additional comments: I feel that the clarity of the article has improved and that there is a clear take-home message that is sufficiently evidenced and of interest to ageing researchers.

The new figure aided clarity. I still feel that this simple message could be presented with fewer statistics and measures but I was better able to follow this version.


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

Input:
Title: EFFECTS OF PERCEPTUAL SIMILARITY BUT NOT SEMANTIC ASSOCIATION ON FALSE RECOGNITION IN AGING
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: The authors have added Bayes factors for some non-significant findings that are interpreted but not for all of them. Please supply additional analysis for...

- Both experiments:
    - non-significant difference in forward digit span between age groups
    - False recollection of novel items

- Experiment 1:
    - adjusted false recognition report BF for non-significant post hoc tests

- Experiment 2:
    - True recognition: report BF for absence of interaction effect
    - True recollection: Report statistics for group and interaction effects including BF for non-significant findings.
        - Also, double check that the reported BF = 0.96 is correct (seems surprising given the strong effect in the frequentist analysis, partial eta² = .25, p < .001)

- Experiment 2, adjusted false recognition: Double check BF for effect of interaction given that the frequentist analysis was non-significant.
Experimental design: no further comments
Validity of the findings: - The authors have clarified in the method section that participants received no instructions regarding the relevance of font. They rightly state that it is unlikely that older participants responded solely based on fonts. However, as previously pointed out the possibility remains that older adults may have considered the font relevant in addition to the words and more so than younger participants. In fact, the possibly impaired ability to ignore fonts that the authors discuss in lines 528-539 makes a similar point. Strategic or involuntary processing of fonts both have consequences for the interpretation of the findings. In case of strategic differences it would be hard to attribute the findings to "false" memory. This caveat to the interpretation should be discussed.

- The authors interpret the age-related increase in perceptual false recognition as being caused specifically by false recollection---being accompanied by a recollective experience rather than feelings of familiarity due to semantic knowledge---(e.g. l. 219-221 or 457-459) because the analysed "remember" responses follow the false recognition pattern. To validly make claim that recollection is selectively driving the effects, the authors would need to show that the same pattern is absent in know responses. Moreover, in the analysis of false recollection in Experiment 1 the ANOVA is followed up by post hoc tests of age effects for each condition. However, it appears that, contrary to all other analyses, the authors do not adjust the alpha level for multiple comparisons (alpha = .017). Had they done so, the age-effect in the font only condition would not reach statistical significance. This would further weaken the claim that the effect is driven by recollection.

- After correct adjustment of false recognition rates in Experiment 2, the group x condition interaction is no longer significant and the evidence for the interaction effect is anecdotal. Hence, the interpretation of differences between subsequently significant and non-significant post hoc tests of age effects per condition is questionable. Similarly, in the subsequent across-experiment analysis the authors report extreme evidence for the group x condition interaction but do not report whether they found evidence against a three-way interaction with experiment. Given the ambiguous results of Experiment 2 such an interaction would call into question whether the group x condition interaction was indeed replicated.
Additional comments: - We appreciate the authors' sharing of raw data and stimulus materials.
- The authors may consider moving lines 144-167 to a data-analysis subsection of the methods section.


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

Input:
Title: THE EARLY MIOCENE BALAENID MORENOCETUS PARVUS FROM PATAGONIA (ARGENTINA) AND THE EVOLUTION OF RIGHT WHALES
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: Authors' English is not adequate. The text is rich in syntax errors and misspellings and needs a profound revision by a native speaker. Use of commas and abbreviations is not consistent, names of authors cited in the literature are often misspelled. Editorial and linguistic revisions are highly needed.
No comment.
No comment.
The article is self-contained but some of the results cannot be accepted unless significant revisions of the methods. Suggested revisions are provided in the comments to the authors.
Experimental design: No comment.
No comment.
Problematic use of published methods to infer total body length in Balaenidae. Characters used for orientation of the skull insufficiently described. Suggested improvements are providedin the comments to the authors.
Method used for orientation of skull insufficiently described and impossible to replicate (acute angle not defined; posterior wall of nasal fossa not defined). Suggested improvements are provided in the comments to the authors.
Validity of the findings: Good validity as far as the anatomical description of Morenocetus parvus is concerned. Phylogenetic analysis must be supplemented with information about the authors' hypotheses of character evolution used to order a high number of character states. Body size reconstruction inadequate based on problematic use of the cited methodology. Suggested improvements are provided in the comments to the authors.
No comment.
Conclusion are well stated based on the methods used but such methods must be discussed and revised as far as body size reconstruction and phylogenetic analysis are concerned. Improvements are related to changes in the methods as suggested in the comments to the authors.
No comment.
Additional comments: This manuscript includes the re-description of an important fossil balaenid, that is Morenocetus parvus. The anatomical description is generally good, as only minor changes are needed to better explain the concepts presented by the authors. The organization of the manuscript is substantially good and the text does not need to be shortened, I only suggest moving the Comparative Skull Analysis before the Phylogenetic Analysis as it provides evidence then used to support the nodes found in the cladograms. The fossil described is important as it represents the oldest record of Balaenidae whose original description is from 1926 and is inadequate for being used in modern phylogenetic works.
Unfortunately, the manuscript shows several problems and, in my opinion, cannot be accepted for publication in its present form. I list such problems below and then discuss all of them:
1)	Insufficient description of the characters used for the orientation of the skull;
2)	Many character states used in the phylogenetic analysis are ordered but no explanation is provided suggesting that the authors had preconceived hypotheses of character evolution;
3)	The equation used for body size reconstruction of Balaenidae was not developed for such a group thus results are expected to be wrong.
4)	The English is not adequate and needs a thorough revision as it shows too many syntax errors and misspellings that, sometimes, make understanding difficult.
The English needs a thorough revision by a native speaker. Please, check verbs, their accordance with subjects; check commas in references; be consistent in your way to cite literature; check authors’ names (e.g., Kellogg includes two g). Please, do check also in the supplementary information files. In its current form, the English is highly incorrect. For example, on p. 8 lines 46 and following:
Balaenids has been consider a key group in understanding of baleen whales evolution, because is the oldest surviving lineage of crown Mysticeti, as suggested by their early…

This sentence must be changed into the following (or an equivalent):

Balaenids have been considered a key group in understanding baleen whale evolution because they represent the oldest surviving lineage of crown Mysticeti as suggested by their early

Materials
It is not clear why the referred specimen is not assigned to Morenocetus: is your decision based only on age assessment? Your decision must be based on morphology as you cannot be sure about species longevity for Morenocetus and you do not provide a quantitative assessment of the different age of the referred specimen. If it is not from Miocene, what is its age? How can you be sure about the fact that the observed differences in Nitrogen and collagen content exclude a Miocene age? Miocene spans from 23 to 5.3 million years ago: are the differences you found indicative of a difference in age of more than 15 million years?

Methods
Physical maturity: the study by Walsh & Berta (2011) was based on balaenopterids and it is not clear whether the chronology of suture closure that they detected on balaenopterids may be directly applied to Balaenidae. They applied to Balaenidae but, without a study of balaenid embryos an fetuses, their application to Balaenidae could be wrong. I strongly recommend authors to cite this problem in the direct application of Walsh & Berta (2011) method to Balaenidae.
Orientation of skull: Character 1 is not clear to me. What does it means that the posterior portion of the nasal fossa is perpendicular to the transverse axis of the skull? In lateral view? In dorsal view? Do you mean the anterior end of the nasal bones in dorsal view? Or do you mean the fundus of the nasal fossa (formed by ethmoturbinates) according to Mead & Fordyce (2009)? Character 2 depends on the whole orientation of the skull and may be a character typical of Eubalaena australis. How can use such a character for determining the orientation of different balaenid species? Character 3 must be defined more clearly. You must provide a value in degrees of the acute angle otherwise your character does not work. Acute angle is an angle included between 1° and 89°: please specify. Is Buono’s personal observation based on dissection? In this case, it is fundamental to understand your methodology otherwise character 3 cannot be accepted.
Phylogenetic analysis: The use of ordered characters suggests that the authors have an idea of how such characters evolved. In many papers, authors do not explain why they decided to treat some characters as ordered. I think that this should be avoided because it seems to me a way to get optimized phylogenetic searches based on preconceived hypotheses of character evolution. In my opinion, authors must explain why they treated characters 1, 4, 5, 25, 35, 37, 41, 58, 79, 86, 99, 104, 107, 114, 121, 172, 176, 182, 186, 204, 212, 226, 229, 231, 252 as ordered. This is a high number of ordered characters. Moreover, the authors use terms not described by their reference (Mead & Fordyce 2009): as an example, medial lobe of the tympanic bulla is not described there. Please, refer to the literature you cited or cite the relevant literature where the terms were defined.
Body size reconstruction: Pyenson & Sponberg (2011) developed the equation cited by the authors for stem Mysticeti that, in their work, included baleen whale species not belonging to crown Mysticeti. This means that the formula cannot be used to predict body size of Morenocetus, Balenella brachyrhynus, Balaena montalionis, Balaenula astensis and Eubalaena shinshuensis. The authors must remove all the parts of the manuscript related to this research and use different methods as the results are not based on the appropriate methodology.

Geological setting
It would be better to define authors’ concept of early Miocene. I guess that they mean Aquitanian-to-Burdigalian but more detail would greatly help in understanding. The authors cite U-Pb and Sr-Sr absolute datings: please cite the dates in million years to clarify the results of these analyses. A clear specification of the age of morenocetus parvus would be greatly helpful. I strongly recommend authors to change the generic ‘early Miocene’ date into a more detailed age horizon (e.g., Aquitanian, Langhian).

Emended diagnosis
If the total length was estimated based on the equation cited in the Methods section, it must be removed as the equation is not appropriate for the reconstruction (see above). Is ‘the narrow exposition of the squamosal’ observed in dorsal or lateral view? I suggest changing exposition into exposure. Bisconti (2000) published a redescription of Balaenula astensis showing what he called ‘lateral squamosal crest’ that corresponds to the supramastoid crest of Mead & Fordyce (2009). The authors stated that the supramastoid crest is absent in Balaenula astensis but this statement may be easily questioned. It would be better to state that in Balaenula astensis the supramastoid crest is reduced. The same character should be reviewed and changed accordingly in the character list in the Supplementary information file. Authors must check the English because their text is rich in syntax errors.

Description
Preservation: The authors use the term “corroded” which refers to chemical attack to the bone. Is that the correct term to be used here? If so, which kind of chemical attack occurred?
Physical maturity: check the English. Rephrase the very long last sentence to help understanding.
Supraoccipital: the references to the stages of suture fusion described by Welsh & Berta (2011) are for balaenopteroids. The authors must state that. As an example, on p. 23 line 388 they should write what follows: (corresponding to stage SR4 of balaenopteroids).
Basisphenoid-presphenoid: on p. 25 line 448, the authors used abbreviations to indicate length and width. I recommend writing length and width as abbreviations are not defined in the previous lines or in the Methods section.
Pterygoid: authors used ~ or ≈ inconsistently throughout the manuscript. I recommend being consistent.
Frontal: p. 31 line 588: how can the authors explain the presence of the rugose surface on the orbit (a character of calves) in an adult or subadult individual?
Periotic: p. 34 line 648: what about the tractus spiralis foraminosus?

Phylogenetic analysis
Check the English carefully. P. 35 line 663: please, define the posterior border of the zygomatic process (of the squamosal, I suppose). P. 37 line 708: note that in Figs 2 and 3 of Bisconti (2000), the narial process of the frontal of Balaenula astensis is absent thus it is impossible to accept it as a synapomorphy of the clade including Balaenula astensis, Balaenella, balaena and Eubalaena. Moreover, it the presence of such a process is questionable in Eubalaena australis based on several illustrations. The analysis results also in the paraphyly of Balaenopteridae as Eschrichtiidae is included within it.
I suggest moving the Comparative skull anatomy before the Phylogenetic analysis as it provides evidence used to code character states and, in the end, for supporting nodes in the cladograms.

Discussion
The authors make comparisons to an unpublished skull (MPL 5-21) and use characters of such a skull as evidence against the monophyly of Balaenoidea. However, they must illustrate what they are referring to otherwise their evidence cannot be accepted. I recommend illustrating the characters they are describing in the text or remove the text about MPL 5-21 to avoid ambiguity. I must note that the character under discussion in this paragraph is related to the development of the coronoid process of the dentary. It must be remarked that the use and codings of ontogenetic characters should be carefully discussed as in many cases may be problematic. Panchen (1994 in Hall, Homoplasy, Academic Press) strongly recommend to use adult morphologies to establish homology and cites authoritative references. I agree that ontogenetic data may be used but only in cases in which complete developmental paths are known but this is not the case of Balaenidae and Neobalaenidae.
Orientation of the skull: I recommend to remove this text unless the characters discussed in the Methods are better defined.
On p. 43 the authors use the italic for a title. Is this correct?
P. 43 line 866: anterior process of the periotic? Please, specify to which bone belong the characters mentioned in this paragraph. Moreover, this whole paragraph is to be carefully revised, as the English is inadequate and rich in misspellings and wrong syntax.
P. 46 line 918 and followings: Pyenson & Sponberg (2011) applied their methodology to the reconstruction of two extinct cetaceans including one balaenopterid (Balaenoptera siberi). In their paper, they are honest and clear in stating that the bizygomatic width overestimated the total length of B. siberi and that corrections are to be made in order to obtain the true length of the specimen under discussion. In this sense, the methods of Pyenson & Sponberg (2011) must be used carefully and with full complement of statistical corrections, they suggested. Finally, they developed specific regression equations to predict the total body length of specific clades of mysticetes: stem mysticetes and Balaenopteroidea. They did not develop specific equations for Balaenidae and, judging from their Fig. 3, stem mysticetes do not include Balaenidae. For these reasons, the predicted body sizes of the present manuscript cannot be accepted.

Figures
Figure 4. The supraoccipital fossa should be named external occipital fossa according to the text.
Figure 5. The lateral border of the exoccipital seems wrongly placed. In fact, in Fig. 5A (right part), such a border corresponds to the lateral edge of the sternomastoid fossa which is not the case, in my opinion. A thinner line located more dorsally seems to better correspond to the lateral border of the exoccipital. Moreover, it is possible to indicate the posterior process exposure in the right part of Fig. 5A. In Fig. 5B the authors should indicate the parietal-frontal suture and the squamosal-exoccipital suture which are clearly visible.
Figure 6B. The authors should indicate the parietal-frontal suture. The lateral border of the exoccipital indicated in this figure does not agree with that in Fig. 5. Please, decide and correct.
Figure 7. Postglenoid must be changed into postglenoid process.
Figure 11. Proximal opening of the facial canal must be changed into endocranial opening of the facial canal according to Mead & Fordyce (2009) which is the reference cited by the authors.
Figure 13. In the reconstruction of the skull of Balaenella brachyrhynus the shape of the premaxilla is different from the photographic representation provided in the original description. In the latter, there is a sharp edge between the anterior border of the narial fossa in lateral view and the portion of the rostrum that is anterior to such an edge has a different orientation. In the authors’ reconstruction, the horizontal portion of the premaxilla is too long if compared to the shape of the premaxilla of the original description and the change in orientation of the premaxilla seems not as marked as in the original description. I recommend the authors to provide a better reconstruction of Balaenella brachyrhynus showing the right details of the rostrum. From a different viewpoint, I would recommend the authors to remove this illustration unless they provide better-grounded characters for getting correct skull orientations for Balaenidae (see above).


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

Input:
Title: THE EARLY MIOCENE BALAENID MORENOCETUS PARVUS FROM PATAGONIA (ARGENTINA) AND THE EVOLUTION OF RIGHT WHALES
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: See below in general comments.
Experimental design: See below in general comments.
Validity of the findings: See below in general comments.
Additional comments: I am very pleased to see this manuscript. A more proper description and thorough analysis of Morenocetus parvus was long overdue. This manuscript does both things, which makes this a much needed contribution to our understanding of marine mammal diversity from South America, and the evolutionary history of balaenids. This work will no doubt be of interest to paleontologist, neontologist as well as anyone interested in the evolutionary history of baleen whales.

The manuscript is generally well written and I commend the authors on the high quality images, illustrations and analysis. However, I do have some minor concerns that are outlined in detail below and that I hope the authors take into consideration.

Specific comments:

Lines 87-89: I suggest changing the beginning of this sentence from “In latest Bisconti’s (2005) analysis…” to “In the latest analysis (Bisconti, 2005)…”

Lines 182-184: I suggest the authors to be cautious when using the implied weight method as it may not necessarily result in the best topology. See the papers by Congreve & Lamsdell (2016) and Puttick et al. (2017) where they discuss the inconsistencies and lack of accuracy of using implied weights. For example see the different position of Mauicetus parki in Fig. 12B, as the sister taxon of Plicogulae and not as a balaenopteroid as in previous analyses (e.g. Marx & Fordyce, 2015). See also Tsai & Fordyce (2016) which show similar discrepancies with this taxon in the equal vs implied weight results.

Congreve, C.R. &. J.C. Lamsdell. 2016. Implied weighthing and its utility in paleontological datasets: a study using modeled phylogenetic matrices. Paleontology 59:447-462.

Puttick, M.N., J.E. O’Reilly, A.R. Tanner, J.F. Fleming, J. Clark, L. Holloway, J. Lozano-Fernandez, L.A. Parry, J.E. Tarver, D. Pisani & P.C.J. Donoghue. 2017. Uncertain-tree: discriminating among competing approaches to the phylogenetic analysis of phenotype data. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 284:20162290.

Line 275: Is there a full name for Cremonesi?

Line 290: I suggest changing “… and lateral edges of supraoccipital straight.” to “… straight lateral edges of the supraoccipital.”

Line 312: correct typo here “… having ths supraorbital…”

Line 315: “thicked orbital rim…” did the authors meant “thicker orbital rim…”

Lines 379-382: In figure 4B the “external occipital fossa” is labeled as “Supraoccipital fossa” please update the figure (or text) so that they are consistent.

Lines 567-569: There seems to be a discrepancy with the first half of this sentence “The supraorbital process is short transversely and long anteroposteriorly:” however, it looks more like the supraorbital process is long transversely, and short anteroposteriorly, not the other way around.

Line 770: period missing after Eubalaena spp.

Line 782: add period after Balaenula sp. and only italize genus

Lines 792-793: separate “Discussion…” section from preceding paragraph.

Line 876: remove space between Chaeomysticeti and comma

Line 887: remove space between “stasis/” and “morphological”

Line 893: I suggest changing “Mysticetes” to “mysticetes”

Line 912: montalionis is not completely italized

Line 914: typo at end of line “extinc”

Line 915: typo, change “diferent” to “different”

Lines 927-930: see also Slater et al. 2017