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: LATE CRETACEOUS SAUROPOD TOOTH MORPHOTYPES MAY PROVIDE SUPPORTING EVIDENCE FOR FAUNAL CONNECTIONS BETWEEN NORTH AFRICA AND SOUTHERN EUROPE
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: Dear Editor and authors.

It was a pleasure to review the paper entitled “Titanosaurian tooth morphotypes as supporting evidence of Late Cretaceous landbridges between North Africa and Southern Europe”. I am providing in attachment a pdf with the major part of my comments and suggestions. I am not a native English speaker, so I avoid to make comments about this. The English seems correct, nevertheless, I had some minor doubts in some points of the text. A careful review by the authors should be enough to make sure that everything is ok.

So, my opinion. This paper made me think a little about if we are doing well on this. I understand the need to publish (I am also in the same situation), but sometimes, this definitely reduces the impact of our conclusions and our finally work. I don’t have a clear answer to solve this problem, so it is only a personal reflection. I suppose that this paper appears in the possibility to publish for free on Peer J, if submitted in February, and some of the mistakes that I found herein, might be related with the need to achieve the proposed deadline. If I am correct, the editors should have this in account in future “free opportunities”, because I feel this paper is far to be done for submission. However, it is excellent to have a paper talking about Cenomanian sauropods of Africa, a still pretty unknown group of dinosaurs in this territory, and this is for the MAJOR point of this manuscript.

Major problems:
-	Along the text, you lack several important references (some of them from the last five years). I will cite some that for me are almost obligatory, in order to discuss your material: Wilson (2005), Wilson and Allain (2015), Wilson et al. (2016), Mocho et al. (2017), Martinez et al. (2016), Wiersma and Sander (2017), Sereno et al. (2007), Nowinski (1971), Seagusa and Tomida (2011), Gallina and Apesteguía (2011), etc…
-	In your systematic discussion you should provide a better discussion with other titanosaurs, especially the ones that have several teeth referred, inclusively from the same skull, such as, Nemegtosaurus, Tapuiasaurus, Sarmientasaurus, Lirainosaurus, etc… The establishment of systematic approaches based on titanosaurian teeth is especially problematic, and you should provide good diagnostic features that allow you to separate them in different groups (a table and figures will be highly recommended with several examples. Only after this you are able to achieve a good discussion).
-	Throughout the text, you provide very vague comparisons, like “seems similar”. Avoid this. Systematic phylogeny needs shared features (synapomorphies), diagnostic features, and exclusive set of features, in order to support the established relationships between the Cenomanian taxa and European taxa. I am not asking for a cladistics analyses, but I need to have the diagnostic features in order to accept your hypothesis. A lot of the differences pointed by the authors are also justified in the text with different preservation, positions,  diets, etc. So, is difficult to me accept your last conclusion. Because some teeth resembled others, you propose a contact between the sauropod fauna of North Africa and Europe around the Cenomanian.
-	Other thing is: some sauropod taxa present an important positional variability on the tooth morphology, and these is well-reported in some taxa such as Camarasaurus or Giraffatitan (taxa that were studied by the authors). The morphology of titanosaurs seems much more conservative, so, is much more difficult to establish different morphotypes, especially different morphotypes with taxonomic signal. In the Late Jurassic of Portugal, for example, you have an important morphological variability of titanosauriform teeth (see Mocho et al. 2017), part of this variability is related with the position and possible ontogeny (if not, the diversity of this clade is definitely underestimated, and at least, 3-5 taxa should be present on the Iberian Peninsula during the Late Jurassic). So the differences that you are observing have a taxonomic value? Maybe yes, maybe not, complete sets of teeth should be used to compare, but a lot of titanosaurian teeth are not possible to differentiate up to the moment. This should be one of your major questions on this paper. Why such a low morphological disparity!? We have characters able to be diagnostic?
-	Enamel ornamentation. You have some important papers about this question Holwerda et al. (2015), Mocho et al. (2017) and Wiersma and Sander (2017). You seem to doubt herein on the usage of these features for taxonomic assumption, you should provide more clear position along the text. A same morphotype might shows an important morphological variation of the enamel ornamentation along the tooth, along the tooth row and during ontogeny (see Holwerda et al. 2015, and Mocho et al., 2017). Holwerda et al. (2015) for a fossil record from the same period of time suggest that wrinkled pattern have taxonomic value, identified at least three different sauropods. Mocho et al. (2017), also provided several differences between clearly different morphotypes and taxa, but also identified important variability between teeth of the same morphotype and possible same taxon. So, any taxonomic assumption should be taken with caution, especially with teeth separated by millions of years.
-	Different rules are applied during for the references in the text. Check this situation
-	Finally, I definitely think, that you should focus your paper on the important information that you can provide for the characterization of the pretty unknown Cenomanian sauropod fauna of Morocco and Algeria. In my opinion, the paleobiogeographic interpretation that you provided lacks strong evidence and mainly supported by the already published evidence of faunal contact between Europe and Africa in the Early and Mid-Cretaceous. You should present evidences for the differentiation between teeth from diplodocoids and derived titanosauriforms. And be very clear about why these teeth should be referred to Titanosauria indet. and not Somphospondyli indet.
I will suggest this paper for publication with major revisions. I will be glad to review a second version.
Experimental design: See above
Validity of the findings: See above
Additional comments: 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: LATE CRETACEOUS SAUROPOD TOOTH MORPHOTYPES MAY PROVIDE SUPPORTING EVIDENCE FOR FAUNAL CONNECTIONS BETWEEN NORTH AFRICA AND SOUTHERN EUROPE
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: This MS describes eight sauropod teeth from the western part of North Africa. Late Cretaceous dinosaur fossils are extremely rare in Africa, so every piece of a new discovery is important.
The MS is generally well organized, but I have some comments and suggestions that should be clarified before the MS will be published.
English is clear. Literature references should be completed (see comments below).
Article structure is ok.
Experimental design: Research question is well defined, relevant. Methods described with sufficient detail.
Validity of the findings: The only problem is the exact location and age of the specimens.
Additional comments: 1) If I understand well the exact locality and thus the age of these specimens are practically unknown. Four of the teeth originate from the Kem Kem area, suggesting a Cenomanian age. On the other hand, the four teeth from Algeria are quite uncertain in age:
„The Continental Intercalaire of Algeria is less studied tan the Kem Kem, and the age ranges from Barremian to Aptian-Albian, however, most authors set the age of the beds close to the Moroccan border, where our Algerian specimens allegedly are from (Taouz, Algeria), to ranging from the Cenomanian to Turonian, with the Cenomanian layers being most fossil rich” – this means to me that these Algerian teeth might even not be Late but Early Cretacoeus in age. So, I would strongly suggest to be more careful to outline paleobiogeographical interpretations based, at least, on the latter four teeth.

2) The authors use the word „landbridge” both in the title and in the MS. As I know there is still no clear evidence for a true land connection between any of the South European landmasses (Iberia, Apulia) and Africa during the Late Cretaceous, thus I suggest to use rather „faunal interchange” (see Buffetaut 1989) of faunal connection phrase instead.
Both in the Introduction and the Discussion parts of the MS the authors discuss a Late Cretaceous faunal connection between the European archipelago and Africa, but refer only a few, relatively recent publications. This hypothesis, however, was already well outlined and supported by many other earlier works, dealing not only with sauropods, such as e.g. Buffetaut (1988, 1989), Vullo et al. (2004), Dalla Vecchia 2002, Pereda-Suberbiola (2009), Rabi and Sebők (2015), Csiki et al. (2015). So, I strongly ask the authors not to forget these workers, who did a lot of work already to demonstrate this scenario, in most cases, based on fossils with more exact age and locality data.

3) Description of the teeth are well done; I have only one comment to this. The authors describe macrowear features (i.e. position, orientation of the wear facets) of the teeth but only once add some info on the microwear details (e.g. scratch, pit orientation, length, proportion). At least the presence or absence of scratches and pits and perhaps scratch orientation would be useful information on those specimens where SEM pictures are available.

4) Citation-reference block is very incomplete! At least a dozen of cited Refs are not in the Reference list, indicated in the annotated pdf (see attached).

5) Figures are well done.

6) Some minor comments and typos have been also indicated in the annotated pdf.


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

Input:
Title: LATE CRETACEOUS SAUROPOD TOOTH MORPHOTYPES MAY PROVIDE SUPPORTING EVIDENCE FOR FAUNAL CONNECTIONS BETWEEN NORTH AFRICA AND SOUTHERN EUROPE
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 3

Output:
Basic reporting: In general the authors provide clear descriptions and their arguments are easy to follow. There are numerous minor grammatical and typographic errors, which I have tried to indicate on the annotated PDF version of their MS.

The authors have cited much of the relevant literature with respect to Kem Kem sauropods and to recent work on relevant sauropod tooth morphology. However, there are large number of referencing errors. The following references are cited in the text, but are not listed in the bibliography:

Calvo & Salgado 1995
Cavin & Forey 2004
Chiappe et al. 2001
De Broin et al. 1971
Erickson 1996
Forey and Cavin 2010
Garcia 2013
Garcia & Cerda 2010
Gheerbrant & Rage 2006
Gomani 2005
Kellner 2006
King et al. 1999
de Lapparent and Gorce 1960
Mannion 2009
Mannion 2011
Rodrigues et al. 2011
Rogers & Forster 2004
Sereno & Wilson 2005
Smith and Dodson 2003

Also, it is difficult to distinguish the papers by Diaz et al. for the years 2012 (two papers) and 2013 (three papers) and the authors should use letter suffixes to make it clearer which paper is being cited.

Finally, Upchurch (1995) and Upchurch (1998) are both duplicated in the reference list (as Upchurch 1995a, b and Upchurch 1998a, b). They are cited in the main text as Upchurch (1995) or (1995a) and Upchurch (1998) or (1998a). This needs correction.

Figures are well produced and show the relevant information, but it would also have been useful to provide images of the tooth microwear as this forms part of the discussion and description.

Most of the raw data are provided, with the exception of more detailed descriptions of the tooth microwear.
Experimental design: The research question is explicit and clearly defined. The authors provide novel data that has not been published elsewhere and use it to address species diversity in the sauropod dinosaur assemblage from the early Late Cretaceous of North Africa. This compliments previous work based on postcranial (largely vertebral) material. The methodologies they employ, based largely on detailed descriptive anatomy, are appropriate and carried out competently. All specimens are deposited in an accredited repository and the authors provide sufficient information for their work to be replicated. Given that sauropod teeth are common in these deposits, it's slightly disappointing that the authors were unable to obtain a larger sample size with which to investigate this question. In addition, although numerous comparisons are provided with European titanosaurs, comparisons with other sauropods are less extensive, which might have biased the authors towards accepting the similarities of their samples to the European material (thus suffering from at least a mild form of confirmation bias in the experimental design).
Validity of the findings: The authors replicate the finding that titanosaurians are present in the sauropod fauna of northern Africa, using a different data set. They also test the frequently made assumption that many of these sauropod teeth are referable to Rebbachisauridae and find it to be lacking as they did not identify any detailed similarities to rebbachisaurid teeth in their sample. However, as their sample is numerically limited I would urge caution in interpretation as a broader sample of these teeth might identify further differences. Also, as noted by the authors, some of the differences seen in their sample are likely due to either preservational differences or positional differences within the tooth row, so I would urge a little more caution in identifying three distinct morphotypes (two seems more defensible). More comparisons with titanosaur teeth from other regions would have been useful as this could have allowed the authors to rule out similarities to taxa from other regions, which could have provided more/less support for the European links that they propose in the MS. Also, some additional basic reporting on the tooth microwear data would have been useful (providing measurements like scratch length, width and orientation frequencies). This in turn could have been used to discuss possible palaeoecological differences between the sauropod taxa, which could provide additional support for the presence of more than one taxon. It would also have been useful to note that there aren't many other African titanosaurs for comparison, so ruling relationships in/out with African taxa isn't really possible at the moment due to sampling, so the implied European connection might simply be the best option at the moment by default. Some nuance in the conclusions would seem to be justified given the small sample size and some of the other ambiguities alluded to above.
Additional comments: NA


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

Input:
Title: LATE CRETACEOUS SAUROPOD TOOTH MORPHOTYPES MAY PROVIDE SUPPORTING EVIDENCE FOR FAUNAL CONNECTIONS BETWEEN NORTH AFRICA AND SOUTHERN EUROPE
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting:
Experimental design:
Validity of the findings:
Additional comments: It was a pleasure to review the paper entitled “Could Late Cretaceous sauropod tooth morphotypes provide supporting evidence for faunal connections between North Africa and Southern Europe?”. I am providing in attachment a pdf with the major part of my comments and suggestions. I am not a native English speaker, so I avoid to make many comments about this, however, this time, the English seems a little confusing in some sentences. The editors and authors should read carefully the text, in order to correct some problems.

The review provided by the authors improved significantly the content of this paper, congrats! However I found some little mistakes that should be corrected (see attachment, and I leave some major comments)

Major problems:

	In the morphotype I, I miss a sentence saying why these teeth are not Rebbachisauridae (you have a detailed comparison, but not a final conclusion about it, and also why is not a non-titanosaur somphospondylan). What is the exclusive set of characters only present in Titanosauria (or some of the titanosaurian clades you are studying), and not present in derived somphospodylans like Phuwiangosaurus, Huabeisaurus or Mongolosaurus?
In your quantitative analyses, explain exactly what you did with the worn teeth. If they were included, you should do an analyses without them, and see how they affect your result. I also feel you can provide a better description and discussion of your result. The inclusion of more non-titanosauria somphospodylan titanosaurs and diplodocoids would be good to test better your taxonomic approach, but I also feel that this can be out of scope, taking into account the significantly improvements provided by the authors.
For your interpretation on the position and tooth-to-food and tooth-to-tooth contact, I miss some references. In methodology you just can refer which studies you are using to interpret the position of the tooth (and explain a little how works). One more time, be aware of the exceptions like Nemegtosaurus and Tapuiasaurus,
I have some major problems with the figures.

1 - The figure 1, the columns have different styles, are you using the originals? I suggest you to provide a clean version made by you, and similar styles. The borders of the continents are not acceptable.

2 – in the illustrations of the teeth I miss some indications of the features that you are describing in your manuscript, for example the wear facets, carinae and striations.

3 – In the figure of the paleobiogeography, why you are not refering the route proposed by Sallam et al. (2018)?

In the table you provide as a supplementary material with the measurements, can you had a column for comments and refer how you measured the teeth, if in situ or from the literature. In the ones where the measurements are extracted from the literature, refer precisely which table or figure you used to measure.

I will suggest this paper for publication with moderate revisions. I will be glad to review a third 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: A REAL-TIME PCR ASSAY FOR QUANTIFICATION OF PARASITE BURDEN IN MURINE MODELS OF LEISHMANIASIS
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: The aim of this study was develop a sybr-green based quantitative PCR assay for a highly conserved and single copy, putative RNA binding protein, DRBD3. The article is interesting and authors are presenting somehow very novels results. The manuscript is clearly written in professional, unambiguous language. The introduction is well contextualized with relevant citations. The abstract needs more detail and structure conforms to PeerJ standards. The main text is structured according with PeerJ standards. The figures are relevant and present high quality. The table 1 can be published as supplementary file.
Experimental design: The design of this study is original and is within scope of PeerJ. The most important issue of the study was measure parasite burden from 1 to 34 days pos infection in fragment of lesion of mice with cutaneous leishmaniasis. However, the study was done with only animal model (C57BL6) infected with L. major. In contrast to L. braziliensis, the L. major produces an important parasite burden in the lesion. Furthermore, there was important unspecific DNA amplification of uninfected tissue samples. These unspecific DNA amplifications can have happened by big amount of DNA (100ng) in the 10 µL of reaction.
Validity of the findings: no comment
Additional comments: The article is interesting and authors are presenting somehow very novels results. The manuscript is clearly written in professional, unambiguous language and well contextualized with relevant citations. The abstract needs more detail and structure conforms to PeerJ standards. The use of qPCR to measure the Leishmania DNA is appropriate, but presents some limitations. One of them, there was of Leishmania DNA after healing of the lesion.  Furthermore, the qPCR is expensive and require sophisticated equipments. It requires also long incubation (overnight) time for DNA extraction.  These limitations can be better discussed in the paper. In the phrase (lines 269-272) “Using a qPCR approach to amplify parasite DNA allows determination of parasite burden in as little as 2-4 hours instead of waiting approximately a week for parasites to grow in the LDA” the authors need consider the extraction time. In the line 280-282, the author wrote that the primers could be adapted for use in PCR-ELISA to improve sensitivity and capacity of the assay. However, the sensibility of the qPCR is high than PCR-ELISA.


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

Input:
Title: A REAL-TIME PCR ASSAY FOR QUANTIFICATION OF PARASITE BURDEN IN MURINE MODELS OF LEISHMANIASIS
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: The English language results adequate.

Check the references in the line 423-426, there is a repetition of the same reference.

In figure 1 legend, please verify the150bp PCR product length; submitting the primer’s sequences in primer-BLAST results in a 140bp PCR product length.

Regarding the figure 1C, show the entire agarose gel and report the type of DNA marker used for this experiment (report it also in “Primer design” section, line 109 of materials and method).
Experimental design: The authors state that amplifying DRBD3 gene overcome the problem of multicopy genes variability during the infection. This should be demonstrated by amplifying the template using other primers, such as those reported in table 1.

In the title of the manuscript, it has been reported “..in murine models of leishmaniasis”; to state that this model is generally suitable for different Leishmania species, they should validate the amplification protocol infecting with other species.

Line 178: please check the melting temperature.

In line 138 the amount of L. inoculated is 2x10e7 parasites in 50 µl, whereas in line 188 is reported an inoculation of 2x10e6 L.; please verify.

Please verify the text formatting of the whole manuscript: check also the space of the unit of measurement (e.g. line 113, 114).
Validity of the findings: In this manuscript, the authors show a new real-time PCR assay based on the amplification of the single-copy gene DRBD3 gene, suitable for animal model studies.
The manuscript is well written, the techniques are well described and there are no objective errors. However, the conclusion are too speculative and not completely supported by presented data.
Additional comments: In this manuscript, the authors show a new real-time PCR assay based on the amplification of the single-copy gene DRBD3 gene, suitable for animal model studies.

Making the appropriate revision, this manuscript could contribute to improve the use of the animal models in experiments involving infection with Leishmania spp.


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

Input:
Title: A REAL-TIME PCR ASSAY FOR QUANTIFICATION OF PARASITE BURDEN IN MURINE MODELS OF LEISHMANIASIS
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: no comment
Experimental design: no comment
Validity of the findings: no comment
Additional comments: The authors responded to the queries and all additions are very illustrative for the reader.
The revisited manuscript turns out to be complete and the conclusion are now completely supported by presented data. Therefore, I endorse the publication.


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

Input:
Title: RISK AND PROTECTIVE FACTORS FOR DRUG DEPENDENCE IN TWO MOROCCAN HIGH-RISK MALE POPULATIONS
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: INTRODUCTION
This section was well written and provided a basic rationale for conducting the study. I thought, however, that the introduction did not adequately justify why incarcerated people specifically were included – and this could possibly be brought to the forefront more in future iterations. Also, did the participants provide written, informed consent prior to taking part in the study? If so, this should be mentioned. If not, it should be justified.

•	Line 65:  Do the authors have a newer reference to support this (seemingly time-relevant) claim?
•	Line 67: When discussing a loss of 6.5 DALYs, presumably this is per person? If so, this should be explicitly mentioned.
•	Lines 71-72: Is a prevalence of 5.8% really very different to one of 5.0%? I would question the strength of this claim.
•	Lines 86-88: Do the authors have a referent to support this assertion?
Experimental design: MATERIALS AND METHODS
- Adequate design and clear research questions.

•	Line 131: It was interesting to read that those participants who finished high school were considered to be in the “high education” group; is this higher than the population demographics of Meknes would suggest?
•	Line 137: What about participants whom had girlfriends not living with them? Were they counted as single, despite being in a relationship?
•	Line 152: The name “Non active substance abuse” in this sentence appears to be different from the normal name used in the rest of the manuscript.
Validity of the findings: RESULTS
•	Lines 182-183: It would be helpful if the authors could briefly indicate the meaning of this finding (i.e., the direction of the association); although it is implied, it is not overly stated.
•	Lines 186-188: Similarly here, the direction of the association would be helpful to avoid ambiguity.
•	Line 198: The authors should report the 95% Cis when reporting the RRs.
•	Line 214: Should ‘screened for active substance use’ read ‘screened positive for substance use’?
•	Line 217: And the same here, also?

DISCUSSION
This was also well written and it was good to see the authors transparently discussing the potential limitations of their research design and resulting manuscript. Clinical implications and directions for future reswarch

•	Line 235: The phrase “A large margin of empirical evidence” does not make sense – presumably the authors are referring to the large body of literature or large amount of evidence?
•	Line 242: Can the authors justify with references their assertion that incarcerated males have high levels of impulsivity? This is almost certainly a true statement, but backing it up with some evidence would be preferable.
•	Line 252: The name “John” is not needed here and should be removed. Line 272: “DUDIT only refer” should be “The DUDIT only refers”.
•	Line 281: “need for”, not “need of”.
Additional comments: Thank you for the opportunity to review this manuscript, which examined the risk and protective factors for substance use in a sample of incarcerated males and a sample of outpatients from a substance use facility in Meknes, Morocco. These are two Moroccan samples that are relatively under-represented in the literature and so it is encouraging to see research studies being conducted in this space. This manuscript was mostly well-written and I imagine that the topic would likely be of interest to PeerJ’s readership. I do have a few specific points for the authors to consider (see above) which I believe may strengthen the manuscript:

TERMINOLOGY:
•	Some of the terminology used in this manuscript (such as ‘addicts’, ‘inmates’, and ‘not active or no abuser’) are all potentially quite reductionist and stigmatising in nature, reducing the person to his offending history or substance use only. I would strongly encourage the authors to remove references to addicts and inmates, and perhaps amend ‘no abuser’ to ‘no abuse’ when describing their categories.
•	Unless it is a PeerJ requirement, I would recommend removing the word ‘subjects’ and replacing it with ‘participants’ throughout the manuscript, as subjects is quite outdated.
•	Data are plural – so it should be “data are”, “data were” etc. instead of “data was collected”.

ABSTRACT
•	It would be helpful to the reader to understand (even briefly) what ‘academic competence’ refers to and how it was measured.
•	In the Results section of the abstract, having some figures and statistics would be helpful to immediately orient the reader to the strength of the observed associations.

I hope this feedback is of use and I wish the authors the best of luck in their future endeavours.


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: RISK AND PROTECTIVE FACTORS FOR DRUG DEPENDENCE IN TWO MOROCCAN HIGH-RISK MALE POPULATIONS
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: This manuscript describes a study investigating risk and protective factors of drug dependence in two groups of high risk Moroccan males using cross-sectional self-report survey data. The authors highlight the paucity of evidence in this area for low/middle income countries (LMIC), and especially in Morocco, whilst acknowledging that there is a broad range of literature on this topic investigating these issues in other settings. Whilst there is some literature based on research in other LMIC that may be relevant, the rationale for this paper is sound overall. There are some limitations both with the study design, statistical analyses and the measures used that are largely acknowledged in the discussion that limit the scope of the research questions and findings. There is also some area for improvement with respect to sentence structure, language and terminology that would improve the quality of the manuscript. These issues are considered below, and some specific suggestions are offered to assist the authors.

The language used needs to be reconsidered. Terms such as “drug abuse” and “addicts” and “suffered” are now considered to further stigmatise people who are experiencing problematic drug use or dependence. Using terms such as “people experiencing drug dependence”, or “problematic use” or other such non-stigmatising language should be considered.

The terms “drug use”, “drug abuse” and “drug dependence” appear to be used interchangeably throughout the manuscript. It is unclear whether these are referring to the same thing, or different categories of drug use. The authors should considering clarifying this, and if they refer to the same thing, should use the same term throughout the manuscript.

The grammar and language can be difficult to follow in places. For example, the sentence beginning on line 70 and ending on line 72, as well as the sentence on lines 86-88.

There are several sentences in the manuscript that make assertions or statements of fact that do not include a reference. Often these are followed by a sentence that does, however every statement of fact or assertion should have a reference to support it. For examples, see lines 57-59, 65-66 and 86-90 of the manuscript.

There is literature referred to as evidence of drug use trends that are more than 10 years old (eg, Odejide 2006 on line 65). There is more recent research published that would be more appropriate and accurate to refer to. Odejide et al also solely report on drug use in Africa, so any research investigating other developing countries would help to strengthen this section.

The burden of disease literature cited in the manuscript in Collins 2011 is probably getting a bit dated now, and there has been more recent work published in this area, including “Estimating the true global burden of mental illness” by Vigo et al (2016) published in Lancet Psychiatry. It would strengthen the manuscript if more recent literature was referred to.

The authors refer to several studies into protective and risk factors for drug dependence, and also the association between psychiatric disorders and drug dependence, then suggest that there is a scarcity of epidemiological research on psychiatric and substance use lower-middle income countries (LMIC) as a key part of their rationale for their study, suggesting that this is preventing the development of treatment programs. This appears to be contradicted by other research from LMIC that assess treatment programs, including: Bosman et al 2014, http://www.psychology.uct.ac.za/sites/default/files/image_tool/images/117/Caroline.Bosman.pdf; Gouse et al 2016, doi:10.1371/ journal. pone.0147900; Magidson et al 2017, doi:10.1080/08897077.2017.1380743

There is a reasonable amount of epidemiological research published in this area that comes out of South Africa that may be relevant to the research questions being investigated in the current study. Some of this work investigated substance use (see eg Pluddemann et al 2008, DOI:10.1080/09595230701829363; Parry et al 2015, https://doi.org/10.15288/jsa.2002.63.430; Dewing 2006, https://doi.org/10.1080/09687630500480228; Myers et al 2010, https://doi.org/10.1186/1747-597X-5-28,

Other research has investigated various aspects of mental illness and effective service provision in LMIC (see eg van Ginneken et al (2011) doi:10.1002/14651858.CD009149; Chibanda et al (2014), doi: 10.1097/QAI.0000000000000258). Some of this research seems relevant to the current study and may be worth mentioning to provide context.

The survey provided is in Arabic, so I am unable to understand what questions were asked, it would be helpful if an English version was also provided.
Experimental design: The research question is well expressed, investigating protective and risk factors of drug dependence in two “high risk” groups. However, the authors may consider defining what a “high risk” group is, as this is not clear. Risk has a technical meaning in epidemiology, so defining this is essential, as the obvious question is high risk of what?

The authors state that there is particular dearth of research looking at addiction in “Moroccan samples”. It is unclear why research done on non-Moroccan samples like some of the LMIC examples above would not be relevant, and may potentially weaken the rationale for doing this project. Articulating what gaps the current project will address and how it differs from previous LMIC research a little more clearly may strengthen the rationale for this study. Some background on what makes Morocco unique from other LMICs (other than the high production rates of cannabis resin) may be of value.

It is unclear why the high rates of cannabis resin production in Morocco “makes the concern over the health and societal effects of drug use highly relevant”. Is this because there are high rates of cannabis use in Morocco? If so, what are those rates? Also, is there evidence of substance use-related poor health outcomes in Morocco? If so, what does that evidence tell us about these poor health outcomes?

The authors should consider replacing the heading “subjects” with “participants”, this is consistent with modern convention.

The analyses conducted seem mostly appropriate, however there are a couple of things that the authors could consider to strengthen them. The first is the method of running univariate comparisons (via chi square tests in this case) and then solely relying on these results to build a multi-variate model is becoming outdated and does not always control sufficiently for potential confounders. The univariate analyses are a great starting point, but there is also a large amount of literature (some of which the authors refer to) about known associations between certain psychiatric disorders and substance use. Combining what is already known from the literature, with univariate analyses when building the multivariate logistic regression model is one way of ensuring that the model is as robust as possible. The second thing that could be done is to use a directed acyclic graph (DAG) to assist with this process (Shrier 2008, https://bmcmedresmethodol.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/10.1186/1471-2288-8-70).
Validity of the findings: The limitation of the DUDIT to a binary yes/no for drug dependence, without being able to identify the specific drug is a potentially fatal one for this paper. Clearly different drugs react differently and are often associated with different psychiatric conditions (ie methamphetamine with psychosis and anxiety and possibly depression, cannabis with depression and possibly psychosis, alcohol with depression etc). Depression is likely the most common psychiatric problem associated with the use of a range of different drugs. In clinical practice, there are different treatments required depending on the type of drug that has been used problematically. Not knowing which substances the participants in this study were using may result in confounding with respect to which psychiatric conditions were of most concern. For example, a small number of participants may have used stimulants, and may report schizophrenia, while a larger number of people may have been drinking alcohol or using cannabis, and may report depression as their main problem. Without being able to analyse these groups separately, clearly the problem reported by the larger group is going to appear more prevalent. This has implications for making general recommendations for community treatment services. Services that treat alcohol or cannabis-related psychiatric problems may not be appropriate or effective for people with stimulant-related psychiatric problems. Simply treating depression for example may not be effective. There is also no way of measuring polysubstance use in the group, as the psychiatric issues for the use of multiple drugs concurrently compared to one drug may be quite different again. Acknowledging these limitations is important, and qualifying any recommendations made for changes to treatment services with these limitations in mind would improve the credibility of the findings.

There is possible selection bias in the sample that is recruited from the prison, as only 7.2% of the total incarcerated population participated, whereas all outpatients approached participated. It is well known that people who volunteer are often systematically different in profile to those who do not. This is a limitation of this study and could potentially result in confounding, something that should be acknowledged.

Another suggestion with respect to the model is based around the fact that the difference in OCD reported between the groups is approaching significance (p=0.08). The authors may consider conducting a sensitivity analysis by running the model with OCD included to see if it changes their results.

An observation of the findings is the possibility that anxiety may be under-ascertained in the participant group, as previous research suggests that this often co-occurs with depression. It is possible that the authors have already considered this and investigated whether participants reported these conditions together or whether only one or the other was reported in most cases. This would be interesting to know from a clinical perspective.

It appears that the finding that depression is the “strongest predictor of ongoing, active drug abuse” may need to be reconsidered. This implies that depression is causal and predictive of future drug use (which it is impossible to conclude using these cross-sectional data). It may be that participants reporting depression is associated with participants also reporting long-term drug use up until the date they participated in the survey. From these data it is impossible to conclude whether depression or drug use is the dependent variable so it is just an association, and nothing “ongoing” can be concluded without follow-up data.

Line 235 “a large margin of empirical evidence” is confusing, consider re-wording as it is unclear what a large margin refers to. In the same sentence “unemployment is coupled with” may also be better rephrased as “unemployment is associated with”.

Line 241, what evidence is there to assume that prison inmates may be impulsive? Referring to this evidence may clarify and improve this statement.

Line 245, it seems unclear how the results from the current study support a hypothesis that employment can move substance users from a “drug culture” to a “mainstream culture”. It is impossible to test this hypothesis with the current study design, a randomised trial would be required to do this. This appears to be speculation, which is permitted by the journal, but should be acknowledged as such. The authors could also reconsider the wording of this paragraph, particular the terms “drug culture” and “mainstream culture” as these implicitly carry value judgements as they are not easy to define.

The paragraph beginning on line 245 is a long one and could potentially be split up. It also could be cut down in size and put more succinctly so that the points being made can be done with less words.

Line 266, consider rewording this to something like “the findings of the present study are consistent with the results of previous studies…”

Line 268, it is not clear what the rationale for these recommendations is. There is no evidence presented to suggest that helping participants with social support and job opportunities will assist to treat substance use disorders and psychiatric illness. A participant reporting poor education and unemployment may be associated with a number of underlying causes or exposures from childhood up until the time of the study. One suggestion is to refer to the literature for evidence-based interventions that have been successful in assisting with treating co-occurring substance use and psychiatric disorders. Providing a reference for the evidence that adequate medical care that addresses depressive symptoms (or depression?) is possible when using integrative treatments would also strengthen this section.

Line 275-276, consider rewording for clarity. The research design means that only a male-specific discussion of the results is possible, so that the findings and recommendations may not be relevant to the female population.
Additional comments: The authors may consider recommending that in light of the small sample size and limited power of their study, that a larger study be designed that addresses the potential selection bias raised above, and that incorporates measures that will make separate analyses possible for different types of drugs. Measures such as the WHO ASSIST are useful to collect data of this type. Further research investigating the effectiveness of treatment for co-occurring substance use and psychiatric disorders in a LMIC setting such as Morocco is also likely warranted.


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: RISK AND PROTECTIVE FACTORS FOR DRUG DEPENDENCE IN TWO MOROCCAN HIGH-RISK MALE POPULATIONS
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: No comment.
Experimental design: No comment.
Validity of the findings: No comment.
Additional comments: Thank you for the opportunity to review the revised version of this manuscript. I am satisfied with the changes that the authors have made on the basis of my suggestions and I wish them luck in their future endeavours.


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: RISK AND PROTECTIVE FACTORS FOR DRUG DEPENDENCE IN TWO MOROCCAN HIGH-RISK MALE POPULATIONS
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: Nothing to add here
Experimental design: Nothing to add here
Validity of the findings: Nothing to add here
Additional comments: Reply to author’s response to initial comments:

In my opinion, the manuscript has been improved by the many changes the authors made, and is much stronger and more balanced than the previous version.

There are a few of the authors’ comments that I would like to address as I think they are important issues that were not resolved by the authors’ response to my initial comments, and addressing these issues will strengthen the manuscript:

“Thank you. We have now rephrased these sentences and now they read as follows: “The latest prevalence of drug use reported in this country was 5.8% (Kadri et al., 2010), a somewhat higher prevalence when compared to global numbers reflected by 5% in 2010 (UNODC, 2016).” (Lines 70-73) & “It is known that lower socioeconomic status of developing countries is associated with insufficient detection of somatic and psychiatric problems both in quantity and quality ; and also with lack of therapy and rehabilitation possibilities (Patel, 2007)” (Lines 91-93).”

I suggest that 5.8% is similar rather than somewhat higher than 5.0%. You could refer to it as marginally higher, but it is almost the same, so saying somewhat higher may be misleading.

“We would though humbly disagree with the suggestion to use terms “people experiencing drug dependence”, or “problematic use” as drug dependence is a psychiatric disease not an experience”.
“Cancer patients or patients with diabetes can be called diabetics and cancer patients without worrying about stigmatization. Being dependent of drugs/substances is another type of disease and we believe that not the word “addicts” which should be changed but the stigmas and indictments coupled to this word.”

I respectfully disagree with these statements. Whilst there has been some previous support for using a model of addiction/dependence as a disease, the emerging expert opinion is that this idea has provable flaws and is now outdated. There is no consensus yet on exactly how to characterize addiction, however it appears that most experts are moving away from using a model of addiction as a disease and I would suggest that the authors do this as well. For some examples of recent literature that discusses this, please see the following for the different perspectives: DOI 10.1007/s12152-016-9293-4; DOI 10.1080/16066359.2017.1399659; DOI 10.1007/s12152-017-9303-1
Also, please refer to “Treatment modalities for pregnant women with opioid use disorder” by Gressler et al, published recently in the Lancet for an example of how people who essentially have a problem with addiction are described in the academic literature in leading journals. They describe “pregnant women with opioid use disorders” not “opioid addicts” or “pregnant opioid addicts”, this is now normative in the addiction research area and I would suggest that these conventions are followed and the manuscript is changed accordingly.
Similarly, the terms “diabetics” and “cancer patients” are not used in the leading health literature any longer, rather “people with diabetes” and “people/patients with cancer” are used as these are considered less reductionist terms. Please see http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(18)30314-3 and https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(18)31078-X for two recent examples of this published in the Lancet.

“Very interesting suggestion. Two thoughts about it: the first is that as previously mentioned, if it is possible, we hope not to complete the present study with further statistical analyses. The second is that difference in the prevalence of Anxiety disorder could not be measured at all (p=0.88)  and as OCD is a type of anxiety disorder there is high possibility that further analyses would not shed lights for other associations (from our data).”

OCD has its own section in the DSM-V, and while the preamble section provided in the manual suggests that some OCD disorders have a close relationship with anxiety disorders, it is clinically not correct to state that OCD is a type of anxiety disorder.
The suggestion to re-run the model with an extra covariate was made based on the assumption that this would be a simple adjustment to the syntax used to analyse the data originally, particularly for a small dataset like the one this study has used. This sensitivity analysis could be easily reported in 1 short sentence in the results if there is found to be no difference, and if there is found to be a difference, then this is an important outcome that will change the results and make the paper stronger, so in my opinion would justify any extra effort required. This seems like a very simple and reasonable suggestion to improve the robustness of the analyses and is encouraged unless there is some reason why this would be difficult or not possible to do.

I had some additional minor suggestions based on reviewing the revised manuscript:

Line 101-102 “feeling of insecure” could be changed to “feelings of insecurity” or “feeling insecure”
Line 107, should the word “samples” or “groups” be inserted after Moroccan?
Line 243, I would consider changing “ongoing, active drug abuse” to “active drug abuse”. The word “ongoing” implies that you have measured drug abuse at more than 1 time point, which is not the case. I would suggest just reporting “active” drug abuse because this is what you measure at the 1 point in time when the data were collected for each person.


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: RISK AND PROTECTIVE FACTORS FOR DRUG DEPENDENCE IN TWO MOROCCAN HIGH-RISK MALE POPULATIONS
Review round: 3
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: Nothing to add
Experimental design: Nothing to add
Validity of the findings: Nothing to add
Additional comments: The authors have addressed all issues raised previously and the changes made have improved the strength of the paper which I think will make a valuable contribution to the literature.


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

Input:
Title: HISTOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF POST-ERUPTION TOOTH WEAR ADAPTATIONS, AND ONTOGENETIC CHANGES IN TOOTH IMPLANTATION IN THE ACRODONTAN SQUAMATE POGONA VITTICEPS
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: I think this is a great paper; interesting findings. I would be glad to see in published in the near future.

I have a few areas to suggest improvement that I've noted throughout the document. They cover two areas:
1. Citations - This is mostly in the introduction, but a few other areas as well. When you say something is "common," "pervasive," or "seen frequently," that implies there is probably a large body of publications supporting that idea, so there should be multiple (and possibly older than 1990s usually) works cited for that idea.
2. Grammar - I tend to be a little overenthusiastic about grammar, so feel free to ignore my comments on grammar if you feel strongly about it. However, I do believe there are a few areas where you use therefor instead of therefore. Also, I strongly suggest not to use "as" or "since" when you really mean "because." I'm sure the reader knows what you mean, but it's a little pet peeve of mine because those two words are not direct synonyms of because. I've also pointed out a few run-on sentences.

You'll also see this in my comments, but trogonophonid amphisbaenians are also acrodont and are squamates, but they do not belong to Acrodonta. That should be noted in your intro (and I think I may have pointed it out again in your discussion?). There's a few publications on this, but there are also a few CT scans available to view on digimorph.org.
Experimental design: no comment
Validity of the findings: no comment
Additional comments: Good findings! I thought it was not only interesting, but considering that the acrodont teeth of agamids have long been thought to be life-long acrodonts, these are also novel findings. I think this work with encourage future research on the topic; it would be interesting to see if a similar pattern is seen in other acrodontians, trogonophonids, and rhynchocephalians.


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: HISTOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF POST-ERUPTION TOOTH WEAR ADAPTATIONS, AND ONTOGENETIC CHANGES IN TOOTH IMPLANTATION IN THE ACRODONTAN SQUAMATE POGONA VITTICEPS
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: •	It is important that the author sets up that the definition of acrodonty is ambiguous at best, however, this reviewer believes it is important to establish what definition of acrodonty the author is ascribing to for the remainder of the manuscript. That is never established in the introduction (lines 86-99).

•	Better, close-up images of the wear facets on the jaws and teeth would be helpful.

•	When using “wear facets” it would be clarifying to specifically refer to either the tooth or jaw wear facets so the read knows which is being discussed.

•	Line 251: a reversal line is mentioned and it would be helpful to the reader if that was labeled in a figure.

•	Line 263: Also important to note that the location (i.e. deep in the jaw) also indicates that it is a developing tooth.

•	Line 281: The wear facets are not really well figured as mentioned in this sentence.

•	Line 285: Label pseudo-pedicels in figures. Additionally, a comparison between the ‘bony pedicels’ of the chameleon and the pseudo-pedicels of the Pogona vitticeps.

•	A more detailed description of the woven bone would be beneficial. Vascularity? Sharpey’s fibers? Osteocytes? A reorganization of this paragraph would clarify important points. Consider first just describing this tissue, then how the location and tissue-type suggests remodeling (also, please provide a citation for why this tissue suggests remodeling), and then discuss how remodeling is further evidenced by the geometry of implantation.

•	There are good descriptions of the enamel on the lingual and labial sides of the teeth but not the mesial or distal sides. A description would be informative and if not available, indication as such would be helpful.

•	It looks like all if not most of the figures in the manuscript are mislabeled. A review by the author of all of these numbers is necessary.

•	Figure labeling is not consistent in a few ways. First, double check abbreviations described in figure legend and those used in images. Second, in this histology images, it is inconsistent whether or not the external view is labeled as A or left blank. It seems most helpful to label as A (which is done in the figure legends, but not on figures themselves) and then shift the following histological images to B, C, D, etc.
Experimental design: •	If it is known, it would be interesting to know if these museum specimens are zoo, captive, or wild specimens.

•	Citation and justification for recognizing the differences in the jaws as ontogenetic rather than different species would add robustness to this analysis.
Validity of the findings: •	The longitudinal sections do not apparently reveal any enamel. Does that mean that there is no enamel on the mesial and distal surfaces? If so that is really interesting and worth mentioning. If it is simply due to sectioning bias that is also worth mentioning.

•	Discussion around the use of acrodonty as a phylogenetic character is well-written and very extremely interesting and important.
Additional comments: Overall I believe this to be a significant and extremely important piece of research that absolutely merits publication. This paper is most significant in its identifying the more nuanced the tooth implantation type of Pogona vitticeps and importantly provides evidence for and calls for a paradigm shift in the use of a descriptive feature like tooth implantation as a synapomorphy for clade definitions. Some minor additions to the photos and descriptions are suggested as well as, some organizational and persistent labeling issues that should be addressed. This reviewer did feel that there were several times where the research intent questions and general introductory material were repeated so please take care to make sure to cut back on redundancy.


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: CHANGES IN STIGMA AND HELP-SEEKING IN RELATION TO POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION: NON-CLINICAL PARENTING INTERVENTION SAMPLE
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: The basic reporting is clear and the English is quite good.  There are major problems with the references, and some problems with the article structure, including the fact that I believe that two more Tables should be presented in addition to the single Table provided.  More specifics are provided in General Comments below. The results are relevant to the hypotheses.
Experimental design: The aims of the study are appropriate to the Journal.
Research question is well-defined and meaningful, and is important to the topic at hand-mental health stigma and receipt of care in general, and in the case of postpartum depression in particular.  There are some problem with the methods, as noted below.
Validity of the findings: The findings are clear even if negative.  The conclusions are appropriate, although selection bias and its implications should be discussed in more detail.
Additional comments: This is an important issue and interesting approach to studying the problem of mental health stigma and help-seeking behaviors.  Some corrections and changes could improve the manuscript so that this could be a meaningful contribution to the professional literature.

Here are more specific comments:

Abstract:
Line 33-34: the word 'on' is missing before 'stigma'
Introduction:
•	Several of the references provided are not appropriate for peer review journals.  Organization websites that make statements about rates and associated variables are not acceptable, as they are not results of published peer-reviewed research. I refer to the beyondblue, PANDA, Gidget Foundation.  The statements made in the text should be backed up by serious research.
•	Line 68: the statement regarding a PPD rate of 44% is far different than that reported in most large-scale studies in developed countries, and is not a fair reflection of research findings.  Further the research referenced (Jackman et al.) has a clear selection bias, since recruitment was done via social media PPD support groups, etc., which are much more likely to attract women who are suffering depressive symptoms.  Thus the rate reported is not generalizable.  Further, the use of this rate and reference suggests a lack of the researchers' knowledge regarding the body of epidemiological studies of PPD.
•	Line 76-79: two references seem to be provided for a single quote.  Please clarify the correct reference.
•	Line 84-88: As noted above, beyondblue is not an appropriate source for the statements.  Mentions of 'stigma' on that website are mainly in describing their efforts or in the Forums..
•	Presentation of the references is not consistent--sometimes et al. is used, sometimes all authors are noted; the editorial rules should be followed.  Also the use of parentheses when noting authors is confusing--sometimes the author's name is within the parentheses even though the names are part of the text (eg., line 109, 134 etc.).
•	Line 120: the reference to Australian Bureau of Statistics is too general--I could not find the data at the url indicated in the References. The information should be more specific.
•	Line 136--the reference Australian National University is not on the Reference list; to what research is this referring?
Method:
•	Participants:  Better description of the participants should be presented, as well as the differences in characteristics between the various study groups (with significance levels)--best presented as a Table.
•	Line 169--16% of the participants having medical training is not a 'small proportion' as this is likely much greater that the proportion in the general population.  Thus raising questions about the recruitment and potential bias of the study population, which should be addressed later in the limitations.  This is also true of the very low retention rates (35.7%).
•	Line 175 'previous allied health training'--why is this included and not discussed later on.?
•	Line 224--the word 'to' is missing before PPD.
Procedure:
•	Line 238--Please name the University.
•	Line 258--was the question posed to all groups (intervention and control)?
•	Line 264-266--this may be better placed in the Results section.
Results:
•	Line 268--the Statistical Analysis section is usually placed in the Methods section.
•	Lines 286-295--A Table with these results would be easier to follow and understand.
Table 1: The scale name "Postpartum Depression Sale" is not the same as that mentioned in the text "Depression Stigma Scale."


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: CHANGES IN STIGMA AND HELP-SEEKING IN RELATION TO POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION: NON-CLINICAL PARENTING INTERVENTION SAMPLE
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: My main recommendation is that this study should be reported according to the CONSORT Statement.
Has the trial been registered? If so, give details. If not, it needs retrospective registration.
The Abstract needs to specify what the interventions involve.
Lines 97-98. This sentence is about recognition, which is not the same as familiarity.
Line 119. I think this should say “prevalence” rather than “incidence”.
Lines 163-164. In reporting the power analysis, please give the effect size that was the basis of the calculation and how this effect size was chosen.
The authors use Cronbach’s alpha as an index of reliability. The consensus of opinion among psychometricians these days is that alpha has major limitations and should be replaced by McDonald’s omega. See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28557467 and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24844115 .
In examining the correlates of stigma (lines 287-295), univariate methods are used. Given that the correlates may not be independent, this should also be done with multiple regression.
I could not understand the sentence on lines 298-300.
Experimental design: No comments.
Validity of the findings: The choice of sample for this study is not ideal, as the participants are not necessarily at risk of PPD (e.g. some are elderly). The study would be better if carried out with pregnant women and their partners, or at least people planning to be parents in the future. This limitation needs acknowledging.
Additional comments: None.


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: CHANGES IN STIGMA AND HELP-SEEKING IN RELATION TO POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION: NON-CLINICAL PARENTING INTERVENTION SAMPLE
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: This is a re-review; issues previously noted have been addressed.
Experimental design: Issues noted in the original review have been adequatly addressed
Validity of the findings: The findings are clear.  Bias has been adequately noted.
Additional comments: The issues in the review have been adequatey addressed.


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

Input:
Title: CHANGES IN STIGMA AND HELP-SEEKING IN RELATION TO POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION: NON-CLINICAL PARENTING INTERVENTION SAMPLE
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 2

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


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

Input:
Title: A TAXONOMICALLY AND GEOGRAPHICALLY CONSTRAINED INFORMATION BASE LIMITS NON-NATIVE REPTILE AND AMPHIBIAN RISK ASSESSMENT: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: Basic reporting is adequate, with clear language used, sufficient field background provided, professional article structure, shared raw data and self-contained study.
Experimental design: The study represents original primary journal in line with PeerJ aims and scope. Research question is well defined, relevant and meaningful.

There are however several problems regarding the methods and study setup, and information on methods, which I presented in detail in general comments to the authors below. These issues will have to be addressed through a major revision.
Validity of the findings: Problems with the methods and interpretation of the results will have to be resolved before the findings can be judged as valid.

Conclusions are generally well stated and linked to research questions.
Additional comments: In their paper titled "A taxonomically and geographically constrained information base limits non-native species risk assessment: The case of reptiles and amphibians", MS #27799, authors presented  an analysis of taxonomic attention and the presence of biases in invasion science literature.

The study is interesting ad relevant, and the manuscript is generally well developed. However, there are several problems related to the methods applied and interpretation of results, which would have to be adequately addressed before the manuscript can be considered for publishing. Please see my detailed points below.

1. My major problem with the study setup is the chosen search phrase, used for identify relevant literature. Many terms are missing that might have identified additional key literature, that is not necessarily picked up by the phrases used here - for example, terms such as newt, iguana, chameleon, agama, tuatara, gavial, gharial, skink, viper, python, serpent, alligator, caiman, etc. (even this list is far from being complete). If a publication is focused on a specific species, it is very likely that vernacular and Latin name of that species will be mentioned in the title, abstract and/or keywords (i.e. in the publication "Topic"), while general name of its taxonomic group will be often not mentioned at all, so search approach used by authors would not retrieve such publications.
     I made a search in Web of Science, using the same general terms authors used (alien, invasive, non-native, exotic, non-indigenous, feral) and the specific terms I listed above: "Topic = alien OR invasive OR non-native OR exotic OR non-indigenous OR feral AND Topic = iguana* OR chameleon* OR agama* OR tuatara* OR gavial* OR gharial* OR skink* OR viper* OR python* OR serpent* OR alligator* OR caiman* OR newt*", after which I eliminated those publications identified by the search phrase made by the authors, which resulted in as much as 874 potentially relevant publications that authors failed to include in their review. Admittedly, many of these publications represent mismatches (i.e. related to medicine, like those mismatches authors identified in their sample), but the proportion of relevant publications should still be substantial.
     I made also search for individual terms (together with general terms, and with exclusion of publications that were included in the sample assessed by authors) and this is what I got:
iguana* = 30
chameleon* = 26
agama* = 0
tuatara* = 5
gavial* = 0
gharial* = 0
skink* = 9
viper* = 13
python* = 53
serpent* = 262
alligator* = 151
caiman* = 4
newt* = 330
     Another major problem here is that these specific search terms are likely to lead to most of the publications targeting these specific species groups, which were largely missed by the broad search phrase used by authors. As a result, it is likely that the taxonomic attention bias observed by authors is an overestimation of the true level of bias, since main body of work directed to whole such species groups is potentially missing from their dataset. This issue will have to be addressed somehow, as it can have a strong impact on results and reduce the value and validity of this study.
    Best way to conduct such studies, beside searching for general species group names, is to search for specific species names (preferably Latin names), which will yield directly the value of taxonomic coverage per each species. Studied species group is large, but there are ways to conduct automatic searches, or to search for multiple species names per each search. For example, where authors provide number of papers per established species in different regions (e.g. Lines 357-358 and elsewhere in the text), it would be more appropriate to indicate the actual mean number of papers each established species really received - as it is estimated now is to an extent ambiguous and unclear.

2. Another important issue is the way papers were judged as dealing with certain species. What does it exactly mean that a species was "studied" in certain publication? This is not explained in the text, but it is critical to judge validity of the study. Was a publication considered as related to some species only if the species was really studied there (e.g fieldwork, experiment, etc.), or it was also accepted as a species-related paper if it only mentioned the species in the Introduction or Discussion (which does not seem proper to be used as a criterion)? Authors also mention in some instances that some papers that covered a lot of species represented species lists for certain country (i.e. invasive species checklist) - is that really a publication that is dealing with all those species, one that provides useful information for species assessments and the application of EICAT/SEICAT and other frameworks? This seems to be one of main weaknesses of the study, that it does not differentiate among different types of studies. A publication focused on a single species and its invasiveness will be certainly more relevant and useful for further evaluations of that species than general papers with species checklists. If nothing else, this problem should be at least discussed about in the paper, and the exclusion/inclusion criteria clearly presented.

3. The emphasis on the low proportion of the total number of species of herpetofauna that are addressed in the literature does not seem proper. It is a result that is worth to be mentioned in the manuscript, but not pushed as one of the major implications of the study (e.g. in Lines 21-22 in the Abstract and elsewhere in the text). Expectation that all of the species (even all those that were never recorded and not expected to be recorded out of their home range) is unrealistic, especially bearing in mind limited research funds that are not easy to obtain even for actual invasive species, with proven negative impacts. While general studies that assess invasion potential across all species groups, i.e. based on the general life history traits, should be certainly encouraged, it is not likely that a single-species study focusing on hypothetical invasion risk of some exclusively native species would be approved for funding, or be judged positively by editors of scientific journals. I would suggest keeping this issue less emphasized in the text, and instead to focus on and assess proportion of covered species to the total number of species that were confirmed as alien or invasive. That will be a much more meaningful indication of a true level of bias.

4.  When discussing about poor coverage of species in the literature from most of the countries, especially those from non-English speaking countries, authors should address the issue of biased coverage of the database used in the analysis, with a strong English literature bias. Web of Science has a strong bias against non-English literature, which limits the usefulness of such databases for this type of assessments (e.g. Adam et al. 2002; Zetterström 2002). Majority of literature in many countries gets published in journals that are not indexed by WoS, while still being locally highly relevant, available and readily used for invasive species risk screening and impact assessments. As such, species coverage indicated by Web of Science and apparent biases will be of somewhat limited value, and should be at least properly noted in the study. This is briefly mentioned in Lines 448-449, but it deserves more attention, including the Methods section (i.e. a paragraph describing the appropriateness and limitations of the used source of data), as it represents one of the major limitations of the study.

5. Regarding different countries and publishing intensity regarding hepetofauna, it would be useful if the total number of publications on herpetofauna per each country would be compared with the total number of publications from the field of invasion science in general per country (e.g. obtained with the general search phrase "Topic = alien OR invasive OR non-native OR exotic OR non-indigenous OR feral"). That would provide a good indication of differences among countries, i.e. which countries proportionally publish more papers on invasive herpetofauna.

6. Lines 25-26, "Less work is published on turtles and snakes, but proportionately more species from both these groups have been studied than for frogs." - this is a confusing sentence, consider revising it. Statement also appears contradictory to the previous sentence (i.e. "strong focus on frogs (58%)").

7. Line 69, "more expensive" - consider rephrasing to avoid confusion (it could be understood as more expensive for purchase), for example "more costly management" or something in that sense. Also, in the same Line, replace "venemous" with "venomous"

8. Line 110 - use passive tense; replace "perform" with "performed"

9. Line 250 - replace "species" with "publications" or "studies"

10. Lines 280-282 and elsewhere in the text - authors refer to particular species interchangeably by their Latin and vernacular name. They should provide both where the species is mentioned for the first time in the text, and afterwards consistently use only one of them, either Latin or vernacular.

11. Lines 308-320 - this section is confusing and hard to follow (e.g. "seven studies covering 285 species for only seven successfully established non-natives", "species studied per successful species", etc.). It should be revised so it is easier to understand this part of results.

12. In line 311-312, authors state "although the bulk of these are lists of traded species"  - as discussed above, it is questionable whether these are really papers dealing with invasive species, if they only study species trade, as well as whether these species were indeed "studied", i.e. whether such paper should be counted for those species.

13. Line 322 "There are also strong biases in the number of papers per invasive species." - Authors discuss here about hte high number of studies per cane toad, and brown tree snakes. Are such publication patterns really biases? If these species have such strong negative impacts, high attention and number of publications is not really inappropriate. If brown tree snake is such a sever pest in Guam, it is only natural that the major focus will be on that species, and it is not to be expected (or appropriate) that the authors from Guam will instead use funds and their time to study instead another species that was never introduced there or elsewhere. My point is that authors should be consider what are real biases and what are appropriate allocations of research effort. This also pertains to other sections of the paper.

14. Authors sometimes refer to "regions" (Line 312) and sometimes to "localities" (Line 327), which is a bit confusing.

15. Line 364 - replace "herps" with a proper term, e.g. "reptiles and amphibians"

16. Line 369 - I am not sure about the PeerJ guidelines, but "Online early" articles (i.e. those not yet assigned to an issue) should be cited as "in press", not "Online early".

17. Lines 460-462, "This begs the question: How many publications are needed to provide adequate information to allow for the accurate assessment of risk of invasiveness and impact?" - the question is incomplete, as it is not just matter of the number of publications, but quality too. Some of the paper types included as studies of certain species, such as simple alien or traded species lists (see my comments above) can not be considered as equally beneficial for this process as focused single-species studies.

18. References in Lines 474, 475, 478 and 517 are cited with "et al." placed in Italics, while it is not so in other sections of the text. Furthermore, Dubey et al. 2014 publication has three-authors, and such publications are elsewhere cited with all authors' names listed.

19. All references cited in the text are included in the reference list, and vice versa. Reference list should be however checked for formatting, e.g. capitalization of journal name in Lines 694-695, inconsistent referring to the R programming language in the text (Line 226) and reference list (Line 706).

References:

Adam, D. (2002). The counting house. Nature 415, 726-729.

Zetterström, R. (2002). Bibliometric data: a disaster for many non-American biomedical journals. Acta Paediatrica 91, 1020-1024.


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

Input:
Title: A TAXONOMICALLY AND GEOGRAPHICALLY CONSTRAINED INFORMATION BASE LIMITS NON-NATIVE REPTILE AND AMPHIBIAN RISK ASSESSMENT: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: I think that the manuscript could improve if the authors provide a bit more of context. However, I don't think that it fails to meet PeerJ's standards, and it is not something that, by itself, should prevent the publication of this manuscript. I have provided more detailed comments in my 'general comments to the authors'
Experimental design: No comment
Validity of the findings: The results reported in the manuscript and, by extension, the conclusions are based on a systematic review conducted two years ago (line 128; date: 03/03/2016). The field of amphibian and reptile invasion ecology has seen some progress since then, and I am concerned that the authors are missing some key references important to assess the current state of the knowledge on the topic. Please, see my detailed feedback in the 'general comments to the authors' section
Additional comments: Thanks for giving me the opportunity to read and review the manuscript ‘A taxonomically and geographically constrained information base limits non-native species risk assessments: The case of reptiles and amphibians’ by van Wilgen et al. A systematic review of the literature on alien amphibians and reptiles is timely to synthesise the progress of the field, which has advanced largely thanks to Kraus’ 2009 book. It is also a key step towards identifying potential knowledge gaps to guide future research and management efforts to address the increasing risks posed by alien amphibians and reptiles. The methods used by the authors are appropriate and follow the guidelines for conducting literature reviews. The presentation of the results is, in general, good, although I think the manuscript will benefit from a better statement of the objectives and purposes of the review, as well as the implications for the management of alien amphibians and reptiles.
Unfortunately, the results reported in the manuscript and, by extension, the conclusions are based on a systematic review conducted two years ago (line 128; date: 03/03/2016). The field of amphibian and reptile invasion ecology has seen some progress since then, and I am concerned that the authors are missing some key references important to assess the current state of the knowledge on the topic. For example, I was rather surprised to find no reference to Capinha et al., (2017)(see references cited below), who revised and updated Kraus’ 2009 database on the global distribution of established alien amphibians and reptiles. The authors themselves recognise that Kraus book, although a landmark work in the area of alien amphibians and reptiles, is probably dated. I am aware that Capinha et al. publication, unlike Kraus 2009 book, does not include introduced but not established species Nonetheless, I don’t think this is a major impediment for the authors to use that newer database. Capinha’s research paper presented a substantial update on the global distribution of established alien amphibians and reptiles. Given how much the authors rely on Kraus’ 2009 database for supporting their results and conclusions, I am wondering how much their results and conclusions would change if they were using Capinha’s database. There are other relevant papers on alien amphibians and reptiles published since 2016 that the author’s systematic review does not include, even if cited in the main text of the manuscript. Examples include (Tingley et al., 2016a; Allen et al., 2017; García-Díaz et al., 2017b; Li et al., 2016; Tingley et al., 2016b, 2017; Capinha et al., 2017; Tingley et al., 2018; Filz et al., 2017; García-Díaz et al., 2017a; Forti et al., 2017; Héritier et al., 2017; Vences et al., 2017; Rosa et al., 2018). I wonder how the inclusion of these additional references in their systematic review, even if they seem to show similar geographical patterns as those reported in the manuscript, would change the results and conclusions reached in the manuscript.
In summary, I am concerned that the results and conclusions presented in the manuscript may not reflect the current state of our knowledge about alien amphibians and reptiles. I do understand that the editorial procedures and decisions made by the journal to where this manuscript was submitted previously are partly to blame for this issue, but it is important that I point this out.

I have also read through the Excel spreadsheet provided by the authors (Supplemental Material), and I realised that there are a couple of interesting papers on the ecology and management of alien amphibians and reptiles published in the period considered by the authors that were not included in their review. For example: (Fujisaki et al., 2015; García-Díaz & Cassey, 2014; Kopecký et al., 2013). Moreover, I wonder whether using only English searching terms and restricting the literature search to the Web of Science (my experience is that Google Scholar is better for finding grey literature, which composes a non-negligible share of the research on alien amphibians and reptiles) may have constrained the range of publications that the authors were able to find. However, I want to emphasise that I don’t think that this is a necessarily important issue in the manuscript – the main goal of a systematic review is to obtain a representative sample and the procedures followed by the authors are sound in this respect.

More generally, I think that the manuscript will benefit from a clearer objective and purpose and, concomitantly, from a better linkage between the research presented and the conclusions and management recommendations. Currently, the manuscript focuses on making a case for showing how the scarcity of studies could hinder the application of risk assessment tools that assess impacts of alien species, such as the (S)EICAT. This is fine for the case of prioritising actions to tackle alien amphibians and reptiles that are already established, as the authors state it in lines 77-79. However, in other parts of the manuscript, the authors suggest that a lack of information may also hinder risk assessments to inform preventive strategies (for example, lines 79-80 and the section ‘Setting priorities’ in the discussion). The later is the main formal application of risk assessments for alien amphibians and reptiles in most jurisdictions. Data-intensive approaches defeat the purpose of risks assessments in informing preventive strategies, particularly considering the pace at which new species of alien amphibians and reptiles are being introduced. Should we wait until they are established somewhere, and we have enough research to manage them? Moreover, I suggest that species-based management measures, like those explained by the authors, are effective when the identities of the species are known. Thus they are appropriate for prioritising established species and pathways such as the legal wildlife trade. However, lots of alien amphibians and reptiles are transported unintentionally, and their identities are not necessarily known a priori, and pathway-level measures would be better suited as preventive strategies in those circumstances (McGeoch et al., 2015; García-Díaz et al., 2017b; Leung et al., 2014). In summary, I suggest that the conclusions presented in the manuscript will benefit from setting the context in which the recommendations would be applicable. Perhaps it could be interesting to evaluate the implications of the results in the context of the different stages of the invasion pathway and different transport pathways. The authors briefly talk about this in lines 486-489, but I think it would be good to expand the discussion on this topic.

Eliciting biases in the literature depend on making comparisons against null expectations. I have read the manuscript a couple of time, and I think the methodological procedures are sound, but I suggest that the authors describe their expectations more explicitly – that will certainly help to understand their results and to showcase current knowledge gaps. Why not, for example, partition the results explicitly by stage of the invasion pathway? I don’t necessarily expect the number of studies of impacts of alien species to correlate with the number of species introduced into a region (i.e., successful and failed introductions). However, I kind of expect that the number of studies will increase with the number of established species (the authors have done this analysis). The authors have the data necessary for the analysis by invasion pathway stage, and I think it would be interesting.

Those were my major comments to the authors. I have some other minor suggestions:

It would be good that the authors define ‘alien’ and ‘invasive’ early on in the introduction, the first time they are mentioned. Currently, these terms are defined for the first time in the methods section, and the introduction makes it sound as if they are interchangeable.

Line 67: the importance of release numbers was also reported by Mahoney et al., (2014).

Line 70: considering recent research (Allen et al., 2017; García-Díaz et al., 2016; Mahoney et al., 2014), I would say that it is not only early maturity but fast-paced life histories in general.

Lines 73-74: I disagree with the statement that the predictive ability of models is unsatisfactory. In fact, I would argue it the predictive abilities of models assessing the probability of establishment are rather good, and models are being used in a number of places to inform management. See for example (Bomford et al., 2005; Springborn et al., 2011; García-Díaz et al., 2016; Kopecký et al., 2013). It is, of course, a different matter for models attempting to predict impacts, but that is not the topic of the reference cited at the end of the sentence in the manuscript.

Lines 367-369: Tingley et al. is not a paper on the intentional trade of herpetofauna that is being discussed here. It is a work on the unintentional transport of toads hitchhiking in goods and commodities. The trade on those commodities results in the transport of the toads, but the toads are not traded.

References cited
Allen W. L., Street S. E. & Capellini I. (2017) Fast life history traits promote invasion success in amphibians and reptiles. Ecology Letters 20: 222–230
Bomford M., Kraus F., Braysher M., Walter L. & Brown L. (2005) Risk assessment model for the import and keeping of exotic reptiles and amphibians. Canberra, Australia: Bureau of Rural Sciences
Capinha C., Seebens H., Cassey P., García-Díaz P., Lenzner B., Mang T., Moser D., Pyšek P., Rödder D., Scalera R., Winter M., Dullinger S. & Essl F. (2017) Diversity, biogeography and the global flows of alien amphibians and reptiles. Diversity and Distributions 23: 1313–1322
Filz K. J., Bohr A. & Lötters S. (2017) Abandoned Foreigners: is the stage set for exotic pet reptiles to invade Central Europe? Biodiversity and Conservation: 1–19
Forti L. R., Becker C. G., Tacioli L., Pereira V. R., Santos A. C. F., Oliveira I., Haddad C. F. & Toledo L. F. (2017) Perspectives on invasive amphibians in Brazil. PloS one 12: e0184703
Fujisaki I., Mazzotti F. J., Watling J., Krysko K. L. & Escribano Y. (2015) Geographic risk assessment reveals spatial variation in invasion potential of exotic reptiles in an invasive species hotspot. Herpetological Conservation and Biology 10: 621–632
García-Díaz P. & Cassey P. (2014) Patterns of transport and introduction of exotic amphibians in Australia. Diversity and Distributions 20: 455–466
García-Díaz P., Ramsey D. S. L., Woolnough A. P., Franch M., Llorente G. A., Montori A., Buenetxea X., Larrinaga A. R., Lasceve M., Álvarez A., Traverso J. M., Valdeón A., Crespo A., Rada V., Ayllón E., Sancho V., Lacomba J. I., Bataller J. V. & Lizana M. (2017a) Challenges in confirming eradication success of invasive red-eared sliders. Biological Invasions 19: 2739–2750
García-Díaz P., Ross J. V., Woolnough A. P. & Cassey P. (2016) The illegal wildlife trade is a likely source of alien species. Conservation Letters 10: 690–698
García-Díaz P., Ross J. V., Woolnough A. P. & Cassey P. (2017b) Managing the risk of wildlife disease introduction: pathway-level biosecurity for preventing the introduction of alien ranaviruses. Journal of Applied Ecology 54: 234–241
Héritier L., Valdeón A., Sadaoui A., Gendre T., Ficheux S., Bouamer S., Kechemir-Issad N., Du Preez L., Palacios C. & Verneau O. (2017) Introduction and invasion of the red-eared slider and its parasites in freshwater ecosystems of southern Europe: risk assessment for the European pond turtle in wild environments. Biodiversity and Conservation: 1–27
Kopecký O., Kalous L. & Patoka J. (2013) Establishment risk from pet-trade freshwater turtles in the European Union. Knowledge and Management of Aquatic Ecosystems: 02
Leung B., Springborn M. R., Turner J. A. & Brockerhoff E. G. (2014) Pathway-level risk analysis: the net present value of an invasive species policy in the US. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 12: 273–279
Li X., Liu X., Kraus F., Tingley R. & Li Y. (2016) Risk of biological invasions is concentrated in biodiversity hotspots. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 14: 411–417
Mahoney P. J., Beard K. H., Durso A. M., Tallian A. G., Long A. L., Kindermann R. J., Nolan N. E., Kinka D. & Mohn H. E. (2014) Introduction effort, climate matching and species traits as predictors of global establishment success in non-native reptiles. Diversity and Distributions 21: 64–74
McGeoch M. A., Genovesi P., Bellingham P. J., Costello M. J., McGrannachan C. & Sheppard A. (2015) Prioritizing species, pathways, and sites to achieve conservation targets for biological invasion. Biological Invasions 18: 299–314
Rosa C. A. da, Zenni R., Ziller S. R., Curi N. de A. & Passamani M. (2018) Assessing the risk of invasion of species in the pet trade in Brazil. Perspectives in Ecology and Conservation 16: 38–42
Springborn M., Romagosa C. M. & Keller R. P. (2011) The value of nonindigenous species risk assessment in international trade. Ecological Economics 70: 2145–2153
Tingley R., García-Díaz P., Arantes C. R. R. & Cassey P. (2018) Integrating transport pressure data and species distribution models to estimate invasion risk for alien stowaways. Ecography 41: 635–646
Tingley R., Mahoney P. J., Durso A. M., Tallian A. G., Morán-Ordóñez A. & Beard K. H. (2016a) Threatened and invasive reptiles are not two sides of the same coin. Global Ecology and Biogeography 25: 1050–1060
Tingley R., Thompson M. B., Hartley S. & Chapple D. G. (2016b) Patterns of niche filling and expansion across the invaded ranges of an Australian lizard. Ecography 39: 270–280
Tingley R., Ward-Fear G., Schwarzkopf L., Greenlees M. J., Phillips B. L., Brown G., Clulow S., Webb J., Capon R., Sheppard A., Strive T., Tizard M. & Shine R. (2017) New Weapons in the Toad Toolkit: A Review of Methods to Control and Mitigate the Biodiversity Impacts of Invasive Cane Toads (Rhinella Marina). The Quarterly Review of Biology 92: 123–149
Vences M., Brown J. L., Lathrop A., Rosa G. M., Cameron A., Crottini A., Dolch R., Edmonds D., Freeman K. L. & Glaw F. (2017) Tracing a toad invasion: Lack of mitochondrial DNA variation, haplotype origins, and potential distribution of introduced Duttaphrynus melanostictus in Madagascar. Amphibia-Reptilia 38: 197–207


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 ADDITION OF VERY LIGHT LOADS INTO THE ROUTINE TESTING OF THE BENCH PRESS INCREASES THE RELIABILITY OF THE FORCE–VELOCITY RELATIONSHIP
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: No Comment
Experimental design: The experiment design of this study is of a very high quality and the authors should be commended. Well done.

Just to clarify (and to help the reader so that these protocols can be replicated in the future)
I am still a little unclear whether the lighter loads used (e.g. 1 and 8kg) in the traditional bench press were additional to the bar weight?
I am also a little unsure whether a traditional Olympic barbell in the traditional bench press exercise was used? Can this be clarified?
I believe that if the 1 and 8kg are being added to the bar it could be seen as misleading to not state actual total load. This issue may be a due to a small lack of clarity in the text which is only a minor fix.
Validity of the findings: No comment
Additional comments: Line 93: A very small thing but this sentence could be tidied up a little. Currently it is quite difficult to understand (“velocity-intercept is responsible that we still”). I think a word or two might be missing

Line 100: perhaps rearranging the words from  “has been commonly used” to “…since a narrow range of loads have commonly been used…” might make the sentence read a little better?

Line 118: I think the words “in the present study” can be removed

Sentence starting on line 156: It would be appreciated if the sentence starting “The F-V relationship….” Could be made a little bit clearer. There are a few words missing and it starts to get quite unclear towards the second half of the sentence

Line 162: “…to address the aim 2” The grammar here isn’t quite right. You could remove the “the” so it reads “….to address aim 2”.

Line 171: “3” Should be “Three” as it’s the start of the sentence

Line 175: I think at the end of the sentence starting line 175 (i.e. concentric only BP) a reference is needed to help direct the reader if they are interested in why this movement was selected. I’m sure the authors will know a good reference that can fit there….

Section “Determination of the 1RM”.
I’m a little bit confused (and this is an easy fix) but was the traditional and BPT using the same loads? Or did they test maximal 1RM on both exercises? If different, how did the authors know when the BPT was no longer a BPT? By clarifying this section a little the reader will be able to understand how to do this testing with their own populations.

Line 198: the authors have referred to the exercises as the traditional and ballistic BP but due to it previously being called the BPT it may confuse the reader (I had to read it a couple of times to make sure that they were the same exercise). Perhaps the same terminology could be used just to clarify for the reader?

Line 243: a bit nit picky but the authors have used the word “strong” to describe the F-V relationship. Should this be “nearly perfect” (for example), as these are the terms outlined in the statistical analysis section?

Line 337: a second bracket is needed after “2018)”