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: MICROGEOGRAPHIC VARIATION IN BODY CONDITION OF THREE MEXICAN GARTER SNAKES IN CENTRAL MEXICO
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: Writing is clear and professional English.

Literature is well cited and reviewed.

Figures are generally good, but some headings lack enough information.
Experimental design: The hypothesis that 'body condition would vary' is rather simplistic.

Methods are well-described.
Validity of the findings: See below
Additional comments: The authors document spatial and ontogenetic differences in body size and condition, sex ratio among three species of sympatric garter snake.

This paper presented several years of body size data collected from three species of garter snakes. It documents differences in body condition among sites, species etc. This result is not surprising given interspecific differences in diet, ontogenetic changes in prey size etc. It would have been remarkable if no differences were found.

However, no data is presented to offer any explanation of the observed differences. Data on prey abundance, feeding rate, temperature, cloud cover etc. would typically be presented to correlate with differences in condition.

The results of this study don't document evidence of either effect- it merely documents the existence of variation. The second paragraph of the discussion indicates this. The remaining discussion largely recounts previous studies that indicate condition is affected by a combination of environmental factors and local adaptations. But the present study does not add to this body of knowledge.

Some specific comments-
L31. It would be worth clarifying here that the number of years actually sampled ranged from 3-11, over a span of 20 years.

L47-8. Identifying local adaptation also requires concurrent information on prey availability, climate etc, to extricate genetic from environmental plasticity. Body condition of snakes is highly plastic in response to prey quality, availability, individual feeding rates etc. Detecting adaptive divergences in body condition needs to control for these environmental determinants. For example, many of the papers cited throughout the introduction, that document adaptive patterns in life history traits also monitored prey availability, climate etc.

I don't understand the justification for using body condition in DFA along with body mass and SVL. Condition is already derived from mass and SVL. How is body condition providing additional information in a multivariate analysis that includes the variables that were used to calculate it?

L148. If SVL and mass varied dramatically among years, body condition must have too. It would be useful to run this 3-way analysis with body condition as the independent variable, instead of SVL and mass. If condition varies among years within species, sexes, and sites, then it must be temporally labile. This would be evidence that the patterns found are likely just based on prey availability or climatic constraints on feeding / assimilation rates.

L274. Several sites showed significantly skewed sex rations. Could these reflect differences in catchability of males and females at some sites? If so, conclusions regarding sex may be spurious.

Fig 4 Heading appears to be cut off in mid-word 'greates'.

Headings for Fig 4 needs more information. The insets need to be described, for instance. And for Fig 4, explain why there is a ratio of SVL/g in the inset. Why are some sites circled in 4C?  Why is there no Figure 4B?


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: MICROGEOGRAPHIC VARIATION IN BODY CONDITION OF THREE MEXICAN GARTER SNAKES IN CENTRAL MEXICO
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 3

Output:
Basic reporting: The authors have collected an impressive dataset on morphological attributes of three species of garter snakes from the Mexican highlands. These are important data and help fill a natural history shortfall for these snakes. Unfortunately, the central aim of the paper is poorly defined, and this makes it difficult to follow the flow of logic linking the different sections together. The authors do not use figures to their advantage. There is extensive in-text reporting of results but it takes the form of parenthetical F-statistics and P-values contrasting a difference in some particular morphological trait of interest. There are almost no associated figures for these results, most of which could be concisely presented in one or two multi-paneled plots. The lack of figures makes it quite difficult to discern the patterns the authors are describing. Furthermore, the authors appear to make self-contradictory statements in several places. For example, on line 251 the authors state that “adults also show sexual differences in body condition” but on line 274 the authors state that “we lack evidence to support a difference in body condition based on sex”.
Experimental design: No comment.
Validity of the findings: The discussion is far too speculative given the limits of the data and is only loosely connected to ideas presented in the introductory paragraphs.
Additional comments: No additional comments


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

Input:
Title: MICROGEOGRAPHIC VARIATION IN BODY CONDITION OF THREE MEXICAN GARTER SNAKES IN CENTRAL MEXICO
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: no comment
Experimental design: no comment
Validity of the findings: no comment
Additional comments: Why was individual sex included in the discriminant function analysis (DFA) when the ANOVA revealed that it was not a significant predictor of variation in body condition? Related to this point, why was ontogenetic status included in the DFA when ANOVA was not performed to determine if different ontogenetic stages differed in body condition? Presumably, if you are going to perform and interpret a DFA the groupings that you use should be important predictors of variation in body condition. If sex doesn't explain variation in body condition the differences revealed by DFA are irrelevant, especially because the discriminant functions also include major contributions from SVL and mass. Similarly, without first knowing whether ontogenetic status is an important predictor of variation in body condition how do we know that differences detected by DFA are meaningful?

Related to these points, it is unclear to me why DFA was performed in the first place. The DFA seems to invert the roles of the dependent and independent variables. It uses body condition (as well as SVL and mass) as an independent variable to discriminate among different groupings (sex, location, ontogenetic status). How is this relevant to the central aim of the manuscript laid out in the introduction (and title)?, which in my reading was to determine if the independent variables sex, location, and ontogenetic status are important predictors of variation in individual body condition. Unless there is a compelling reason for keeping it, I suggest dropping the DFA from the manuscript, or at least making it very clear that body condition is being used in two distinct statistical contexts.


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 EFFECTS OF SOLIDAGO CANADENSIS WATER EXTRACTS ON MAIZE SEEDLING GROWTH IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE BIOMASS ALLOCATION PATTERN
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: The manuscript is good in English writing. It is easy to understand what the authors want to say. Overall, the content and language of the paper is good overall.
Experimental design: The experiment methods used in this manuscript were right, but very conventional and simple. The research results are not significantly innovative in related field.
Validity of the findings: This manuscript is just about the allelopathic effects of a common alien invasive plant in China on the growth of a crop. The result is not much value to improve our understanding of  the impacts of plant invasions.  It is just a common subject, I think not much readers will be interested in it.
Additional comments: No more comments


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

Input:
Title: THE EFFECTS OF SOLIDAGO CANADENSIS WATER EXTRACTS ON MAIZE SEEDLING GROWTH IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE BIOMASS ALLOCATION PATTERN
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: I think that the study titled "The effects of Solidago canadensis water extracts on maize seedling growth in association with biomass allocation patterns" has valuable data about the phytotoxic effects of S. canadensis not only on plant growth but also on leaf characteristics and photosynthetic activity. However, the introduction need to be simplified since some parts are confuse and difficult to follow. The aims need to be clarify as well as some parts of the material and methods.
I have suggested small modifications in the results section. In discussion, some results need better explanations in the basis of theory concepts or the results found in literature
Experimental design: I think that the experimental design is fine and well explained in general
Validity of the findings: Althought I have made some suggestions in the results, in general they are well presented and supported by statistical analysis.

Conclusions need to be reviewed
Additional comments: I have added specific comments to the manuscript in the word file


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

Input:
Title: THE EFFECTS OF SOLIDAGO CANADENSIS WATER EXTRACTS ON MAIZE SEEDLING GROWTH IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE BIOMASS ALLOCATION PATTERN
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 3

Output:
Basic reporting: Professional English language is used throughout the manuscript.

The background is not clear enough, the authors focus mostly on hormetic effects of S. canadensis for most of the Introduction part. However, the very first lines of Introduction state a negative effect of S. canadensis on native plants.

Relevant literature was used for this article.

Article is well structured.
Experimental design: This manuscript contains original, primary research.

Aim: I don't understand why maize was used as a donor-species, especially for hormetic effects, since, as authors prove, this species is mostly inhibited by Solidago.

The research question is properly stated.

ln. 105 according to my calculations there were only 6 seedlings/repetitions per treatment. Did you repeat the experiment to get more robust results?
ln. 99 - could you cite a proper literature for extracting in a refrigerator in 4 C degrees?
ln. 100 - what does the expression "2 layers of cotton" mean?
ln. 113 - what was the extract diluted by? distilled water?
ln. 115 Why do you express the units in mg/ml, since both extract and dilutor are liquids, probably the same kind of liquid?
ln 118 were the extracts and nutrient solution applied from the top or bottom of the pot?
Validity of the findings: The results part is written in a very compacted way. The data is presented in a robust way in the figures. Statistical data is also clearly presented.
ln. 176-the expression "seem to have" is not precise, especially when you perform statistical analyses. Please correct.
ln. 191-192. The authors did not measure the Relative growth rate, still they discuss very evidently that "RGR was promoted". Vide - this conclusion is not supported by your results.
The other parts of discussion are written in a good way
Conclusion is sufficient enough, and in relation to the research hypothesis.
Additional comments: In general the manuscript should be more clear, especially in the methodological part.


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 EFFECTS OF SOLIDAGO CANADENSIS WATER EXTRACTS ON MAIZE SEEDLING GROWTH IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE BIOMASS ALLOCATION PATTERN
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: The English language of this manuscript should be corrected.

Literature is sufficient.

Article is properly structured. Figures and tables are prepared in a proper way, easy to read.

I don't understand why the part Introduction is finished with a conclusion of these studies.

The conclusion part should be placed at the end of the paper. I suppose ln 97, where the Authors write about what the "suggest" in this paper is actually a research hypothesis and this should be clearly stated.
Experimental design: The research fits within the aims and scope of the journal.

Research question should be more clear (please see the comment above)

Investigation performed correctly.

Methods are described fairly. In which growth stage the maize was collected for the measurements?
Validity of the findings: Results are described very briefly. The results are not very novel, but do bring some new findings to the field. Data is statistically sound. Conclusions are linked with the original question and research results.
Additional comments: No additional comments


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

Input:
Title: ANYWHERE BUT HERE: LOCAL CONDITIONS MOTIVATE DISPERSAL IN DAPHNIA
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: The manuscript is well written, the structure conforms to PeerJ’s standard, figures and tables are clear and referred to in the text and reference list is complete. I do however have a few suggestions to improve the manuscript.

Line 22. (“resource availability in the alternative patch….” Instead of “resource limitation in the alternative patch…”
Line 23. Our work highlights the very large influence….. Limit the use of adverbs, they generally do not add anything to the findings.
Line 63. Still, broader Ecological and population dynamics may also be powerfully influenced by the relative…..
Line 105. Better use a reference to a published paper instead of an internet reference (e.g. modified as by Ebert 1998 using only 5% of the recommended SeO2 concentration”)
(reference to AdaM: D. Ebert, C. D. Zschokke-Rohringer, H. J. Carius, 1998. Within–and between–population variation for resistance of Daphnia magna to the bacterial endoparasite Pasteuria ramosa. ProcB 265: 2127–2134.)
Line 183. “Despite this advantage in”…. Replace with  “Despite this higher….”
Line 190. ….may be extremely profound.
Line 197. …may have a very large effect….
Lines 263, 271, 293, 303, 320. Capitals mid-sentence in the references.
Line 307. Missing the  “ : ”  behind invited review.
Lines 233-347. Carefully check the references for Latin names and ensure they are in italic.
Tables. I assume the “¡” in the tables is used to denote significance? Potentially include this in the table legends. Or considering that in the figure *** are used be consistent and also use *** in the tables.
Figure 1. The authors could consider a slightly modified version of their figure were graph titles are on the outside (see attached file).  This may make the figure slightly easier to read (although the current version is already good)
Figure 2 Similar comment as figure 1, the readability of the axis may be slightly improved (see attached file).
Experimental design: The experimental design is rigorous, has sufficient replication and addresses the main question. I just have a few small points that I would like to see clarified.

Could the authors clarify how the standard errors in figure 2 were obtained? I may have missed it but in the material and methods it states that the animals were counted every 24 hours. I suspect the authors did more than one count (and hence were able to provide SE for each replicate population). If this is indeed the case the material and methods should be amended.

As noted in the legend of table 1 standard anova assumptions were not violated. Could the authors amend the material and methods with the methods used to make these assessment and also provide test statistics on homogeneity of variance and normality?

Considering the authors did find clear differences between treatments I assume that the feeding differences between both patches are maintained even after the connection between both patches is opened. It may however help if the authors provided some additional information on how long difference between patches were maintained despite the direct connection between both patches. How long does it take for the algae to disperse (by diffusion) tough the entire system after being fed to patch 1?
Validity of the findings: On lines 179 to 188 the author’s discus the evidence for that dispersal was driven by resource shortage rather than density itself. To make their argument the authors compare the densities and number of migrants between the well fed and non-fed patch 1 populations. Although the points the authors make are valid the argument doesn’t take into account any interactive effects between density and resource shortage. Potentially density could still play a role in moderating strength of the response e.g. a stronger response at higher population densities. I wonder if the authors can strengthen their argument by correlating the number of migrants within each treatment to density (taking into account the higher baseline of migrants expect at higher densities)?
Additional comments: The authors provide a neat and well-designed experiment to understand how Daphnia use information from local and alternative patches to make a decision to stay or move. I found the paper quite interesting but believe it can be further improved by providing a deeper discussion.

I believe the a slight elaboration of the consequences and implications and the addition of a few concrete examples (e.g. in species X migration decisions are based both Y and Z) to support literature statements throughout the manuscript will help drive home the importance of these statements, the author’s findings and implications for the field and may make the paper appeal to a wider audience.

Building on my previous point I think that especially line 222-224 “Relaxing that assumption is now well justified on empirical grounds, and the magnitude of shift in dispersal resulting from condition dependence suggests that it will have non-trivial effects when incorporated into mechanistic models of evolution, population dynamics, invasion spread, and so on.” Could use additional explanation and examples. How may our theoretical predictions change, what actual effects?


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: ANYWHERE BUT HERE: LOCAL CONDITIONS MOTIVATE DISPERSAL IN DAPHNIA
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: The manuscript is generally very well written and clear with a logical structure. The use and number of the included figures and tables is appropriate and serves to make the methods and results easily accessible. The figures are well designed and the layout of the tables is clear.
Nevertheless, some of the sentences are very long and could easily be divided into two (or more) by replacing a connecting “and” with a full stop (e.g., L 11: “…dynamics and it is apparent increasingly …”; L 30: “…, and the variety..”; L 53: “(…) and while they are…”). Please check the entire manuscript for such cases and change throughout.
Experimental design: This is a very interesting manuscript addressing an important paradigm. The research questions are well defined, and in the context of the current conservation landscape very timely.

I do, however, have some concerns/ questions regarding the experimental design:  I am not a Daphnia specialist, and thus this may be a ‘stupid question’, but is there a possibility that within this genetically identical experimental population (L101), the genetic make-up governing dispersal decisions – and more specifically the (non-)gathering of extra-patch information – underwent mutation and is thus not representative for the entire species? Please address this in the text by either highlighting this possibility or by citing references on other ‘genetically inert behaviours’ substantiating that this is not possible.
Also, how likely is it for (habitat exploring) Daphnia (that are trying to gather extra-patch information) to find this single 15mm small dispersal tunnel? i.e., How robust are your conclusions that Daphnia does not use extra-patch information for dispersal decisions vs they would under natural circumstances, but could/ did not find the tunnel in your experimental design?
In addition, your tunnel length of 117mm seems quite a long distance for a small organism like Daphnia – for the reader to assess your experimental design, you would need to put this into context of known D. sp. dispersal distances under natural (or even different experimental) conditions!
In addition, two, sometimes fundamentally different, factors are important in shaping dispersal decisions: Somatic fitness and reproductive fitness. Somatic fitness is largely determined by food resources, as investigated in this manuscript. Reproductive fitness, however, is (also) affected by genetic components and thus population density/ number of available partners for sexual reproduction. Although the authors have got an experimental design (and the available data) to test these effects, they choose to largely ignore them. Nevertheless, even if sexual reproduction (and thus simple population density) is not that important in Daphnia sp. due to parthenogenesis, this aspect needs to be addressed at least in the introduction. Recent publications (e.g. Byrne et al. 2018) would help to introduce this paradigm.
Validity of the findings: Currently, this ms is focused purely on dispersal behaviour of Daphnia spp. limiting its appeal to a wider readership. However, with little additional work, this appeal could be broadened considerably by expanding the cited literature to a wider range of species (or even, simply naming the species in the text to which the currently cited references pertain). Specifically, throughout the introduction, I am missing examples on dispersal decisions governed/ moderated by intra- and/ or extra-patch resource availability from other species. In part, this could be solved by adding species names in the paragraph starting L40ff.
Additional comments: I very much enjoyed reading this manuscript. It sets out to investigate a timely paradigm addressing push/ pull factors affecting the dispersal behaviour of Daphnia spp., which could easily be expanded to other species.

General comments:
1) The manuscript is generally very well written and clear with a logical structure. The use and number of the included figures and tables is appropriate and serves to make the methods and results easily accessible. The figures are well designed and the layout of the tables is clear.
Nevertheless, some of the sentences are very long and could easily be divided into two (or more) by replacing a connecting “and” with a full stop (e.g., L 11: “…dynamics and it is apparent increasingly …”; L 30: “…, and the variety..”; L 53: “(…) and while they are…”). Please check the entire manuscript for such cases and change throughout.
2) Throughout the introduction, I am missing examples on dispersal decisions governed/ moderated by intra- and/ or extra-patch resource availability from other species. In part, this could be solved by adding species names in the paragraph starting L40ff.
3) I am not a Daphnia specialist, and thus this may be a ‘stupid question’, but is there a possibility that within this genetically identical experimental population (L101), the genetic make-up governing dispersal decisions – and more specifically the (non-)gathering of extra-patch information – underwent mutation and is thus not representative for the entire species? Please address this in the text by either highlighting this possibility or by citing references on other ‘genetically inert behaviours’ substantiating that this is not possible.
Also, how likely is it for (habitat exploring) Daphnia (that are trying to gather extra-patch information) to find this single 15mm small dispersal tunnel? i.e., How robust are your conclusions that Daphnia does not use extra-patch information for dispersal decisions vs they would under natural circumstances, but could/ did not find the tunnel in your experimental design?
In addition, your tunnel length of 117mm seems quite a long distance for a small organism like Daphnia – for the reader to assess your experimental design, you would need to put this into context of known D. sp. dispersal distances under natural (or even different experimental) conditions!
4) Two, sometimes fundamentally different, factors are important in shaping dispersal decisions: Somatic fitness and reproductive fitness. Somatic fitness is largely determined by food resources, as investigated in this manuscript. Reproductive fitness, however, is (also) affected by genetic components and thus population density/ number of available partners for sexual reproduction. Although the authors have got an experimental design (and the available data) to test these effects, they choose to largely ignore them. Nevertheless, even if sexual reproduction (and thus simple population density) is not that important in Daphnia sp. due to parthenogenesis, this aspect needs to be addressed at least in the introduction. Recent publications (e.g. Byrne et al. 2018) would help to introduce this paradigm.
Specific comments:
L85: rephrase: “a greater range of responses has been observed” (i.e., “range” is singular)
L113ff: rephrase for ease of understanding: “…data collection. Each container measured 90mm x 75mm at the base, was 110mm high and widened gradually towards the top to 100mm x 90mm. A circular hole…”
L118: Again, as a non-Daphnia expert, how long would it take an individual to traverse this 117mm dispersal tunnel? This is important to add here so that readers can assess your experimental design of feeding every 24h and, particularly, counting population sizes in both patches after 96h (L140).
L122: rephrase: “… we examined the effects of …”
L125: You are giving an average of 122 individuals/ patch here; surely this has to be an exact measure to assess effects of resource availability/ abundance and social factors accurately? At the bare minimum, you need to include min & max as well as STD here!
L148: Again, I realise that for non-Daphnia specialists it would be helpful if you’d include average lifespan of species somewhere above, so that all readers can assess the results of unfed populations shrinking over the course of 95h (L147ff & Fig. 1)
L153: Shouldn’t this read “during the first 96h” instead of “at 96h”?
L163ff: Interesting that food availability affects population size in patch 1, but not in patch 2. I assume, this must be because population density was always below carrying capacity in patch 2? But then, there were unfed patch 2’s, too, where I would expect Daphnia to starve and die even if they did get ‘pushed’ to disperse into this unfavourable habitat through lot food in natal patch 1. And the reverse is true, too: In favourable patch 1’s, population increased – why did this not happen in patch 2 (i.e., independent of immigration, but simply through higher breeding and survival)?  Maybe my non-understanding is partly again due to my lack of knowledge of Daphnia life expectancy and generation span -  Please clarify!
L175: Please add species to the cited references in this paragraph!
L178: You infer that “due to the generality of dispersal being influenced by intra-patch information, your results can be extra-polated to other D. spp, too – However, to assess this inference, the reader needs to be informed if there are species where intra-patch resource availability has been shown to NOT affect dispersal decisions!
L179ff: This result would be better included as a testable hypothesis and prediction, rather than simply being added here in the discussion! This would strengthen the appeal of this ms to a wider readership considerably! As it stands, you are currently presenting your study simply as investigating resource availability push/ pull factors, but neglecting to formally investigate also population-density dependent PUSH factors – although you do have the appropriate experimental design and data!
L206ff: How likely/ possible is it for chemical information to make its way through this narrow and fairly long dispersal tunnel? I assume there ius no current/ water movement at all between the 2 tanks. This again highlights my concern that the findings of this study cannot easily be transferred to natural environments and conclusions drawn here have to be assessed with care when making inferences to natural D. sp populations!


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: ANYWHERE BUT HERE: LOCAL CONDITIONS MOTIVATE DISPERSAL IN DAPHNIA
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 3

Output:
Basic reporting: This article is well written. It states the research question clearly and places it within the current literature. Extra references to current research on the impact of resources on dispersal could be cited, e.g.
Fronhofer E.A., Legrand D., Altermatt F., Ansart A., Blanchet S., Bonte D., Chaine A.S., Dahirel M., De Laender F., De Raedt J., di Gesu L., Jacob S., Kaltz O., Laurent E., Little C.J., Madec L., Manzi F., Masier S., Pellerin F., Pennekamp F., Schtickzelle N., Therry L., Vong A., Winandy L. & Cote J. (2018) Bottom-up and top-down control of dispersal across major organismal groups. Nature Ecology and Evolution, 2, 1859–1863.

Figures could be improved. In particular, figure 2 seems to present very similar data as figure 1 (see below). Figure 1 should not be formatted as a histogram (to be reserved for count data) but rather as a mean +- confidence interval (or other measure of error/variation among the 5 replicates, which is currently missing).

Some improvements to the tables are possible too. E.g. in table 1 statistics relate to count at 96h but this is not specified. The caption tile of table 1 is also very uninformative. It seems "<" has been incorrectly typed/converted in tables 1 and 2.
Experimental design: Methods are briefly but quite clearly described. Some details should be added to make them completely clear and allow readers to understand what has been done and potentially redo the experiments:
* Daphnia individuals were counted (L.127) but it should be stated how, and especially if the census was exhaustive (all individuals were counted) or based on a sample.
* A justification should be given to the length of the connecting pipe (corridor) between the two habitat patches. This is linked to my comment about the need for a better justification about the use of extra-patch information (see below).
Validity of the findings: My main criticism about the validity of the findings is related to the statement that “local conditions alone drive dispersal”, already present in the title. I believe this point is overstated for several reasons. First, the absence of an effect cannot be proved, by nature. Of course, in practice one can reach a reasonably high level of certainty about the absence of an effect provided the power to detect it, if it exists, is high enough. In the present study, I find the introduction lacks some discussion about why it could be expected that Daphnia could acquire some information about the conditions in the distant patch, together with an associated justification of the experimental setup, in particular the length of the connecting corridor pipe. Indeed, individuals cannot ignore something they do not perceive. Stating that this information is ignored implies to first prove that this information can be known, e.g. because individuals have been observed to travel back and forth and “sample” the distant patch, or can sense some chemical molecules from a distance. Some pieces of information related to that are given in the discussion (L. 199 ff).

If such information about perception cannot be given, I believe that the conclusion of the absence (or ignorance) of the extra-patch information by the individuals to base their dispersal decisions is speculative, and should be explicitly stated that way.

Also, but less importantly, some discussion about the potential differences in the results if other Daphnia clones had been tested would be nice, given the introduction states (L. 88) that impacts on dispersal can vary among Daphnia species and clones.
Additional comments: No additional comments


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

Input:
Title: ANYWHERE BUT HERE: LOCAL CONDITIONS MOTIVATE DISPERSAL IN DAPHNIA
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: Line 50. Replace or remove “powerfully”?
Line 72. “low density patches” instead of “vulnerable” patches”?
Line 81. ….will help to resolve questions of such character, maybe better, will help to resolve these/such questions.
Line 82. “Here, we examine their relative………” Considering it is the first sentence of the paragraph maybe use; “Here, we examine the relative influence of intra-patch and extra patch information on dispersal by……”
Line 176. Could the authors also provide the P-value for the relationship?
Line 185. Taking into account the age distribution (i.e. number of juveniles) in the origin patch were there more migrating juveniles than expected by chance?
Line 201. I would write, “Indeed, strictly our results only apply to the single clonal line of D. carinata we tested.
Line 219. Exchange “no practical potential” for “limited potential”, and remove “there”…..e.g. “..was limited potential for births to occur in patch 2, regardless of food availability.
Line 234. We caution, however, that parameterising models using our or similar results should only be undertaken with great care. The results are likely to depend………………………
Line 247. Maybe replace “in the present case” with “In our study”?
Line 264. I would remove the “moreover” from the sentence. “In conclusion, our results add to the growing body of evidence that condition-dependent dispersal is the norm amongst taxa, and that it is capable of generating substantial differences in dispersal behaviour (Legrand et al. 2015; Fronhofer et al. 2018).”
Experimental design: No comments, the authors have addressed all my concerns satisfactory.
Validity of the findings: I would like to thank the authors for adding the additional supplementary figures. However as noted already on Line 176 for figure A1 besides the amount of variation explained by the correlation (r2) I would also suggest testing if the correlation itself is significant and if the slopes between both lines differ. This would allow you to provide more certainty in the sections starting at line 243
Additional comments: The authors have done a good job at addressing the issues raised by the reviewers. The additional examples listed in introduction and discussion and the more in-depth discussion have greatly improved this manuscript.  Besides the few issues I have raised above I have no further concerns and would recommend a minor revision.


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: ANYWHERE BUT HERE: LOCAL CONDITIONS MOTIVATE DISPERSAL IN DAPHNIA
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: No comment
Experimental design: no comment
Validity of the findings: no comment
Additional comments: I am impressed by the thoroughness with which the authors addressed reviewer concerns on the previous draft. All my queries have been implemented (or rebutted) to my satisfaction and I very much like the revised version of this manuscript.

Two very small points:
- In line 24, please change "large influence" to "considerable ..." and
- In line 248 please change "The seemingly odd result" to "This surprising result"


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: ANYWHERE BUT HERE: LOCAL CONDITIONS MOTIVATE DISPERSAL IN DAPHNIA
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 3

Output:
Basic reporting: The authors improved their manuscript based on the three reviews they received. In particular, precisions about some literature cited were added in the introduction.
Figures were improved but to some extent. In particular, if profoundly disagree with the following justification: “Figure 1 has been altered in accordance with the recommendation insofar as our plotting software allows us to do so (ggplot2 for R). Figure 2 has been left as is, since using the approach that would be necessary with ggplot2 (faceting, as in figure 1) would unfortunately prevent us from labelling which groups are significantly different in a clear manner.” I found this to be a very good example of the “tyranny of the tool”. R is a great tool, but it is just a tool, and many other tools still exist. If your tool cannot do what you want, why not using another tool?! As an example, you could add extra items (such as labels) on the figure plotted with ggplot2, simply by using an image software or even Powerpoint.
Experimental design: The authors added key information about the design, which make the experimental design, and its limitations, clearer. However, some statements in the rebuttal are still more “personal beliefs” than “proven reality”. For example, the fact that “Daphnia carinata are highly active swimmers and most individuals repeatedly encounter the opening each day” does not seem supported by data. I agree with the conclusion that given the mobility of Daphnia individuals, it is likely that they encounter the corridor entrance; but to state “they repeatedly encounter the opening”, I’d like to see some data.
Validity of the findings: My main criticism about the validity of the findings was related to the statement that “local conditions alone drive dispersal”, already present in the title. I believe this point is overstated. Although the authors introduced more nuanced statement at several places in the manuscript, I still believe the title should be changed. Indeed, the title is likely to be understood by readers as some kind of proof that other sources of information than local information are ignored: “local conditions alone drive dispersal” does not mean “local conditions is the only factor we were able to show to have some effect on dispersal”. But the manuscript does not prove that at all. If the experiment was able to show that some information is perceived but not used, I would agree. But this is not the case. Given the importance of the title in conveying the general message of a scientific study, I strongly advise to modify it to state only what is proven in the study: Daphnia take local conditions into account in their dispersal decision, so dispersal is not random. I understand this may be less sexy because there are already a series of studies showing this result, but this is the only conclusion supported by the data.
Additional comments: No additional comments


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

Input:
Title: QUALITY-OF-LIFE AMONG SYRIAN REFUGEES RESIDING OUTSIDE CAMPS IN JORDAN RELATIVE TO JORDANIANS AND OTHER COUNTRIES
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: Very important topic and potentially impactful research. Research question well defined,relevant & meaningful. It is stated how research fills an identified knowledge gap. Experimental design issue with comparing means in other countries. I think this should not be done and the authors should stick to presenting the rich data they already have form Jordan.

•	A few typos found and corrections are needed. Highlighted areas that need word smithing and have grammatical issues. Please spell out WHOQOL-BREF in the abstract and all abbreviations at first mention in the text and abstract.
•	Introduction: Suggest changing sentence in line 80 to: “and the majority of the remaining two millions are registered in Lebanon and Jordan.”
•	Latest percentages from UNHCR Jordan show that more than 9% (Perhaps closer to 15%) reside in camps. Fix and include citation here. Also the 650,000 number is underestimated and numbers form the ministry of interior should be used (closer to 1 million refugees)
•	3 camps instead of two please check the literature. I believe there is a Dubai-sponsored camp or something.
•	Line 85: suggest removing politically sensitive words such as “illegally”. One could debate that.
•	Line 88: Again spell out QOL at first mention in the text. Abstract is not part of the manuscript.
•	Include citation for QOL after end of sentence; line 91
•	Line 93: The literature
•	Line 126: Replace targeted with recruited
•	Line 127: add a “total” before sample
•	Line 142: spell out ASES
•	Define criteria for ASES
•	Lines 150, 151: Be very explicit in explaining the criteria for defining LSES
•	Line 170: Too much wording. I suggest removing whole paragraph and briefly saying that it was validated with an included citation
•	Line 174: What do you mean a pilot study was performed? What exact tool did you use to measure internal consistency? Did it measure within-subject variability or between-subject variability? Is the 0.7 a Cronbach’s alpha? If so, state that clearly.
•	Lines 190&191. This is very low and there should be an explanation for that in the limitations section.
Experimental design: •	Mention confounders you adjusted for in the multivariate regression model. Did you adjust for age? Confounders should be mentioned in this section not tin the results only. The statistical analysis section should be better explained to include variables used in the multiple regression model, adjustments made and comparison of means in other countries and refugee camps does not sound right. Comparing means is meaningless since context is different in each country and setting. How were the means in other studies obtained exactly? Through manuscripts review? Explicitly describe that. What was the n size per mean in each of these papers? An additional Table could be useful here stating source of information, authors, sample size, mean, year published..etc. I think comparing means is a weakness of this study and should not be part of the main findings but rather inserted in the discussion and throughout the general theme but does not sound right scientifically to compare means like this. If this was a systematic review paper this could be a different scenario and should be done vigorously well to show scientific rigor in presenting such data.
•	Table 1: There should be an explanation in limitations why the majority of Jordanians recruited were females. Describe why unemployment rate in this sample especially among Jordanians is very high and how it relates to the national unemployment rate. For monthly income in table: include actual amount per category between brackets in JODs or US Dollars. What does presence of disease mean? Chronic condition or what? A common cold could be considered a disease at time of questionnaire administration.
•	Social relationships: You mentioned earlier that the N size was small for this so how could you make such conclusions> Suggest minimizing generalizing like this with a small sample size.
•	Line 253: again what diseases? You mean number of diseases? Or adjusting for having a disease or not?
•	Table 4: what do you mean population as a variable here? Stratify by population and show data.
•	Line 330: remove the word funding and use finances instead.
•	Limitations section: what do you mean sample size was more than 200 so it is a good study? Reword. There is no set number for an ideal sample size. Remember this is a limitations section not a self-praising one. Again avoid charged terms such as “illegally”, you can say unregistered versus registered. I suggest removing the whole comparison with other countries and focus on the data in your paper that you collected and presenting it better in additional tables. You already have a lot of data. You can reference other papers in the discussion to try to draw comparisons but comparing non-camp to camp in other countries, lacking rigor in doing so is a major weakness. In the limitations you should mention why you had less answers for certain questions, why more females…etc. This is all faulty recruitment and study design that should be mentioned and accounted for.
Validity of the findings: Data is robust, statistically sound, & controlled. Stratify by population and present Table 4 in a better way. Remove comparisons with other countries. Suggest removing figures A & B
Additional comments: More citations and references should be included throughout the manuscript. Revise for typos and language


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: QUALITY-OF-LIFE AMONG SYRIAN REFUGEES RESIDING OUTSIDE CAMPS IN JORDAN RELATIVE TO JORDANIANS AND OTHER COUNTRIES
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: a.      it is clear with professional English used throughout.
b.      Introduction and background show context but did not mention the other refugees affected by the Syrian crises such Palestine refugees who were registered in Syria since 1948 and fled Syria to Jordan following the crises. According to UNRWA statistics a total number of 17,000 Palestine Refugee from Syria fled to Jordan as a result of the crises and are taken care by UNRWA.
c.       Figures, tables and graphs are relevant.
Experimental design: a.      The study is novel in assessing QOL among Syrian refugees in Jordan and clarifies the impact of crises and refugee status on QOL.
b.      The data are statistically sound.
Validity of the findings: a.      The research question is relevant, meaningful and identified knowledge gap.
b.      The study is technically sound and ethically supported.
Additional comments: The study could have included other refugees affected by the Syria crises such the Palestine refugees who fled to Jordan which will widen scope of the study and add to its strength.
5.      Conclusions are well stated and inked to research question; however it should recommend and open the window for new research with enough samples from all population affected by the Syria crises namely Syrian refugees, Palestine Refugees registered originally  in  Syria but fled to Jordan as a result of the crises,  Palestine refugees registered in Jordan since 1948(total 2.3 million by Dec2017 as per UNRWA records in Jordan Field Office), Low socioeconomic status Jordanian, Average socioeconomic status Jordanian.
 Attached is copy of the stud and annual report of health Department/UNRWA 2017.


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: QUALITY-OF-LIFE AMONG SYRIAN REFUGEES RESIDING OUTSIDE CAMPS IN JORDAN RELATIVE TO JORDANIANS AND OTHER COUNTRIES
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: Professional article
Experimental design: Research question is clear
Validity of the findings: Novel and valid results
Additional comments: Well drafted


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: DRAFT APHAENOGASTER GENOMES EXPAND OUR VIEW OF ANT GENOME SIZE VARIATION ACROSS CLIMATE GRADIENTS
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: The article is generally well prepared, though see comments below regarding climate variables and the abbreviations. Figure are generally crisp / easy to read (save vectors in Figure 6).

A few areas that require attention include:

(1) I think the manuscript could be improved through the addition of more background / context regarding the relationship(s) between climate adaptation, genome size, and response to climatic change.

Given the exploratory nature of the study, perhaps it is not possible to develop predictions / testable hypotheses, but it was unclear to me how / why relationships between genome size and climate gradients would be indicative of ant responses to climate change. In think this is especially important given that the authors were apparently not able to control for phylogenetic relatedness (which they acknowledge and discuss).

The title makes a link between 'ecological genomics' and 'responses to climate change', but that's not really what this paper is doing. Instead, the study involves correlating aspects of the genome with climate variables, finding some significant relationships, and then claiming that these relationships are somehow informative (or at least warrant consideration) of climate change responses. However, without a clear, mechanistic linkage between climate, genome size, and climate adaptation, I could not follow how these biogeographical relationships say anything about climate change responses.

I think it is enough to report these relationships and speculate some in the Discussion as the what they might mean, but as written, I do not feel the title reflects the study or its findings.

(2) At times the writing was vague and wandering, particularly in the Introduction. A good example is L69-70, which states "...phylogenetics is a factor determining the response of ant species to climatic change...". It was unclear to this reader how / why "phylogenetics" would "determine" a response to climatic change.

The Introduction also reads a bit like a laundry list of reasons justifying what it is important to sequences the genomes of ants and Aphaenogaster in particular. In my opinion, a lot of this wasted space. I think it is enough to say ants are important generally, Aphaenogaster is something the authors have studied and so have some insights and get on with a discussion about genomics and climate adaptation - either broadly or in ants specifically to the extent that is possible.

(3) A few minor points:

L168-170 - Check grammar / missing word.

Figure 1 - Not sure this one is necessary.

Figure 6 (vectors and associated labels need to be much darker to be visible).

There is some minor confusion regarding which climate variables / datasets were used when. For example-

Table 2 - PRISM data are reported here, but worldclim is used in the analyses - any reason for different datasets?

L178 - Annual minimum temperature and annual maximum temperature are not among the 19 standard bioclim variables from WordClim - are these custom or referring to BIO5/6 (which are month not annual)?
Experimental design: As mentioned above, I think the manuscript would benefit if predictions or research questions were more clearly articulated and supported in the Introduction. While two hypotheses are mentioned in the final paragraph of the Introduction, they tended to be vague or poorly worded.

For example: "...to test the hypothesis that climate variables shape the distribution of ant genomes, we explored the correlation between spatial and multi-decadal climate variables". First, what is the distribution of an ant genome? And second, it reads as if the correlation of interest is between "spatial and multi-decadal climate variables" - in other words, between two kinds of climate variables, not between a set of climate variables and some aspect of ant genomes.

Otherwise, the methods are well described and the statistical analyses seem well executed.
Validity of the findings: I will echo my comments above regarding the failure to clearly articulate the linkages between climate gradients, genome attributes (size, similarity), and responses to climate change.

While the data seem robust (I cannot comment on the sequencing / bioinformatics) and the analyses sound, and while the authors acknowledge the importance of other factors ignored (for now) in the analyses (such as phylogenetic correlations), I do feel that, given the sample size, the data and results are somewhat limited in what they can tell use about climate adaptation / responses in this group of ants. It certainly is great to have and report these new sequences, which will add to a growing body of sequence data for ants, I just caution against over-interpretation / speculation given the small sample size and uncertainty.
Additional comments: No additional comments


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

Input:
Title: DRAFT APHAENOGASTER GENOMES EXPAND OUR VIEW OF ANT GENOME SIZE VARIATION ACROSS CLIMATE GRADIENTS
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: no comment
Experimental design: no comment
Validity of the findings: no comment
Additional comments: Title: Expanded view of the ecological genomics of ant responses to climate change

The authors have produced draft sequences for the genomes of six species of ants in the genus Aphaenogaster collected from eastern North America. There is high value in these ant genome sequences: ants in this genus are models for studies of ecology and behavior (>300 papers with Aphaenogaster in the title), no sequence from this genus had to date been reported, these six new genomes increase the number of ants with sequenced genomes by ~25%.

The methods for genome sequencing and analysis are sound and the writing style and quality are appropriate (see minor issues below). The new ant genome sequences could represent a publication on their own, even without much analysis. The authors perform superficial comparisons of the genome sequences: showing higher similarities between genomes of species in the same genus than between genuses, as well distinct separation from genera compared with others previously published ant genomes in the formicoid subfamily. Intriguingly, the data also support the polyphyly of A. rudis as described in recent literature, though this evidence is based on a sample size of n=2. Together, these data would be sufficient for publicaiton in peerj.

However, the manuscript is framed within the context of using ants as indicator taxa for environmental disturbance and climatic variation. Specifically, the authors suggest that ecological variables should influence ant genomic signatures. They propose that (i) ants found within similar ecological conditions should have more similar genomes; and that (ii) genome size should similarly correspond to biogeographic patterns. These hypotheses are original and would be very interesting if proven (stronger datasets to test such hypotheses may exist in mammals). Unfortunately, neither hypothesis is very well substantiated and the supporting data is rather tenuous because the authors (i) lack power (a small number of species for a relatively high number of examined environmental variables) and (ii) do not control for phylogeny. We note that additionally there is little consideration of possible variation within species.

Furthermore, the title evokes responses to climate change - which implicitly suggests temperature manipulation experiments - but this is quite far from the paper.

This is somewhat frustrating given that the senior author has a strong track record of rigorous work. Controlling for phylogeny/ would make the climatic/biogeographical analysis much stronger, although we note that 21 of the 25 ant species used come from the Americas thus potentially creating a bias. A rigorous analysis of the proposed hypotheses would likely require much additional data generation that is likely beyond the scope of this paper.

We recommend that the authors:
- Move the biogeographic/climatic analysis from results to discussion. And shorten it substantially in the main text (this could involve moving some aspects to supplementary).
- Make it clear that the manuscript mainly reports a powerful new phylogenomic resource for an  important ant genus
- Change the title and abstract (and other parts) of the manuscript to focus on the resource and dramatically tone down interpretations linked to ecology or effects of climate change.

We expect that this would only represent a small amount of work.

With kind regards,
Gino Brignoli & Yannick Wurm

Minor comments
L52 “...social structure and community assembly” - missing u
L89 “With the these new…”   - remove “the”
L94: "demonstrated patterns in the   evolutionary dynamics of ant genome size (Tsutsui et al., 2008) " - I think the authors simply mean to say that there was variation in genome size.
L113: Anophales -> Anopheles
L118 "blast" is lowercase - while subsequent page it is uppercase L128
L118: which version of BLAST? What was approach used to remove contaminants, chimeric sequences etc (software, parameters etc)
L126: what does "70% of fragments mapped " mean? Fragments of what? Mapped from where to where?
L128: using -> Using
L128/129: which NCBI sequence database? NR? Which blast algorithm? Blastx? blastn?
L130: the -> The. similar capitalization issues in Fig 3 legend and elsewehre
L133: I don't understand what "recommended for gene coverage" means?
L123: "Genome Quality:" -> usually the CEGMA (or BUSCO) metrics are used as biological measures of genome completeness.
L189 to 191 - were all 26 ant species used for all analyses? If so which collection locations were used for previously published genomes? (Such information may unfortunately be absent from previously published genomes)
Pg13 “Figure 6. Plot an showing…” - remove “an”
L249 “from from previous experimental…”
Table 1 can be supplementary
Ref "The evolution of genome size in ants. " - should only have 4 authors but has about 20x more!
The two rudis colonies do not cluster together according to whole-genome MASH. I understand the authors dont want to do fullgenome comparisons here - however does e.g., a mitochondrial or nuclear “housekeeping” gene phylogeny based on sequences from these sample support the polyphyly?


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: DRAFT APHAENOGASTER GENOMES EXPAND OUR VIEW OF ANT GENOME SIZE VARIATION ACROSS CLIMATE GRADIENTS
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 3

Output:
Basic reporting: no comment
Experimental design: Major comments:
There are a few issues with the main analysis correlating environmental variables with genomic characteristics:
1. The total length of assemblies is not a good metric for genome size. While flow cytometry is ideal, k-mer analysis (e.g. GenomeScope) also tends to be more accurate than assembly size so should be used instead.
2. The authors note that they did not perform phylogenetic correction for their analyses (line 237) but seem to acknowledge that it would be a more appropriate approach. I would argue that such a correction is essential. The conclusion that climate influences genomic characteristics is completely dependent on this analysis.
3. It appears that the latitude and longitude of collecting site were used for correlational analyses. However, given that this study is comparative in nature, each individual genome is meant to represent an entire species. And several of these species have very large ranges that span the entire eastern United States into Canada making these data points inappropriate for this analysis. The midpoint of the species ranges could be a reasonable alternative. Unless the authors are arguing that these six specimens that they have used are effectively a single population but I don’t believe that this is the case. While there appears to be some undiscovered species diversity within A. rudis, the rest appear to be good species without gene flow between them.
4. The previously sequenced ant genomes included in the analysis were sequenced using a variety of different methods. For example, some genomes included 454 sequencing. This could bias the size of the genome assembled. Perhaps some of these influences could be taken into account.
5. The authors perform their analyses both by including Aphaenogaster genomes and again without these new genomes. However, a third analysis that focuses just on Aphaenogaster might be more compelling. This would eliminate some of the phylogenetic bias in the data and also eliminates many of the other factors that could be playing a role as all Aphaenogaster genomes were collected and assembled in the same way. I also wonder if leaving out the fungus-growing ants, a group that is also over-represented, could have a similar effect. Relatedly, the fact that Aphaenogaster has such an impact on the analyses seems to suggest that phylogeny is playing a significant role.

Other comments:
-More detail is needed for the DNA extraction procedure. Was it really necessary to collect DNA from a whole colony? Is there polygyny or multiple-mating in these species that could affect the assembly? Reporting heterozygosity/genetic diversity would be useful and these data could be used to infer colony structure if it is not already known.
-While genome annotation is certainly a significant additional challenge, comparing gene sets across species could provide additional insight. This can now be relatively easily accomplished with pipelines like BRAKER which don’t necessarily require transcript data to run.
-Line 128: That is not the average genome size of those listed in the table
-Line 128-130: Why was this BLAST analysis done?
Validity of the findings: no comment
Additional comments: This study by Lau and colleagues presents the newly sequenced genomes of six species of ants in the genus Aphaenogaster. Given their worldwide abundance and ecological importance, the genomes of these species are likely to be of substantial scientific use. There are relatively few taxonomic groups, particularly within ants, where multiple closely related species have been de novo sequenced, making this a potentially valuable resource for studying both ants and genome evolution.


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: DRAFT APHAENOGASTER GENOMES EXPAND OUR VIEW OF ANT GENOME SIZE VARIATION ACROSS CLIMATE GRADIENTS
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: I feel the authors have fully addressed all concerns raised during the previous round of review.
Experimental design: No comment.
Validity of the findings: I feel the authors have fully addressed all concerns raised during the previous round of review.
Additional comments: Thank you for your careful attention to concerns raised during the first review. I feel the paper is much improved and will make an excellent early contribution to our understanding of any genomes.


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: DRAFT APHAENOGASTER GENOMES EXPAND OUR VIEW OF ANT GENOME SIZE VARIATION ACROSS CLIMATE GRADIENTS
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: see below
Experimental design: see below
Validity of the findings: see below
Additional comments: Line 242  p=0.076 is not "marginally significant"

As reviewer 3 points out, genome assembly size is indeed very noisy and something like GenomeScope is much more powerful and precise for this type of comparison. The response to the reviewers comment is inapporpriate. You cannot have a genome assembly if you didn't start with short reads. This is a very very quick analysis (half a day MAX to do all species) but would increase accuracy of these estimates.

### My additional comments in response to the cover letter ###

L123: "Genome Quality:" -> usually the CEGMA (or BUSCO) metrics are
        used as biological measures of genome completeness.
RESPONSE: CEGMA has been discontinued and the authors recommended
using alternative tools. BUSCO is available, however, at present we
have not completed the genome annotation process, which appears to be
a requirement.

### What is this statement based on?
### Having an existing geneset is NOT a requirement for running BUSCO.

Ref "The evolution of genome size in ants. " - should only have 4
      authors but has about 20x more!
RESPONSE: We have not changed this, as we are using the bibtex cls
file that was provided. Please let us know if there is a different
formatting file that we should use.

### I do not understand what the authors are saying.
### The manuscript mentioned clearly has a specific set of authors.
### https://bmcevolbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2148-8-64


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 SYSTEMATIC COMPARISON OF EIGHT NEW PLASTOME SEQUENCES FROM IPOMOEA L
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: The general manuscript is written in clear English, the background information and cited references are mostly sufficient.  Article structure is professional but some elements lack sufficient detail to be fully understood by the reader.  In a few cases, the article relies on authors looking up other critical information - that information should be given in this manuscript.  Below are some specific comments:

Abstract "SC/IR" should be "SSC/IR"?
line 47 insert "of" between "understanding" and "genetic"
line 73 - change to "The length of land plant chloroplast genomes..."
line 75 - insert "mostly" before "maternal"
sentence from lines 78-79 is awkward and unclear
line 100.  for fix "1 %" as 1% - here and elsewhere?
line 104-105 - insufficiently clear explanation of data cleaning. Method could not be repeated.
line 106 - the paper is about genome assemblies, please give the methods, not just a citation to the method.
line 117 - the methods describe 6 repeat types, but the figure only has 5?
line 139 - how do we use a chloroplast reference to remove nuclear data?  I think the authors mean they pulled matching cpDNA data from the set of all reads they didn't remove nuclear data, rather targeted matching cpDNA reads.   If they only "removed nuclear data" then all the mitochondrial data would still be in the mix.
line 149 space fix "to 161,721" so the appropriate space is included
line 162 fix the spelling on cytochrome
line 246 - replace for with four
line 250-258 - this section doesn't fit the results into the context of what is already known vs novel findings. I think most of the patterns described here are well know for land plant cpDNA, so perhaps citing some relevant literature and discussing that briefly would be helpful.
line 270 and several other spots, a citation is given without the associated year.
lines 282 - 291.  I'm not convinced these are solid conclusions given the study design and findings.  For example, I. trifida comes out in two distinct clades on tree, so how can we conclude that it is sister to I. batatas when that is only true in one portion of the tree?  We need to know more about the taxonomy of the group.  Where would the type specimen of I trifida come out on this tree?  Without that, the conclusion isn't meaningful.
Line 285.  In phylogenetics, it is not common to say the one species is more "similar" to another based on the inferred relationships.  Better so say it is more closely related.  Similarity can have a very different meaning

Legend Figure 1 - What is the graph in the center of the diagram? Please describe this in the legend

Legend Figure 3.  What are the five repeat types - describe in the legend (not the M&M described six repeat classes, why are there only 5 here?  What are the SSR types?

Legend Figure 4.  I presume a window size must have been defined to calculate a percentage?  Should that be mentioned in the legend?  What tool was used?

Legend Table 1.  Describe what the accession # is?  Where would one go to find the information on the origin of this sample?
Experimental design: This is original primary research and within the aims and scope of the journal
Questions were defined and the data generated will be valuable for others
Much of the methods have not been described in sufficient details to facilitate replication.
Validity of the findings: Some of the conclusions are not clearly stated or supported (see comments about about the relationship between I batatas and I trifida
Additional comments: No additional comments


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

Input:
Title: A SYSTEMATIC COMPARISON OF EIGHT NEW PLASTOME SEQUENCES FROM IPOMOEA L
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: I have no concerns regarding the methodology used by the authors and the descriptions provided in this manuscript. The English writing needs minor corrections and some better explanations in various sections would be useful (see my comments on the Word document). References missing include the important work done by Roullier and collaborators in several papers between 2011 and 2013 (2011, Molecular Ecology; and 2013, PNAS and PLoS ONE).
Experimental design: The experimental design is correct and the analysis can be replicated. However, it is not clear to me what is the research question that the authors addressed nor how the results presented here contribute to filling that gap. See my comments on the "Validity of the findings" section.

My main concern regarding the Experimental design is related to the identification of the specimens included in this study. Species identification in the sweet potato group is difficult, because it relies mostly on the shape of the sepals which is notably variable. Therefore, an important question would be, how did the authors identify or confirm the identity of the materials in their study? Comparing their results to those presented by Roullier et al. and Muñoz-Rodriguez et al. (2018, Current Biology), several specimens in this study are most likely misidentified. For example, the Ipomoea ramosissima specimen (PI 540711) is likely to be Ipomoea cynanchifolia, which is morphologically identical except in the shape of the fruit when fully developed (see for example Wood et al.’s 2015 study of Ipomoea in Bolivia). The fact that this I. ramosissima and the I. tiliacea specimens are not sister to each other, as shown in previous studies, raise concerns in this reviewer about the identification of the specimens. Also, the Ipomoea trifida specimen KF242476 (obtained by the authors from the data provided by Eserman et al.) is likely to be a misidentified specimen belonging to other species, rather than proof of the non-monophyly of I. trifida as hypothesised by the authors. In addition to any conclusions drawn on this specimen, extra caution must be taken when using it as reference for assembly, as its true identity is not 100% clear.

Also, from Table 1, it is not clear the provenance of the Ipomoea splendor-sylvae specimen. Does it come from Peru or from Mexico?
Validity of the findings: This manuscript presents a study of the chloroplast genomes of ten species of Ipomoea closely related to the sweet potato. As noted by the authors, two studies of whole chloroplast genomes have been published recently: Eserman et al. (2014, American Journal of Botany) and Muñoz-Rodríguez et al. Eserman et al. provided a detailed study of chloroplast genomes in Ipomoea, including three species in the sweet potato group, and Muñoz-Rodriguez et al. studied some 170 chloroplast genomes and hundreds of nuclear DNA regions of all species in the sweet potato group specifically with comparisons between species, multiple specimens per species, phylogenies of the group, etc. Muñoz-Rodriguez et al. built on the work done previously by Roullier and collaborators and several other groups in the late 1990s and early 2000s using DNA barcodes and other markers. All those studies and especially Muñoz-Rodriguez et al. helped clarify, to a great extent, the relationships between the species in the sweet potato group. Furthermore, those studies made available the chloroplast genomes analysed, which means that around 200 whole chloroplast genomes of species in this group are now available for phylogenetic studies.

Together with what I exposed in previous sections, a major concern related to what has been exposed in the previous paragraph is that this manuscript does not present any novelty apart from, perhaps, the detailed description of the structure of chloroplast genomes. As explained above, phylogenetic relationships between the sweet potato and its wild relatives were addressed in more extensive studies by Roullier et al and Muñoz-Rodriguez et al using nuclear and chloroplast data and multiple specimens of each species. I think this study does not provide any new insights into the question. The analyses presented here could perhaps be more relevant if the authors had included more specimens per species (which is desirable in a phylogenetic study of any group of plants these days), so their monophyly could be evaluated, but as it is now, with only one sample per species, this study does not add any new discovery to this group of species. If the authors aimed to replicate or challenge the results of previous studies, I think more sampling and combination of chloroplast and nuclear genomic data would be necessary.

Perhaps more interesting is the comparison of the chloroplast genome structure between species. However, considering 1) the extraordinary similarity between chloroplast genomes in this group (as shown by the authors), 2) that several species diverged in recent times and 3) that mutations in the chloroplast genome accumulate at slower rates than in other genomes (see for example Drouin et al. 2008 in Molecular Phylogenetics & Evolution), a highly similar or almost identical configuration is expected. This was already shown in previous studies too, although not with as much detail as presented here. Taking all this into account, I think this part of the manuscript would benefit from incorporating other species across Ipomoea and even across the family Convolvulaceae, which would cover a more extensive timeframe and different evolutionary patterns. I advise the paper could be considered for publication if such comparisons across a broader taxon sampling were incorporated.
Additional comments: No additional comments


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

Input:
Title: A SYSTEMATIC COMPARISON OF EIGHT NEW PLASTOME SEQUENCES FROM IPOMOEA L
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 3

Output:
Basic reporting: This manuscript reports the 10 complete plastome sequences of sweet potato and related species. It contains a substantial amount of new data. But I believe it is a simple data report paper rather than a comprehensive research paper. Several apparent errors also evident in figure and table preparation. Therefore, I recommend the through revision before publication.

Discussion on line 260-281. Discussion for the phylogenetic relationships of Ipomoea trifida is very confusing because the author used the collection numbers rather than the GenBank accession numbers in discussion. Please replace the collection numbers to the Genbank accession numbers in the text. The authors simple suggest the differences of phylogenetic relations of Ipomoea species in previous study and current species are due to taxon samplings. But the possibility of the hybridization should also address using the previous nuclear gene trees such ITS markers.

Batatas is the subcategory names under the genus Ipomoea. So, it should write to be Ipomoea ser. Batatus or Ipomoea sect. Batatus rather than Batatus name alone. Please correct the names thought the manuscript.

Fig.1. Annotation of rps12 gene is wrong. It is a divided gene. The author should present an adjust map rather than the computer generated wrong map. Please redraw the rps12 region of map.

Fig. 3A. It is not the repeat types. It looks like the repeat length.

Fig.5. Please add NCBI accession numbers after all scientific names. Please marked with bald face or different color for newly reported sequences on the tree.
Experimental design: It is well performed experiment.
Validity of the findings: The manuscript contain several clean data and new  reports for 10 Ipomoea pastomes.
Additional comments: No additional comments


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

Input:
Title: A SYSTEMATIC COMPARISON OF EIGHT NEW PLASTOME SEQUENCES FROM IPOMOEA L
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: This is an improved version of the manuscript, and I acknowledge that authors have made all efforts to address the different issues and questions raised by all three reviewers. Most questions have been carefully resolved, which is much appreciated.

However, I still think there is room to improve the English writing, and some sentences need re-writing. For example, sentence in line 132 is not clear: "The step size was set with to 400 bp, with an 800 bp as a window (Fu et al., 2017)". This is only one example, but authors must note that there are several other parts of the text where inconsistencies appear, singular/plural, typos, etc. I think it is necessary to correct these before the manuscript is published. It should not take much time and would help future readers of the paper.
Experimental design: No comment.
Validity of the findings: Same as in my previous review.
Additional comments: No additional comments


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

Input:
Title: A SYSTEMATIC COMPARISON OF EIGHT NEW PLASTOME SEQUENCES FROM IPOMOEA L
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: This manuscript reported eight new chloroplast genome sequences of Ipomoea. With other published 32 sequences, the authors reconstructed the phylogenetic tree of Ipomoea. I wish more detailed phylogenetic anlyses and detailed description about the phylogeny of Ipomoea ser. Batatas using whole chloroplast sequences. But, I think the manuscript contains publishable information. The revised version of manuscript is better than the previous version.

But, the current version also need minor polishing befopre the submission of final version.

-The gene number counts in Table 2 should be given by unique gene numbers  rather than the duplicated countings in IR regions.

-There are many grammatical errors. Please proofread the manuscript before the submission of final version.

For examples:

Line 75. The length – The lengths
Line 90. repeats varieties - repeat sequences
Line 293. Delete genus
Lines 297, 300.  Ser. or Series should be use constantrly across the manuscript.
Line 311. different – difference
Line 316. A detailed repeats – A detailed repeat.
Experimental design: Experimentally, it is a standardized NGS and annotation process.
Validity of the findings: Eight new plastome sequences from seet potato plants.
Additional comments: I wish more detailed phylogenetic anlyses and detailed description about the phylogeny of Ipomoea ser. Batatas using whole chloroplast sequences. But, I think the manuscript contains publishable information.


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

Input:
Title: ANATOMICAL LOCATION OF AICA LOOP IN CPA AS A PROGNOSTIC FACTOR FOR ISSNHL
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: no comment
Experimental design: no comment
Validity of the findings: no comment
Additional comments: It is a good manuscript focus-analysing only on ISSNHL group. The methods, results and discussion are scientifically comprehensible and have added value to the current 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: ANATOMICAL LOCATION OF AICA LOOP IN CPA AS A PROGNOSTIC FACTOR FOR ISSNHL
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: In my opinion, this is a well-written article with a clear and professional English language. The literature is well referenced and relevant. The structure is conformed to PeerJ standard.
About the figure, I have some opinions :
1.	Figure 3 is unnecessary since the hearing thresholds of affected and nonaffected ears are presented clearly in the Results section.
2.	It is better to clearly mention the definition of the y-axis and the error bar in the figure legend of figure 4 and 5. For example, mean (or average) hearing threshold improvement with standard deviation (or error)
3.	In Figure 4D, the y-axis of dBHL shall be dB HL.
In the table, Chavda classification sometimes is typed as “Cahvada”.
The statement of asterisk in statistical analysis (*p<0.05, **p<0.01, and ***p<0.001 ) is unnecessary because I do not see any asterisk in results section and figures/tables.
Experimental design: The original primary research is within Scope of the journal (Medical science). Research question well is defined, relevant and meaningful. However, I have some comments about experimental designs :
1.	The authors were suggested to demonstrate more the meaning of two different classifications of Chavda and Goirred on their study and their hypothesis. Do they hypothesize that the distance of AICA and IAC correlate to the occurrence and prognosis of ISSNHL?
2.	 Did all of the subjects treat with high dose steroid only? Are there any subjected who have ever receive intratympanic injections of steroid? Since salvage therapies were important factors that affect the prognosis of ISSNHL, the authors were suggested to mention their protocol to treat ISSNHL more detailedly.
3.	 The authors only define hearing improvement as more than 10 dB HL at each frequency. However, one who can improve 11 dB HL at 1kHz may not improve at 4kHz. Probably another grading system such as Siegel’s criteria may be better to reflect the hearing outcome of ISSNHL patients.
Validity of the findings: The author speculated that the group that experienced hearing improvements (Chavda type 1) might have had a higher rate of inflammatory/infectious etiologies compared to patients with a Chavda type 2 or 3 configurations so that patients with Chavda can respond better to steroid therapy. However, if it is the case, patients with Gorrie type 1 will have a better prognosis, which is not shown in the results. In addition, why the improvement of Chavda type 1 is only found over 1 KHz and 4 KHz needs further elucidation.
Additional comments: It is an interesting article that provides the readers to think about other possible etiologies of ISSNHL as well as factors that affect the hearing outcomes of ISSNHL. However, more discussions were suggested to speculate their conclusion that the anatomic location of the AICA loop may help prognosticate hearing outcomes in ISSNHL patients.


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: ANATOMICAL LOCATION OF AICA LOOP IN CPA AS A PROGNOSTIC FACTOR FOR ISSNHL
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 3

Output:
Basic reporting: Line 85: please check the amount of methylprednisolone. Because, MPD is usually used as 0.8mg/kg/d. Or please describe your steroid protocol.
Experimental design: Line 83
it is interesting that PTA was calculated by the average of 0.5, 1,4,8 kHz. And it is different from other ISSNHL studies. Please consider including results of other frequencies or focus on the mean hearing level instead.

Line 112-113:
As described earlier, reporting PTA at 0.5, 1, 4, 8 khz separately is a little bit unsual. Please consider reporting of PTA at all frequencies from 250 Hz to 8 kHz. In addition, the authors are asked to add the mean hearing level of both sides.

Line 116-122
1.	The authors are asked to write results of the Chavda & the Gorrie in next paragraph.
2.	Table 2 should be mentioned in the beginning of the new paragraph like this.

“The types of anatomical variations of the AICA were not different between the affected side and the contralateral side (Table 2) (p>0.05, Fisher’s exact test). With regard to the Chavda classification, Chavda type I was the most common, followed by type II, and type III. For the Gorrie classification, the Gorrie type III was the most common (Table 2).”

3.	Please delete the following sentence. “Using the Chavda classification, both ears showed a high proportion of type 1 (greater than 50%), with type 2 having the next highest proportion. “. It’s redundant.

4.	Table 2: The Cahvada may be the typo of Chavda. Please correct the typo.

Line 123-132.
Please delete the following sentence starting from Patients were separated into … . It’s also redundant. To clarify, the authors should simplify the results of this paragragh like this.
“The relationship between AICA and symptoms were classified as Table 3 and 4. As a result, the anatomic variations of AICA was not different according to vertigo and tinnitus, respectively (p>0.05).”

Line 133-146

1.	With regard to figure 4 and 5, Please add the mean hearing level in the center of bars at all figures.
2.	The authors are asked to add the mean hearing level and the hearing gain according to each classification, respectively. Figures may be better to express the results more efficiently and the numbers should be included in the figures.
3.	Please consider including results of other frequencies such as 250 Hz, 2 kHz, 3 kHz. Or, concentrate on the mean hearing level according to each classifications.

Table 1:
The proportion of vertigo seems to be higher than other studies. The usual co-incidence of vertigo was reported to be about 30%. Please describe what made this in the discussion section.
Validity of the findings: Line 201-202
Please delete the final two sentences staring from limitations -, and We highly recommend…

By this, your final conclusion will be more clear.
Additional comments: In this study, the authors analyzed the relationship between the AICA and the various prognotisic factors of the sudden hearing loss. As a result, they found that hearing outcome may be influenced by AICA loop to a small extent.

The authors are asked to add more descriptions why the location of AICA matters in the clinial course of idiopathic sudden hearing loss.  The authors described that the anatomical variations of the AICA results in the ISSNHL. However, it seems to be too strong statement. Although labyrinthine artery is a branch of AICA, there is no consensus what proportions of sudden hearing loss is caused by problems in the vessels. And the authors focused on the vascular loop, not a labyrinthine artery.


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: ANATOMICAL LOCATION OF AICA LOOP IN CPA AS A PROGNOSTIC FACTOR FOR ISSNHL
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 4

Output:
Basic reporting: This article is written clearly in unambiguous English throughout. It adheres to acceptable formatting standards and the figures and tables are relevant to the study. Relevant permission has also been obtained from the local review board allowing this work to be done. The literature on the subject is also relevant and up to date
The authors have set out to determine the relationship between the shape and location of the AICA and its correlation with the clinical features and prognosis of ISSNHL. This is a simple study that was performed by retrospectively reviewing data of patients who presented over a two year period to their centre.
In the introduction, the authors have made adequate effort to introduce the studied parameters and the relevance of their hypothesis. The methodology including imaging and clinical parameters evaluated are clearly described. The raw data of patients have also been shared.
Experimental design: The experiment is original work that has been appropriately designed to answer the research question. The results are acceptably described in the text.The statistical tests are also appropriately applied The Tables however could be improved. In Table 1 depicting demography, it would be better to state the category of demographic data being represented rather than listing all different parameters one after another. Example Gender : Male x% vs Female y% .  Statistical test applied and the p value findings should also be added to the tables for ease of reading rather than having to go back to the text each time. (For Tables 2 – 6). The Figure depicting the Chavda and Gorrie MRI classifications are appropriate.
Validity of the findings: Despite their being studies to correlate the anatomy of the AICA with audiovestibular symptoms, the authors are the first to study this anatomy in patients with ISSNHL. The work has noted no statistically significant findings indicating that their might be any relationship with the AICA anatomy and incidence of ISSNHL. The demonstrated improvement in hearing and its relationship to the anatomical subtypes also did not reveal significance statistically.A larger small sample size is needed to confirm this point.
Additional comments: Overall, this is a well conducted simple retrospective effort to study AICA anatomy and its correlation with ISSNHL. The methodology is  appropriate, however the results tables should be appended to better represent the data in terms of statsitical tests applied.


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: ANATOMICAL LOCATION OF AICA LOOP IN CPA AS A PROGNOSTIC FACTOR FOR ISSNHL
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: Clear
Experimental design: Original
Validity of the findings: Valid
Additional comments: accepted as commented by me before.


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: ANATOMICAL LOCATION OF AICA LOOP IN CPA AS A PROGNOSTIC FACTOR FOR ISSNHL
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: no comment
Experimental design: no comment
Validity of the findings: no comment
Additional comments: The authors revised their manuscript well. Minor revisions are suggested as below:

1.	I still do not see the definition of error bar shown in figure 4 and 5. Are they standard deviation or standard error ?
2.	The statement of asterisk in statistical analysis (*p<0.05, **p<0.01, and ***p<0.001 ) is suggested to be deleted since there are no asterisks shown in results section and figures/tables.


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: ANATOMICAL LOCATION OF AICA LOOP IN CPA AS A PROGNOSTIC FACTOR FOR ISSNHL
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 3

Output:
Basic reporting: no comment
Experimental design: no comment
Validity of the findings: no comment
Additional comments: Thank you for hard work.


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

Input:
Title: ANATOMICAL LOCATION OF AICA LOOP IN CPA AS A PROGNOSTIC FACTOR FOR ISSNHL
Review round: 3
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: no comment
Experimental design: no comment
Validity of the findings: no comment
Additional comments: The authors revised their manuscript as my suggestion. Thank you for hard work.


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

Input:
Title: NUMERICAL ABILITY AND IMPROVEMENT THROUGH INTERINDIVIDUAL COOPERATION VARIED BETWEEN TWO CYPRINID FISH SPECIES, QINGBO AND CRUCIAN CARP
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: Language could be improved.
Experimental design: Statistics and data use should be explained and checked.
Validity of the findings: OK
Additional comments: The study reported in the MS “The numerical ability and improvement through interindividual cooperation varied between two cyprinid fish species, qingbo and crucian carp” is interesting and well-performed. I think this study will be of interest for the readers of PeerJ.
Below I provided a list of suggested changes and pints that could be improved to better present the study.

L19-21
We used qingbo (Spinibarbus sinensis) and Chinese crucian carp (Carassius auratus) to test whether numerical discrimination could be improved by the cooperation of conspecific or heterospecific dyads of fish.

L24
Numerical cognition should be ”performance” or “numerical acuity”

L25
Remove “under the condition”

L27
....even at the ‘easier’ numerical discrimination, i.e., .....

L39
Remove “other”

L42-45
In some cases being in the larger group increase competition for food and it is not beneficial. I think it is better to rewrite this sentence considering only the antipredator defence advantage.

L47
Prefer should be “shows”

L47
Break the sentence after “living”. Then start a new sentence for the cooperation.

L53
Which species have been tested by Bai?

L62
“We tested” and “the ability to choose the larger stimulus”

L85
How many repetitions overall?

L94-96
During the test, the behavioral responses of the test fish were recorded using a webcam (Logitech Pro 9000; Logitech Company, Suzhou, China) located 100 cm over the test tank and above the arena and connected to a remote computer.

L99
Explain the holding device

L113
IMPORTANT POINT: I don’t understand how the authors dealt with the data of the dyads. Did they measure each fish in the dyad independently and then they calculated the average? Please clarify in detail this important information.

L117-118
It seems that the authors used an F test (repeated measures ANOVA?) rather than a t test. Please check carefully the analysis.

L154
Agrillo

L163
Psychological should be cognitive

L163-165
Can the authors provide some data for the interesting boldness effect? Maybe they can also run a very brief experiment to measure boldness....

L169-171
I firstly read about this idea in the paper:
Lucon-Xiccato, T., Dadda, M., Gatto, E., & Bisazza, A. (2017). Development and testing of a rapid method for measuring shoal size discrimination. Animal Cognition, 20, 149-157.
Maybe the authors can cite it here.

L182
Bisazza
Please double check references

L216
Psychological should be cognitive

L273
Danio rerio in italic

Figure 2
I think the asterisk should be on the top of the two bars because the statistical test was for the difference between the two bars.