Amphibian Diversity of the Yucatan Peninsula: Representation in Protected Areas and Climate Change Impacts

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors, 

I have read through your manuscript. I find your work very interesting. However, your research would benefit from extensive changes especially regarding the language and presentation of your results and discussion.

Regarding the introduction I suggest that you provide a bit more information on the study area and the species under investigation instead of giving general information on phylogenetic and functional diversity. Aslo, you should provide more details on your goals/hypotheses, as they are not explained well.

I urge you to present in a clear and understandable way the analyses you performed and your results. 

I suggest that you should rewrite extensive part of the discussion and avoid speculations/generalizations. Please stick to the interpretation of your results and try to address one by one your hypotheses. I think if you added a "CONCLUSIONS" paragraph this would benefit your work and help the reader put together all these nice and interesting findings.

Throughout the paper try to be consistent and please do not use new terminology/hypothesis in the discussion if it has not been previously mentioned in the introduction.

A native speaker should defenately help you improve the language. Perhaps some parts are hard to understand because of the language. See my comments on your manuscript for more details.

Sincerely

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

I think that this manuscript is an important contribution to knowledge of amphibians communities in a climatic change scenario. The use of TD, PD and FD analyses arethey are novel and attractive from a scientific point of view. However, I believe that the methodology is not well explained and needs a new wording. Just small changes to make it more understandable for readers. The use of acronyms for everything seems excessive to me, but it is a personal opinion. I think the manuscript can be accepted with the small changes I suggest.

 

It is necessary in the discussion to incorporate a new references since there are few works used in it.

 

Introduction: You define (TD, or species richness). You need explain it because diversity is not species richness. They are two different concepts. However, if you estimated TD as a species richness do you need explain it clearly. In the start of the discussion occurs the same.

 

 

 

Figure 1 : I think that the authors must include a color figure. In gray scale it is very difficult to differentiate Pantanos to mangroves.

 

 

 

Lines 148-149.Do you need explain what is and how calculates the M area of BAM diagram. Also, how BAM diagram it was made. readers Don’t know this methodology.

 

 

 

They are acronims not defined. BAM, ENM, GCM, RCP45, RCP85, ccsm4, MIROC5,…    authors must define they the first time when it is cited or showed.

 

Lines 145-148 can be rewritten in order to explain more accurately the methodology. Readers who are not versed in these methodologies will not be able to replicate them in case they are interested.

 

 

 

Lines 172-176. We cut environmental variables to the extension of the joined Ms of all species and to reduce multicollinearity among variables, we performed a principal component analysis (PCA). The first four axes that explained ≥ 95% of the total variance were retained to run the models. This procedure was performed with the ‘iPCAProjection’ function of the ENMGadgets package.

 

 

 

Authors don’t present in results the eigenvalues or the explained variance of the selected variables. Please made a table with these results. Already. ENM Environmental Niche Modeling must be explained the first time. Is not too easy to read the MS with too much acronyms.

 

I.E.: 2.4. Ecological niche modeling (ENM).

 

 

 

The same for ROC. receiver operating characteristic

 

 

 

Although the authors say “Further details of the modeling process and  projections to the future are shown in the supporting information”. I think the authors should try a little more to make the methodology more intelligible. The methodology used is correct, but as it is presented, the reader must make an act of faith to believe it. I miss data presented in table form (in SUPPl. MAT. i.e. ). Correct it, please.

 

 

 

 I don't like the continuous use of acronyms in the text. I prefer to read Taxonomic diversity (TD), protected areas (Not PAs), Yucatan Peninsula (Not YP) or Ecological Niche Modeling (Not ENM). However, it is a decision of the authors and the chief editor to decide about it. It's just that I don't like to keep thinking what that acronym refers to every time I read it.

 

 

 

Lines 262-265. I prefer that Figure S2  in the text. Please include it as Figure 2.  Then, Figure 2 to figure 3 and 3 to 4.

 

 

 

Figure 2 : Use all width of the page in order to better read.

 

 

 

Lines 284-286. Where is this result?

 

 

 

In figure 2 I think that will be better indicates R2, not r. (All are positive)

 

 

 

Line 288-290 ;On the contrary, in the 2070-rcp45 scenario the correlations between PD and FD with TD reached their highest values but in the 2070-rcp85 scenario nearly 48% and 94% of the PD and FD variation, respectively, was not explained by TD. I don’t understand why are these percentages.

 

 

 

Figure 4. Raw standardized effect size (SES) values of phylogenetic and functional diversities (SES.PD: a, e, i, m, and SES.FD: c, g, k, o, s). The…

 

 

 

Line 335: decrease in species richness (TD)

 

 

 

 

 

Some references could aid to improve the introduction ad discussion. i.e:

 

 

 

Physiology and acclimation potential are tuned with phenology in larvae of a prolonged breeder amphibian.  Urtzi Enriquez-Urzelai, Alfredo G. Nicieza, Albert Montori, Gustavo A. Llorente and Miren Bego Urrutia. Oikos, 2022: e08566. doi: 10.1111/oik.08566

 

Enriquez-Urzelai et al. Are amphibians tracking their climatic niches in response to climate warming? A test with Iberian amphibians. Climatic Change

 

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-019-02422-9

 

de Pous P et al (2016) Range contraction and loss of genetic variation of the Pyrenean endemic newt Calotriton asper due to climate change. Reg Environ Chang 16:995–1009.

 

Ficetola GF, Maiorano L (2016) Contrasting effects of temperature and precipitation change on amphibian phenology, abundance and performance. Oecologia 181:683–693

 

Garrga et al 2012. Are protected areas truly protected? The impact of roadtraffic on vertebrate fauna. Biodivers ConservDOI 10.1007/s10531-012-0332-0. (Perhaps secondary paper)

 

Moritz C, Agudo R (2013) The future of species under climate change: resilience or decline? Science 341:504–508

 

Pacifici M et al (2015) Assessing species vulnerability to climate change. Nature Clim Change 5:215–224

 

Parmesan C (2006) Ecological and evolutionary responses to recent climate change. Annu Rev Ecol Evol Syst 37:637–669

 

Pecl GT et al (2017) Biodiversity redistribution under climate change: impacts on ecosystems and human wellbeing. Science 355:eaai9214

 

Quintero I, Wiens JJ (2013) Rates of projected climate change dramatically exceed past rates of climatic niche evolution among vertebrate species. Ecol Lett 16:1095–1103

 

While GM, Uller T (2014) Quo vadis amphibia? Global warming and breeding phenology in frogs, toads and salamanders. Ecography 37:921–929.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

All my suggestions/comments have been addressed. I have nothing more to add.