Dissimilarity among Species and Higher Taxa of Amphibians in a Hotspot of Biodiversity and Endemism in the Neotropics

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This manuscript explores the amphibian diversity among biogeographic provinces in Oaxaca, an important Mexican state for amphibians. Such a study has the potential to inform conservation efforts. Below I provide suggestions to improve the manuscript in the general order they appear in the manuscript.

lines 16-17: I think this sentence could be deleted in the Abstract.

lines 18-19: What does “their replacement components” mean?

line 31 and throughout: Several of the papers used to generate statistics on the diversity of Mexico and Oaxaca are relatively old, and the authors do not appear to have attempted to update them despite a recent explosion in papers updating the herpetofauna of Mexico and the Mexican states (e.g., Ramírez-Bautista et al. 2023 An updated list of the Mexican herpetofauna: with a summary of historical and contemporary studies. ZooKeys 1166: 287-306 among others).

lines 33-35: Is there a citation for this?

lines 40-41: I think you should just say that amphibians are experiencing a major extinction crisis, not that it is the worst extinction crisis in history.

lines 51-55: Are there no other studies looking at beta diversity in amphibians? For example, García et al. 2007. Patterns of alpha, beta and gamma diversity of the herpetofauna in Mexico’s Pacific lowlands and adjacent interior valleys. Animal Biodiversity and Conservation 30: 169-177; Serrano et al. 2014. High amphibian diversity related to unexpected environmental values in a biogeographic transitional area in north-western Mexico. Contribution to Zoology 83: 151-166; see also Smith et al. 2020. The biogeography of ecoregions: Descriptive power across regions and taxa. Journal of Biogeography 47: 1413-1426.

lines 60-65: Since the text is in English, it might be best to use the abbreviations for the English names of the provinces/subprovinces.

line 66: What work are you referring to? Again, any updates on this?

line 122: How did you determine the area of the subprovinces?

Results: There are several parts of the Results that are very hard to follow. Please work on polishing the clarity of the writing and simplifying the long, complex sentences. In addition, be very clear about what you are talking about in each result.

Figure 3. First, the individual panels should be identified with a letter. Second, the axis labels for the top four panels are virtually unreadable.

lines 175-189: I am having a very hard time relating this to what is shown in the figure. They don’t seem to match to me. It would also be helpful to label the panels in Figure 4 so you can refer to specific graphs when you are talking about these results. That may help make things clearer.

line 176: This actually looks like 4 groups not 3 groups to me.

lines 211-212: This is like the 3^rd time you say this in the manuscript. I don’t think you need to keep repeating this, especially since the values are relatively outdated.

lines 233-235: Since you are using the same species list, how are your analyses different from the original?

lines 244-248: Maybe I’m missing something but this seems like you are just basically defining what beta diversity is. I’m not sure what is new here.

lines 267-273: Seems like you could dig a little deeper here. Can you analyze this> At the very least can you do more to try to determine why?

lines 277-279: It seems it is more likely due to the differences in endemicity of these two groups.

lines 288-290: What does this mean?

lines 291-323: I’m not sure how these two paragraphs are related to your study. Either make the connection more clear or get rid of the paragraphs.

Generally pretty good, but some aspects need to be cleaned up.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The study initially focuses on the national level before narrowing down to the state level, with a particular emphasis on a state known for its rich biodiversity. While the technical aspects of the study, such as statistical analyses and dataset design, are appropriate for the objectives, there is room for improvement in presenting the findings. Please refer to the revised manuscript for detailed comments on each point.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The analyses suggested in the abstract do not seem to be fully addressed in the text; I do not see any substantial analysis (or reference to it) of the use of beta diversity in conservation strategy (line 16, 23-25).

The inference about environmental differences lack any detail; an area-by-area analysis of environmental features versus diversity would have made the study a lot more interesting -are you able to do this?

Beyond precipitation, what are the physiographic differences among the provinces, how are these provinces defined? It would be necessary to state these in the paper rather than just allude to them in references

It would be useful to the reader to summarise in the discussion what new information your study offers above what is presented in your reference [2] Mata-Silva et al 2015.

Some validation of the method of Carvalho et al [12,13, 15] would improve the study, can you summarise what other research has used this method and with what outcome?

some specific points:

line 40-41 amphibians may be experiencing the worst exctinction crisis... the fossil record is not very extensive, how do we know what extinction crises happened in the past?

Table 1 -I find difficult to understand, needs some explanation

Figure 4 - do you need to label the axes of these plots, such as NMDS 1 and 2 etc?

Minor grammatical errors, needs minor editing but basically very good

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have made a good attempt to address my previous comments. There are still a couple things that need to be addressed before publication:

1) Figure 3 is still very hard to read the axes and it is not clear what SP and TX mean in the figures (provide a definition in the legend).

2) Lines 320-348 seem to be identical to 477-505. One of these needs to be removed.

Fine

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for considering points raised in review. Most of the issues I raised have been addressed satisfactorily.

There remain two areas covered in the authors' response letter that could be added to the text with only a couple of sentences for each point:

1. climatic or environmental information for each sub province: the authors analysis presented in the response letter is interesting, and could be summarised into a sentence: annual mean temperature but not precipitation are related to total beta diversity. The detailed analysis could be placed in supplementary information

2. physiographic differences among provinces: the authors prefer just to refer to Mata-Silva 2015; my view is that a paper needs to be able to be read as an independent account at least at the level of the general scientific reader ('tell a story'); the editor may have a view. The description of beta diversity seems somewhat one-sided without at least a general appreciation of what the physiographic differences actually are . I have read again Mata-Silva 2015 and believe that the differences could be summarised as additions to table 1 or a separate table, for example giving maximum elevation and mean annual temperature. obviously figure 1 contains elevation information which is helpful, but it is easier to interpret if placed directly alongside other relevant information such as that in table 1.

The interpolated discussion beginning with 'The coincidence of some of our results with those of Mata-Silva....' is good but occurs twice in the discussion, please edit.

English is very good, occasional minor text edits could be done

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf