Taxonomic and Functional Diversity of Reptiles in a Heterogeneous Landscape of Jalisco State, West-Central Mexico

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors,

The manuscript is generally well written and organized, however, there are certain issues that should be addressed.

For example, in the discussion section, many of the results that you refer to do not correspond to the results presented, so please correct this mismatch. In addition, you do not provide any data on field sampling which is also very important. As well, you use the term poisonous and refer to venomous animals (which is not the same).

Below are more specific comments.  

Line 44 dominate several ecosystems à add examples

Line 50-51 and what about fishes? Add terrestrial to avoid this confusion

Line 58 – „…reptiles represent one of the most endangered groups of vertebrates worldwide“ This is not true. Reptiles are only 4th most threatened vertebrate group; amphibians, sharks and rays, and mammals have more threatened species, and only birds and bony fishes are less threatened (according to IUCN).  

Line 105 - m.a.s.l à remove dot after m (m a.s.l.)

Figure 1 – increase font on axis and figures, and symbols in b), c) and d) as these are very tiny and difficult to read

Line 124 – masl à change to m a.s.l.

Line 124-125 Some of the dominant tree species were Bursera bipinnata, Ipomoea murucoides, Lysiloma acapulcense, Opuntia fuliginosa and Tecoma stans as dominant à rephrase

Line 126 The TDF also had temporary and permanent water bodies, and some areas were deforested, so CO and CA were established instead. à unclear; you still have TDF so what was changed?

Line 128- 130 - Quercus resinosa, Quercus magnolifolia… put all Latin names in italic and instead of repeating genus name, write only the first letter (Q. magnifolia…)

Line 136-138 – why do you have different number of areas for different habitat types?

Line 151- which period is wet season and which is dry?

Data collection – which method did you use to search for reptiles? Please specify (was is only visual observation, traps…, did you use transects within the plots?...) please describe! As well, how many people were involved in each field search? Were always the same observers in all plots?

Line 185- It was applied a complete linkage method à unclear

Table S2- Do you mean poisonous or venomous? If you refer to animals that use toxins to obtain food (such as vipers), then you refer to venomous and not poisonous animals. These terms are not synonymous so please correct if necessary!

Line 199- it’s cluster analysis (not clustering)

Line 241 – protected (Pr) is confusing since in the text (line 222) you say that 15 species are in a category of protection, and here you clearly mean those referred to as “subject to special protection”

Line 226 – it is unclear what do you mean by sampling effort when you never mention any methods that you used for sampling? Please elaborate on this.

Table S4- explain abbreviations in the table description.

Line 279, 453 – venom instead of poison

Line 280, 458, 480 – non venomous (and not no poisoinous)

Line 285 – no venom

Line 287 – not venomous

Figure 3 legend- everywhere change poison to venom

Lines 300, 327 - Ctenosaura pectinata – put in italic

Line 377, 455 - S. storerioides – Spell out full genus name at the beginning of the sentence; C. basiliscus

Lines 396-398 – this is very confusing; you say that you found similar values for temperate forest (6, 9, 16 and 7) – these values are not similar! There is a huge difference between 6 and 16! In addition, you say that for tropical forests values are lower but they are higher (15, 10, 9 and 10). As well, where did you get the value TDF = 15 (in table S2 it says 12, not 15)? Please, correct this and elaborate on the results.   

Lines 418 – 427, 438 you discussion does not correspond to the results presented in figure 2e; check whether there is a mistake in labelling or order of graphs…

Line 451 – venomous

Line 493 – please write species richness in undisturbed forest for comparison

Line 509 – check the results! Data that you mention here do not correspond to those presented in graphs!

Line 531 – delete Although

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Authors have addressed most of my concerns. Figure 1 looks much better and Table 1 is more informative with specimen numbers. Figure 3 is also improved, even though more complex. Please explain in the legend or table header that size is maximum total size (I assume, or it may be average size? SVL ?). This also needs a unit, although I guess it's cm.

Regarding my comment on "very abundant" species, it may be true that q0 etc are commonly used by ecologists but many readers won't be ecologists, so it would be still good to explain them in some concrete terms.

There are a few minor things left, e.g. in Table 1, please fix the plot numbers to horizontal orientation. Please also check spelling, e.g. in line 312 venomous is spelled venemous.