Diversity and Endemism of Amphibian Fauna in the Yoko Forest Reserve, Democratic Republic of the Congo

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The ms is a very interesting approach on the Amphibian fauna of the Yoko Forest Reserve, contribution to the knowledge on the  group for DR Congo.

In its present form however, it does not provide important information needed. It could also benefit from rearranging some parts of the present ms. I note below the three main issues to be addressed.

1.       Proposed hypotheses

The hypotheses proposed by the authors are scattered within the Materials and Methods section. I suggest putting the hypotheses, briefly or even in bullets at the end of the introduction.

The comments regarding each should follow the same order in the next sections where needed, but certainly in the results. They should also follow at least in part of the discussion.

Such a structure would make the ms much more friendly and comprehensible for the reader.

Moreover, take care regarding internal contradictions. E.g. the phrase “…we claim to obtain a value close to 1 because the abundance is the same for all species present in the study area.” on lines 130-131 to my view contradicts the findings shown in figure 4.

2.       Specimens

Line 111-113 read: Specimens were collected manually over a period of three consecutive months and, once identification had been relatively mastered, only doubtful specimens or those belonging to species not yet recorded were collected.

Where are these specimens? are they deposited in a collection of a Museum? the authors lab? how can one verify the findings? Especially the specimens that consist first records for the area should be in some way made available. Minimum info needed would be description of the collection (institution? lab? private? ) if the specimen are in ethanol (and what concentration) name of the person who collected, and the person who identified the specimen, date and exact locality (as exact as possible, ideally geographical coordinates) of collection.

3.       Comparison

The comparison of YFRE with other areas (lines 229 - 264, including figures 5 and 6) is a good practice and very desirable. However, the work presented here fails to be informative as the reader does not know the location nor the size of the areas compared.

A simple solution would be to add a map of DRCongo outlining the localities mentioned and if possible mentioning their size. Outline colours could follow the colours of Fig5 and 6 grouping and the legend could be common for the two.

 

Minor issues

Lines 119-120 “ entered into Excel 2016 for use in various software packages for various analyses”. Consider something like “digitized for further analyses.”

Line 288 and 291 Tableau 2, Tableau 3. I don’t mind , but as the text is in English I propose Table

 Lines 346-350. I remain confused: YFRE has mainly Anurans? or only Anurans? If no relevant publication exist, I would chose “only”

 line 365 “of amphibian predators and prey in the YFRE” this literally means (e.g.) snakes (predators) and insects (prey), and the sentence says locals exploit them . Is this what you want to say?

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

After investigating, the author utilized three techniques: visual observation, habitat search, and acoustic identification. I suggest the author provide information on the techniques used to obtain data on these 33 species. This information can be presented in Table 1 or a supplemental file. Additionally, why didn't the author display photographs of all 33 species in Figure 3? Doing so might enhance the paper. After a thorough review of this manuscript, I don't believe it's ready for acceptance. I recommend submitting this study to a more specialized journal.

Some comments: 

Line26: captures is replaced with “surveys”.

Line121: To determine the diversity of amphibians in the study area (hypothesis 1). this is not a hypothesis. The author should learn how to formulate hypotheses.

Line121: Simpson's index (1-D)？ line125: D is Simpson's index？ Which is correct？

Line140: which is hypothesis 2？

Line146-149: hypothesis 3？，hypothesis 4？

Line160: D = 1−S7 ， is D in here Simpson's index？I am confused.

Line168: hypothesis 5？

Line186: Compared with the literature, which reference?

Line188: why Simpson's index is 0.841 could indicate that amphibians are diverse?

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The study entitled: Preliminary data on amphibian diversity in the Yoko Forest Reserve, Democratic Republic of Congo, is a classic study of species distribution, analysis of specific richness and diversity. The importance of the study lies in two points:

1.- The lack of knowledge of the existing batracological community in the DRC.  The present study is an important advance in the knowledge of the amphibians of a very forgotten area.

2.- The use of a standardized methodology that allows you to compare your results with other existing ones.

I miss an phenological analysis of the presence of the species, at least the most abundant ones.

I believe that the study can be published with small, very small changes that I have noted in the pdf.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The ms is really interesting because it generates an overview of the diversity of amphibians in an area as diverse as Tropical Africa and particularly the DRC. The structure of the document is solid. However, I consider a weakness in the methodological design. Any study of these characteristics must consider species conservation plans and strategies. These strategies are the IUCN species protection categories, DRC wildlife laws (if any) and the EVS system (review Johnson J., Wilson LD. & Mata-Silva V. 2014. A conservation reassessment of the amphibians of Mexico based on the EVS measure. Amphibian and reptiles conservation 7(1) 97-127). I suggest the authors review the papers of Lemos-Espinal et al., and Woolrich-Piña et al., on diversity of amphibians and reptiles to have an idea of how to present the list of species with their respective conservation categories. Likewise, I suggest that the authors hire the translation services of a native English speaker so that the new submission of the ms has a better quality of English. spelling in detail in the references section.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The ms has improved after the first review round. Fig.6 is particularly useful. Still one issue remains. The authors somewhat confuse hypotheses with questions. This may be easily amended by rephrasing parts of the text according to the following text.

Hypotheses are predictions which you confirm of reject with your results. In most cases in your text you describe questions and not hypotheses. Please see the examples below.

 

Line 125 To determine the diversity of amphibians in the study area (hypothesis 1)… There is no hypothesis (prediction) here.

Further down (lines 134 -135) you could add

we expect to obtain a value close to 1 (hypothesis 1)… This is a prediction

Depending on your results you confirm or reject your hypothesis (in this case confirm)

 

Line 143: Species abundances were obtained by counting the number of individuals collected

for each species to test hypothesis 2. There is no hypothesis here. It could be written as (e.g.)

to test if all species are equally abundant (hypothesis 2) or not (hypothesis 2 rejected) we calculated species abundances as a percentage of species x in the total catch of individuals

 

Lines 148-150. This makes it possible to see whether environments similar in terms of their specific compositions (=how many species) are also close in terms of their specific richness, (=how many species) but also to give a visual insight into hypothesis 3.  No hypothesis here.

This could be written (e.g.)

We compared species richness among several areas to see where YFRE ranks (= question 1)

If you want to formulate it as a hypothesis you should write something like:

We expect YFRE, due to its size and location to rank at an intermediate position among several areas compared (hypothesis 3).

 

Lines 150 - 152. To detect similarities between this study and others that have been carried out in the DRC and Central Africa, Jaccard's dissimilarity was calculated using formula (2) [42] enabling hypothesis 4 to be tested. No hypothesis here. This is a good question but there is no hypothesis. Hypotheses are formulated as “predictions” which depending on you results may be confirmed or rejected, e.g: We expect to see situation X (hypothesis 4) or situation Z (hypothesis 4 rejected)

If you want to formulate this question as an hypothesis you should rephrase as (e.g.) We expect to find the areas concerned, grouped in more than one groups bases on geography and species richness (hypothesis 4). If you find them in a single group, hypothesis 4 is rejected.

 

Lines 170-173. Again a very good question, but no hypothesis

Formulation as a hypothesis in this case would be something like: We expect YFRE to score higher than other areas tested regarding the rate of endemism (hypothesis 5). For this we calculated and compared endemism percentage in each site.  

 

 

 

 

You have 5 very important questions which I formulate in brief below. You may alter the phrasing in the text treating them as such (i.e. questions which further you answer with your results) or use the more complicate “hypothesis” phrasing using the examples I provide above.

What is the amphibian diversity in the study area?

What is the amphibian species abundance in the study area?

How similar is the amphibian fauna of YFRE to other adjacent areas in terms of species richness?

How do the areas investigated group regarding their amphibian fauna?

How does the degree of endemism vary in the areas investigated?

Author Response

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Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Consider that the authors responded to the observations made. I just suggest that they take one last look at the ms and double check the references.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

It appears that the document was properly proofread. I suggest the authors attend to the comments.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx