Bridging the Gaps: Exploring Aquatic–Terrestrial Connectivity through the Trait-Based Ecology of Riparian Predatory Arthropods

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript presents interesting topic.

If I'm not mistaken, the review only includes terrestrial spider species. Would be interesting to see if there are some differences if Argyroneta or Dolomedes were included.

Also, it would be interesting if lentic ecosystems were used as comparison.

Some minor corrections are given in the MS pdf.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 1

We appreciate the time and effort that you dedicated to provide feedback on our manuscript. We are grateful for the insightful comments and for the valuable improvements to our paper.

Comments and suggestions for the authors:

“The manuscript presents interesting topic.”

Response:

Thank you for your interest and appreciation of the topic we chose. We are glad that you find it relevant and hope that other researchers will too.

Comments and suggestions for the authors:

“If I'm not mistaken, the review only includes terrestrial spider species. Would be interesting to see if there are some differences if Argyroneta or Dolomedes were included.”

Response:

The terms “Argyroneta or Dolomedes” were not included in our search on Web of Science. However, the search returned few articles that studied the species Dolomedes aquaticus (references: 59, 73, 80) that we included in our analysis, as individuals of this species are known to dwell on shorelines, though hunting in the water. Our review does not include any species of the genus Argyroneta, as no paper addressing it was found through our search strategy, and since, from our knowledge, Argyroneta aquaticus mostly lives in the water.

Comments and suggestions for the authors:

“Also, it would be interesting if lentic ecosystems were used as comparison.”

Response:

Lentic and lotic ecosystems comparisons could be very interesting. However, such comparison requires applying the same approach to select the relevant papers from the literature and analyze them, which is not the scope of our review. We consider your suggestion could become the topic of another research of interest.

Comments and suggestions for the authors:

“Some minor corrections are given in the MS pdf.”

Response:

We believe the suggestions provide solid improvements and as such we:

Removed the redundant keywords (lines 29-30).

Removed ”biomass” from the phrase “emergent insect biomass” (line 42).

We believe the highlighted question for “spider*” in the search string table (Table 2) has been answered previously in regard to the type of spiders included in the analysis. We thank you again for the question.

As the words used to describe function could vary, (ex.: functional, functionality, functions) we used the * truncation card in accordance to the methodology of Web of Science. We acknowledge that the term used in the searched lacked the letter “n”, however, the results account for all the variation of the word “function” as it can be seen through the link provided in the Supplementary Material.

Renamed the figures as tables and numbered them accordingly.

Regarding the question about habitats and types of water bodies (line 229). We mostly talk about riparian habitats and not type of water bodies, if we made reference to lotic habitats, we called them as such in the text (ex. lines 189-191).

Put Bembidion in Italic (line 316).

Rewrote the phrase in the conclusions that included “We suggest” (line 430) with one of the suggestions provided.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is a review paper that draws together the literature on aquatic-terrestrial connectivity with respect to functional and trait-based approaches. The authors believe this is the first review of this kind and I am not aware of any other. Riparian arthropods provide significant links between rivers and their riparian communities, and this paper considers predatory spiders and carabid beetles in this regard. A large literature has been assessed impressively, and the result is a useful compilation of information that will be of interest to aquatic and riparian ecologists.

The aims of the research are clearly presented on page 2 and the methods of sourcing the literature are well explained. The relevant papers found deal with riparian zones in many parts of the world. Results are clearly expressed in the text, although many sentences are rather long making the reader concentrate intently. The figures are essentially tables that summarise the findings and directions of change in various situations. Table 1 is particularly useful as it sets the scene by defining the terms used in the review along with pertinent examples.

The text will benefit from some grammatical revision, and I have attempted to assist with this by attaching an annotated copy of the manuscript. Therefore, I will only mention a few things here.

Some specific points

Line 8. The University of Bucharest’s website gives the name of the authors’ department as Systemic Ecology and Sustainability, rather than Systems Ecology...

Line 16 and elsewhere. The term “anthropic” is used. I believe the correct term in this context is anthropogenic.

Line 137 and elsewhere. Use of the abbreviation “etc.” is not useful as it gives no indication of what other traits might be. Delete.

Figure 1 and text. The authors use the term hydric stress, but I suggest a better term is desiccation stress. See my comment on page 9 of the annotated text.

Figure 1 legend. Tell the readers how to interpret the arrows (and see Figure 3 where a new symbol occurs).

Line 316. As a generic name Bembidion should be in italics.

Line 329. What does “sympathetic” mean here. I suspect this is not the right word, but I can’t think what the correct one might be!

References. I could not find Reference 80 cited in the text. If it is missing, please add it in.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Overall, the manuscript is well written but some corrections to grammar and sentence construction will improve its accuracy and readability. I have attached an annotated copy of the manuscript with some suggested corrections for the authors to consider.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 2

We appreciate the time and effort that you dedicated to provide feedback on our manuscript. We are grateful for the insightful comments and for the valuable improvements to our paper. Furthermore, we are much obliged by your effort to grammatically correct the manuscript.

Comments and suggestions for the authors:

“This is a review paper that draws together the literature on aquatic-terrestrial connectivity with respect to functional and trait-based approaches. The authors believe this is the first review of this kind and I am not aware of any other. Riparian arthropods provide significant links between rivers and their riparian communities, and this paper considers predatory spiders and carabid beetles in this regard. A large literature has been assessed impressively, and the result is a useful compilation of information that will be of interest to aquatic and riparian ecologists.

The aims of the research are clearly presented on page 2 and the methods of sourcing the literature are well explained. The relevant papers found deal with riparian zones in many parts of the world. Results are clearly expressed in the text…Table 1 is particularly useful as it sets the scene by defining the terms used in the review along with pertinent examples.”

Response 2:

Thank you for your interest and appreciation of the topic we chose. We are glad that you find the topic relevant and the endeavor useful. We hope that other researchers will too.

Comments and suggestions for the authors:

“Although many sentences are rather long making the reader concentrate intently.”

Response:

We intend to make our review as accessible as possible for potential readers. As such, we shortened several of the longest phrases.

Comments and suggestions for the authors:

“The figures are essentially tables that summarise the findings and directions of change in various situations.”

Response:

We changed the name of the figures to tables and numbered them accordingly.

Comments and suggestions for the authors:

The text will benefit from some grammatical revision, and I have attempted to assist with this by attaching an annotated copy of the manuscript. Therefore, I will only mention a few things here.

Response:

We consider this revision to be very important for the quality of our review. As such, we made all the suggested changes (both those written as specific points and all the other in the annotated text) with two exceptions listed at the end. The improvements we made are as follows:

Comments and suggestions for the authors:

“Line 16 and elsewhere. The term “anthropic” is used. I believe the correct term in this context is anthropogenic.”

Response:

We changed the term „anthropic” to „anthropogenic” in all instances.

Comments and suggestions for the authors:

„Line 137 and elsewhere. Use of the abbreviation “etc.” is not useful as it gives no indication of what other traits might be. Delete.”

Response:

We deleted the abbreviation “etc.” in all the tables.

Comments and suggestions for the authors:

“Figure 1 and text. The authors use the term hydric stress, but I suggest a better term is desiccation stress. See my comment on page 9 of the annotated text.”

Response:

We changed the term „hydric stress” to „desiccation stress” in all instances.

Comments and suggestions for the authors:

“Figure 1 legend. Tell the readers how to interpret the arrows (and see Figure 3 where a new symbol occurs).”

Response to reviewer:

Added the following text „Arrow pointing up = overall tendency of increase; Arrow pointing down = overall tendency of decrease; Bi-directional arrow = inconsistent reported response tendencies.” to the legend of the tables (Tables 3, 4 and 5), plus the following text „Zero = no significant correlation” in the only instance where it was encounterd (Table 5).

Comments and suggestions for the authors:

“Line 316. As a generic name Bembidion should be in italics.”

Response:

Put Bembidion in Italic (line 316).

Comments and suggestions for the authors:

“Line 329. What does “sympathetic” mean here. I suspect this is not the right word, but I can’t think what the correct one might be!”

Response:

Changed the term “sympathetic” to ”sympatric”, as originally intended.

Comments and suggestions for the authors:

References. I could not find Reference 80 cited in the text. If it is missing, please add it in.

Response:

Reference 80 is cited in Table 4 in the last row.

Comments and suggestions for the authors:

“Line 8. The University of Bucharest’s website gives the name of the authors’ department as Systemic Ecology and Sustainability, rather than Systems Ecology...”

Response:

Exception 1. “Department of Systems Ecology” (line 8): We thank you for your keen observation in regard to the name of our department on the university website. It was indeed misspelled on the university website, as the English name we use includes Systems Ecology. It was an error we had no knowledge of, and that has been corrected since thanks to your observation, for which the members of our department also extend their gratitude. Given what previously written, it will not be necessary make this particular change.

Comments and suggestions for the authors:

Based on annotation of the text (line 34).

Response:

Exception 2. Regarding the addition of the word “of” inside the phrase containing “known for support and regulation ecosystem services” (line 34). We will respectfully decline to make the suggested change as we make reference to classes or types of ecosystem services as considered by the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment or The Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services (CICES).

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript in the present form is good, but it requires minor but obligatory changes mainly in term of format:

1- Add recent references.

2- Lines 73-74: include reference(s) for support your proposal of use ground beetles (family Carabidae) and spiders (order Araneae).

3- Lines 139-142: include reference(s) as support.

4- The manuscript is presented as review, but it has "Material and Methods" section, a review does not has it, I suggest reorganize the tittle of the paragraphs, because there are results obtained from material and methods that are compared with references.

Many success and blessings 

Thank you for your consideration, many blessings

Author Response

Response to reviewer 3.

We appreciate the time and effort that you dedicated to provide feedback on our manuscript. We are grateful for the insightful comments and for the valuable improvements to our paper.

Comments and suggestions for the authors:

“The manuscript in the present form is good, but it requires minor but obligatory changes mainly in term of format”

Response:

Thank you for your interest and appreciation of the manuscript and of topic we chose. We are glad that you find it relevant and hope that other researchers will too. We hope that we adress your suggestions as best as possible in order to improve our manuscript.

Comments and suggestions for the authors:

“1- Add recent references.”

Response:

Our study is based on the research papers selected according to the search strategy presented in section 2 of the paper. We included papers published until September 2023. In the revised version of the  manuscript at line 82 we add „published until September 2023”.  As we mentioned in lines 86-88, “only articles that measured and analysed traits, components of FD and trait-mediated behaviours” were considered. We are not aware of any paper not included in the reserch. If the reviewer knows other relevant parpers to be included we kindly ask to share the information.

Comments and suggestions for the authors:

“2- Lines 73-74: include reference(s) for support your proposal of use ground beetles (family Carabidae) and spiders (order Araneae).”

Response:

We provided two citations in the text to support our choice in line 74.

Comments and suggestions for the authors:

“3- Lines 139-142: include reference(s) as support.”

Response:

The information presented in lines 138-142 is a result of our own reserch. In the revised manuscript we make this clear by adding ” We found that feeding preference...” in line 138. We aslo added references to support the claim ”followed by polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) analysis, increasingly popular, due to its better capacity to discern food origin and nutritional quality.” in the same line.

Comments and suggestions for the authors:

“4- The manuscript is presented as review, but it has "Material and Methods" section, a review does not has it, I suggest reorganize the tittle of the paragraphs, because there are results obtained from material and methods that are compared with references.”

Response:

Thank you for your observation. We revised and changed the title of the 2nd section of our review from „Material and Methods” to „Literature screening and curation methodology”.