Current Status and Spatiotemporal Evolution of Antibiotic Residues in Livestock and Poultry Manure in China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
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Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
no
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper generally follows the PRISMA protocol. However, there were some drawbacks from the methodological side. First, the search terms were not optimal. For example, there is a spelling mistake in lincosamides, pleurutins is not a common term in scientific literature and a more general term phenicol would be more appropriate than chloramphenicol. Second, there is no information on whether the authors ensured the data were comparable between the studies. If the whole class of antimicrobials was analyzed, the difference in the concentrations could result simply from different scopes of analytes in the analytical method. How did the authors deal with that problem? Third, there is no information on the results of PRISMA and, more importantly, final papers that were included in the study.
The paper shows interesting data but not all results are sufficiently discussed. What I miss the most, is the correlation between the spatial distribution of antimicrobial residues with the analogic distribution in farm practice. Could the differences and hot spots be to some extent explained by the differences in animal species, depending on the region?
Finally, I have some remarks about the presentation and writing.
The authors used some words, especially drug names, which are not widely recognized in the scientific community, e.g. aureomycin, platyclines. Please refer to international names of drugs and generally recognized classes of drugs.
Picture 3A is hard to read. It would would be much clearer, if authors used only + error bars.
Table 3 is unnecessary. Why is the administration route important? I agree that the antimicrobial use is important but the stratification factor should be antimicrobial class, not administration route.
Conclusions are too long and too general.
Figures 1,2 & 3 include Hu line, which is not an obvious term for non-Chinese reader. If that is important to you, you should explain or discuss it, if not delete from the figures.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
