Uncertainty in Marine Species Distribution Modelling: Trying to Locate Invasion Hotspots for Pterois miles in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Article reads like a brief technical report. Results are not particularly novel. Moderate copy edits required. Perfect for JMSE.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thanks for the effort in reading our work. The text has been worked and updated while copy edits have been done.

Best regards

Dimitris

Reviewer 2 Report

The topic of this study, how climate change affects the distribution of an invasive species, is both important and interesting. Temperature is an important limiting factor of their range. In this manuscript, I find limited discussion on the results of this study. Please compare and contrast the potential distribution patterns for different climate scenarios (figs 2-5), what are the major differences between those predictions? Also, how do you interpret the uncertainty (fig 6) pattern? What does it mean to have a 0.86 uncertainty in real terms?

Is there any evidence from either incidental observations or systematic surveys that support the result in fig 1? I believe there are some incidental records from Italy, but the probability of lionfish appearing there is not high based on this model. Can you explain why?

In the following, I list the specific comments.

Abstract. Try to include the important results from the modeling exercise into the abstract. For example, the potential hot spots and perhaps where the lionfish will not pose a problem in the region.

page 3. The description of the biological data is missing. For example, time coverage, spatial coverage, sampling effort, and a brief summary of the presence/absence data. How many sampling stations are there? Is the surveying effort standardized? These are important things that will influence the results, but they are not described here. I don't see figure S1.

Page 3 line 101. Exactly what recommendations did you follow? They need to be specified here. Did you split the data into training and test sets? If not, is there an overfitting issue here? Is the model validated in any way?

Page 3 lines 101-112. Giving the names of the metrics is not enough for the readers to understand why they are calculated. For each metric, briefly explain what it is trying to measure.

Table 1. How did you calculate these metrics in the Mediterranean? I assume the distribution data used come from other regions. Again, this information could be in the appendix, which is missing.

Fig 1. Please give the landmass some color other than white. It is a bit difficult to tell which part is land and which part is sea, for readers not from the region. Also, give the color bar a unit, is it probability?

Page 8 Fig 6. What is the unit of uncertainty? What does a 0.86 value of uncertainty mean ecologically? I think these are important things that need to be properly explained in the text.

I don't see the importance of different variables in the model.

Editorial comments:
line 45. Words seem to be out of order.
line 51. Check grammar.

Author Response

Dear reviewr

Attached you will find, with red letters, the response to the comments.

We would like to thank you since your effort support the improvement of our work.

Best regards

Dimitris

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have addressed all the concerns in the response letter well. Still, I cannot find the said supplementary files. Please make sure they are included in the final submission. I have no further major comments.

Minor comments:

line 47-48: ... could serve as a mitigation action ...

line 230: ..., provides ...

line 231: ..., a piece of information that provides ...

Author Response

Thanks for the comments.

We now have all required for the final submission.