PONE-D-19-21585

Successional, spatial, and seasonal changes in seed rain in the Atlantic forest of southern Bahia, Brazil

PLOS ONE

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PLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments:

A reviewer has recommended accepting this manuscript for publication, pending minor changes. I agree with his(her) assessment and am willing to consider a revised version for publication in the journal, assuming that you are able to modify the manuscript according to the recommendations.

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Reviewers' comments:

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Comments to the Author

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The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

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Reviewer #1: No

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Reviewer #1: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: This is an impressive study examining the effects of secondary forest age, distance from mature forest, and season on seed rain (density and diversity). The study appears to be well conducted, they collected an impressive amount of data (26,500 diaspores from 15 plots over 12 months) and, for the most part, it is well written. Most of my comments are about the methods (some parts need to be explained in more detail) and discussion.

1. My main critique is that the Discussion is difficult to follow and some of the results are not really discussed (see comments 11 and 12 below). This is a challenging study to discuss in that the authors collected data on several factors, so they have A LOT of results to discuss, and several of them don’t follow easily-interpretable patterns.

2. L107: “during the first 40 years of succession” This sounds like the authors collected data over 40 years. Perhaps it can be reworded to clarify that secondary forests up to 40 years old were examined. (Same issue in line 30 in the abstract.)

3. L122: “haplorthox” is not regularly-used jargon. Perhaps provide more info about what this term means.

4. L130: How did you determine the age of the secondary forests?

5. L144: “For these species, counts were estimated with subsamples.” Please explain in more detail.

6. L145: “A fruit was considered a single diaspore regardless of its number of seeds.” Please explain your rationale. This method seems like it would underestimate fleshy-fruit (and animal) dispersal compared to dry seed (and wind) dispersal.

7. L153: “animal dispersed species, which displayed features associated with vertebrate dispersal agents” Please state your criteria for labeling a diaspore as animal-dispersed versus wind-dispersed.

8. L192-193: I think it makes more sense to re-word this as: “we modeled diaspore size as the log-odds ratio of large diaspores (here classified as being larger than 15 mm) to the total amount of diaspores”

9. L184-185 and L200-202: When you say “we included [means and 95% confidence intervals]” does that mean you included them in the results/graphs? When I first read these sentences, I thought you meant that these means were included in your models, and it was very confusing. Please clarify.

10. L251: It would be more accurate to say “our results indicate that the density and species richness of seed rain increases with forest age”

11. L320: “this study did not show a significant relationship between distance from mature forest and seed rain diversity” This is a key result that is not discussed. It’s contrary to your hypothesis stated in the Intro. Any ideas why? Are your results similar to or different from previous studies?

12. The pattern in Figure 3d seems surprising. Why is the diversity of biotically-dispersed diaspores highest at the edge of the mature forest, but then it drops at 20 m, before steadily climbing with distance from the mature forest? I would have expected it to DECREASE with distance from mature forest. Any possible explanations?

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Reviewer #1: No

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Successional, spatial, and seasonal changes in seed rain in the Atlantic forest of southern Bahia, Brazil

PONE-D-19-21585R1

Dear Dr. Piotto,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it complies with all outstanding technical requirements.

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With kind regards,

Angelina Martínez-Yrízar

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: