PONE-D-20-19802

A new reproductive mode in anurans: natural history of Bokermannohyla astartea (Anura: Hylidae) with the description of its tadpole and vocal repertoire

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Malagoli,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

There were two referees who both find the results interesting and suggest that they should be published. Also, on the one hand, there are mainly minor comments regarding the manuscript's structure, language etc.

However, on the other hand, one referee made an important point (and therefore even ranked the paper 'reject'), and I share this point. There is a lot of natural history information on a particular species and the focus of the paper is not really strong. That is, the paper as it is would perhaps work well in a herp journal but not so well in a more general science journal. The one major point of your findings, the new reproductive mode, is certainly something special and something beyond a natural history study. But this is not well emphasized given the amount of other information. The referee suggests to split the information into various papers, which I think is a good idea.

Along with this, the introdcution and the discussion remain a bit too general in the paper as it is.

These critics are NOT a reason to reject your paper according to the publication criteria of PLoS ONE. As a result I ranked your paper 'minor revision' and leave the decision with you to perhaps shorten the manuscript for PLoS ONE with a stronger focus on the reproductive mode novelty. 

Please submit your revised manuscript by Oct 26 2020 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Stefan Lötters

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements.

1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf

2. PLOS requires an ORCID iD for the corresponding author in Editorial Manager on papers submitted after December 6th, 2016. Please ensure that you have an ORCID iD and that it is validated in Editorial Manager. To do this, go to ‘Update my Information’ (in the upper left-hand corner of the main menu), and click on the Fetch/Validate link next to the ORCID field. This will take you to the ORCID site and allow you to create a new iD or authenticate a pre-existing iD in Editorial Manager. Please see the following video for instructions on linking an ORCID iD to your Editorial Manager account: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xcclfuvtxQ

3. We note that Figure 11 in your submission contain map images which may be copyrighted. All PLOS content is published under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which means that the manuscript, images, and Supporting Information files will be freely available online, and any third party is permitted to access, download, copy, distribute, and use these materials in any way, even commercially, with proper attribution. For these reasons, we cannot publish previously copyrighted maps or satellite images created using proprietary data, such as Google software (Google Maps, Street View, and Earth). For more information, see our copyright guidelines: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/licenses-and-copyright.

We require you to either (1) present written permission from the copyright holder to publish these figures specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license, or (2) remove the figures from your submission:

3.1.    You may seek permission from the original copyright holder of Figure 11 to publish the content specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license. 

We recommend that you contact the original copyright holder with the Content Permission Form (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=7c09/content-permission-form.pdf) and the following text:

“I request permission for the open-access journal PLOS ONE to publish XXX under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CCAL) CC BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Please be aware that this license allows unrestricted use and distribution, even commercially, by third parties. Please reply and provide explicit written permission to publish XXX under a CC BY license and complete the attached form.”

Please upload the completed Content Permission Form or other proof of granted permissions as an "Other" file with your submission.

In the figure caption of the copyrighted figure, please include the following text: “Reprinted from [ref] under a CC BY license, with permission from [name of publisher], original copyright [original copyright year].”

3.2.    If you are unable to obtain permission from the original copyright holder to publish these figures under the CC BY 4.0 license or if the copyright holder’s requirements are incompatible with the CC BY 4.0 license, please either i) remove the figure or ii) supply a replacement figure that complies with the CC BY 4.0 license. Please check copyright information on all replacement figures and update the figure caption with source information. If applicable, please specify in the figure caption text when a figure is similar but not identical to the original image and is therefore for illustrative purposes only.

The following resources for replacing copyrighted map figures may be helpful:

USGS National Map Viewer (public domain): http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer/

The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth (public domain): http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/sseop/clickmap/

Maps at the CIA (public domain): https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html and https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/cia-maps-publications/index.html

NASA Earth Observatory (public domain): http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/

Landsat: http://landsat.visibleearth.nasa.gov/

USGS EROS (Earth Resources Observatory and Science (EROS) Center) (public domain): http://eros.usgs.gov/#

Natural Earth (public domain): http://www.naturalearthdata.com/

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

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

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: This study brings novel and important information on the biology and distribution of a frog species, including the description of a new reproductive mode for anurans. The manuscript is a beautiful natural history study and is well written. Although I recognize the importance of natural history studies to enhance our knowledge on the ecology and evolution of organisms, I have to say that the manuscript suffers from the lack of focus, which makes it extremely long. Additionally, the work is centered in the species biology, which makes it less attractive to a broader audience.

As the study presents diverse aspects of the species biology, I think the authors should consider separating the content of the manuscript in different more focused manuscripts (e.g. reproductive mode and breeding biology; description of tadpole and call types; geographic distribution and conservation). I would like to emphasize that my suggestion is not based solely on the length of the work, but because shorter and more focused studies are more likely to be read and to reach greater impact in the scientific community. Below, I provide some suggestions that might be useful to broaden the focus of the manuscript.

The introduction is very restricted to the taxon studied. It is possible to modify the framework to make the study more interesting to a broader readership. For instance, the great diversity of reproductive modes in frogs could be introduced in the light of the evolution of terrestrial reproduction in vertebrates and the factors leading to terrestriality. Furthermore, other aspects of the study are not presented in the introduction. The importance of acoustic communication and diversity of acoustic repertoires in many animal groups, including anurans, could be mentioned in the introduction. Similarly, as the manuscript uses predictive models to infer geographic distribution and discuss the conservation status of the species, these subjects should be presented in the introduction (e.g. the situation of amphibian conservation in the world and in Brazil, main threats to the group, the current conservation status of the species and the importance of predicting geographic distribution to support conservation policies).

Similarly to the introduction, the discussion section presents a superficial discussion because of the great variety of subjects in the manuscript. For instance, in the first paragraph of the discussion, if water bodies are available, I was wondering about the factors that could have led to the reproduction in bromeliads in this species (e.g. to avoid competition with other species in aquatic sites, avoid predation, avoid competitor males or sneakers?). There are recent papers discussing the evolution of terrestrial reproduction in frogs that could be mentioned. Furthermore, in the last years, new reproductive modes have been described for anurans and currently we have more than 40 reproductive modes (mentioned in the introduction), many of them described for species from tropical forests outside the Neotropics. Factors related to the evolution of this striking diversity of reproductive modes among tropical frogs could also be discussed.

Reviewer #2: The study by Malagoli et al. is a very nice piece of amphibian natural history, well written and richly and beautifully illustrated. It describes a new reproductive mode in anurans, courtship, defensive behaviors, spawning, and tadpoles of Bokermannohyla astartea. They also update the description of its vocal repertoire and provide updated information on its geographic distribution and conservation status. There is some criticism surrounding the description of new reproductive modes in amphibians because very subtle differences in reproductive biology are sometimes used to propose a ´new reproductive mode´. The reproductive mode of B. astartea seems, however, indeed distinctive. Of course, there is an important element missing… that is, how do tadpoles end up in surface waterbodies. Maybe the authors could be more explicit about whether they have invested the time and effort needed to find tadpoles above stage 26 in bromeliads, or tadpoles below stage 26 in streams. Descriptions of behavior, tadpoles and calls (based on my limited experience with bioacoustics) are all very thorough. Again, the pictures and, to be honest, all graphical elements, are excellent. I only have minor comments that could be addressed to improve the paper.

Line 118 - Seventy-one-days exclusively or predominantly devoted to observing B astartea? Or 71 days in which several tasks were conducted in the field including observing B astarea?

Line 119 – Observations were done in only two breeding sites? Is this species of difficult access in other localities within the range of its distribution?

Lines 133 – 145 – Figure titles for figures 1 and 2 are the same. I believe you could change them to better indicate what each figure shows. Alternatively, you could rearrange those two panels into a figure that shows the breeding sites and its differences (temporary vs permanent streams? BS1 vs BS2?) and another showing the position of calling activity on the BSs.

Line 147 - What is a ´all-occurrence sampling method´?

Lines 164-165 - Liver and muscle samples were preserved… What for?

Lines 167 – 170 – How many specimens in each category (resident males, satellite males, females)?

Lines 191, 626, 687 - Presumed? Presumably?

Lines 228 a 244 –It is not absolutely necessary, but It would be helpful for readers to have the measurements of the external morphology indicated in a figure like Figure 6.

Lines 309 – 311 – Did they use 75% of the data to train the algorithms and 25% to validate it? Please, explain in a bit more detail.

Lines 339 – 341 – When you show the number of individuals (n), also provide percentages so we can immediately know how rare or common the behavior was in your sample size. Like you did in “Males vocalizing outside bromeliads (6.7%, n = 6)”.

Line 345 –“ 39.7 ± 1.3 mm (36.8–42.7 mm, n = 40)”. What are these intervals inside the parenthesis? Minimum and maximum values? Confidence intervals?

Line 363 – “(n = 14, % of total males observed?)”

Line 366-369. I don’t think you have to indicate the full study locality in the figure title. Just “Males of Bokermannohyla astartea recaptured in the same sets of 367 bromeliads in the two breeding sites sampled (BS1 and BS2)” would be enough.

Line 399. The male does not spawn. I assume you mean ´after egg laying was completed´ or something like that.

Lines 427-428. Is the satellite male observing or being observed? I believe you meant “no satellite males observing” here.

Line 443. ´ Spawns were always found in bromeliad leaf-tanks´ - as opposed to? All your sampling effort was invested into bromeliads. Would you have found spawns in a surface waterbody?

Line 449 – “(139–194)” minimum and maximum values?

Line 535 – 538. I cannot fully see four posterior tooth rows or the gap in the first tooth row in Figure 7A. This is not necessarily a problem and I know those pictures are hard to obtain. Still, do you have another picture that clearly shows them?

Lines 647 – Again, you do not need to repeat the locality in the title of the table.

Line 752 – Remove comma in “Even, the predicted occurrence”

**********

6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

PONE-D-20-19802R1

A new reproductive mode in anurans: natural history of Bokermannohyla astartea (Anura: Hylidae) with the description of its tadpole and vocal repertoire

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Malagoli,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

There are some few issues left that need attention. The one referee and myself were very satisifed with your review.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Feb 05 2021 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Stefan Lötters

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

**********

2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

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

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: No

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: This is a beautiful natural history paper, describing a new reproductive mode for a Neotropical anuran species and other reproductive traits. I really appreciated reading this revised version. The authors did a great job improving the introduction and the discussion. I think that the manuscript can be accepted after minor revision, mostly regarding text corrections and adjustments. Although I tried to correct some grammar errors, I thnk that the manuscript still needs an English revision. My specific suggestions/corrections and comments follow below.

Abstract

Line 47: Include “the” before “novel reproductive mode”.

Introduction

Lines 54-59: In the paper by Silva et al. (2020), authors suggest that the reproductive modes have influenced fecundity and sexual dimorphism in anurans, not the opposite as stated in the introduction. Thus, I suggest rewriting the sentence excluding this part, as follows:

“However, recent studies indicate that sexual selection by male-male competition [5] and parental care [6] also played an important role in the evolution of terrestrial reproductive modes in anuran amphibians, indicating that multiple factors can contribute towards terrestriality.” You can also join the first two paragraphs.

Line 61: replace “tetrapods”

Line 76: replace “…is the diversity in tadpole morphology”

Line 78: substitute “upon” for “on”

Line 85: substitute “to” for “in”

Line 86: delete “categorized as”

Lines 88-90: rewrite as follows: “…and territorial calls may have unique traits and play determinant roles within the social context and reproductive biology of anurans”

Line 95: include “a genus of” before gladiator treefrog

Line 101: include “the” before reproductive biology

Line 107: include “the” before Serra do Mar

Line 116: include “the” before reproduction

Materials and methods

Line 132: it seems that montane is repeated

Line 180: when referring to live animals, it is better to use “individuals, males, females, etc”. Specimen is mainly used for dead animals deposited in collections. Check throughout the text.

Lines 191-192: If you used these tissue samples from adults for tadpole identification, it would be nice to clearly state that “These samples were used for tadpole molecular identification (see details below).”

Line 245: replace “are given”

Line 286: It would be better to write “…traits were measured according to Köhler et al…”

Results

Line 315: exclude “and” before Vriesea and insert a comma

Lines 312-314: You have beautiful pictures, thus you could refer to Fig. 2 when describing calling sites.

Lines 323-326: The first paragraph of the results describes temporal breeding pattern and habitat use. Thus, results on male and female SVL and sexual dimorphism fit better in the second paragraph.

Table 1: Include at the end of the legend: “Days between recaptures are shown as mean (range)”. Exclude “mean (range)” from the table. Also, standardize decimal digits.

Line 349: I suggest “Courtship and oviposition behaviors”

Figure 3: Some adjustments in the legend: “(A) Female approaching the resident male in vocal activity. The white arrow indicates the location of the resident male in the bromeliad leaf-tank. On the left, the satellite male was observing the interaction. (B) In another set of bromeliads, the same female was inspecting the bromeliad leaf-tank while the resident male was in the leaf-tank above (white arrow). (C) Pair in amplexus in the leaf-tank inspected by the female. (D) After egg laying was completed, resident male left the female and sat on the upper leaf-tank, where he began to emit a courtship call to attract the female again. (E) Pair in amplexus in the upper leaf-tank. Notice the spawn just placed in the anterior leaf-tank and the approach of the satellite male (white arrow). (F) Satellite male sitting on the newly deposited spawn (white arrow). The pair remained in amplexus in the leaf-tank above”.

Line 396: substitute “couple” for “pair”. In the same line, substitute “the couple were” for “the pair was”. Check throughout the text.

Line 431: correct “Spawns were found”

Figures 5, 6: It would be nice if photos could be arranged in the same order they are mentioned in the text, or maybe change the order in the text? For instance, at the beginning of the tadpole description (line 483), it is possible to mention Fig 5A-D.

Line 581: There is no Fig 8 anymore. To which figure do you refer here?

Table 3: “Acoustic parameters of the calls of Bokermannohyla astartea…”

Discussion

Lines 688-695: It is always nice to initiate the discussion calling attention for the main results. Thus, I suggest beginning with the discussion about the use of bromeliads as calling and breeding sites and the record of a bromeligenous species in the tribe Cophomantini for the first time. It is easy to be done by changing the position of the sentences.

Lines 685-686: Discussion on the reproductive period should be moved to the end of the paragraph. Moreover, it would be nice to add a sentence about the occurrence of the species in the Atlantic forest, where annual precipitation is high mainly in spring/summer, which may favor the prolonged breeding season of the species and the use of bromeliads to reproduce.

Lines 686-687: As I mentioned in the results, sexual size dimorphism should be discussed in the second paragraph. Males and females exhibited differences in SVL. Which differences? Clearly state that females were larger and mention that this is common pattern for anurans (with some references), although other Bokermannohyla species do not present sexual size dimorphism.

Line 719: substitute “positioning themselves over” by “sitting on”

Lines 720-722: rewrite as follows: “…when opportunistic males try to fertilize oocytes released by the amplectant female, which were not fertilized by the resident male...”

Line 725: I suggest “Courtship and oviposition behaviors”

Line 732: substitute “conduct” by “conducting”

Line 737: include “possibly” before “because”

Line 741-742: Courtship precedes amplexus and oviposition, thus I suggest rewriting as: “We recorded the partitioning of spawns among different leaf-tanks by amplectant females of B. astartea.”

Line 748: Partitioning of spawns has also been recorded for the hylid Dendropsophus haddadi (Silva et al. 2019. Reproductive biology of Dendropsophus haddadi (Bastos and Pombal, 1994), a small treefrog of the Atlantic forest. Herpetology Notes 12: 319-325). Given that Hylidae is a speciose family, I suggest adding that spawn partitioning might be common, although poorly reported.

Line 754: Emphasize your findings about the reproductive mode by adding “novel for anurans” at the end of the sentence.

Line 773: The correct would be Table 2 (tadpole measurements).

Line 774: reword “bromeliad leaf-tanks”.

Lines 777-780: It is intriguing why only tadpoles up to stage 26 occur in bromeliads. Why not until stage 21 or 24? There is a paper by Leite and Eterovick (2010), where they describe the tadpole of Bokermannohyla martinsi and make interesting comparisons among Bokermannohyla tadpoles regarding their morphology and ecology. In this paper, the authors suggest that Bokermannohyla tadpoles have a long duration of stage 25, probably related with the fact that most species reproduce in permanent ponds/streams. Do you think that the long duration of stage 25 could explain why only tadpoles up to stage 26 were found in bromeliads? Or, alternatively, is it possible that tadpoles have a mechanism of stop developing and growing while inside the bromeliads? There are many studies describing plasticity in tadpole growth and development (depending on environmental conditions) and I think it would be interesting to raise some of these hypotheses.

Line 856: substitute “between” for “with”

Line 858: reword: “may also have”

Lines 860-874: As I mentioned in the introduction, there is a misinterpretation of the study by Silva et al. (2020) about reproductive modes and sexual size dimorphism (SSD), and no sexual selection mechanisms are involved. I would suggest removing this discussion on SSD. However, if you decide to keep, I suggest reorganizing this paragraph, as follows:

“… some traits of the reproductive biology of B. astartea agree with a recent complementary hypothesis that is linked to sexual selection [5]. For example, the territoriality of males related to the sets of bromeliads and hidden amplexus and spawning may decrease the risk of polyandry [37, 5] and can also reduce spawning damage by multiple male harassment [5]. Besides male-male competition, terrestrial reproductive modes have been suggested to influence sexual size dimorphism and fecundity in anurans [7]. The less pronounced sexual dimorphism in relation to the SVL between males and females of B. astartea may occur because amplectant females do not carry males to another site for spawning [7]. Still, this space limitation of bromeliad leaf-tanks may favor the reduction of female size since the pair has to fit in the small space to spawn (e.g., [37, 100]), possibly reducing spawning size in these microhabitats, and thus resulting in a less pronounced sexual size dimorphism [7]. These traits are postulated to be strongly related to the evolution and diversification of terrestrial/arboreal reproductive modes in frogs, and reinforces that other selective pressures can act beyond predation and competition [5, 7].”

Line 875: include “anuran” before “species”

Line 879: include “the” before “Atlantic forest”

Line 881: I suggest “…that favor the occurrence of many types of humid microhabitats…”

Line 885: I suggest “…basic biology of Neotropical anurans…”

**********

7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

A new reproductive mode in anurans: natural history of Bokermannohyla astartea (Anura: Hylidae) with the description of its tadpole and vocal repertoire

PONE-D-20-19802R2

Dear Dr. Malagoli,

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

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

Stefan Lötters

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: