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PONE-D-21-01262

Biogeographic regionalization by spatial and environmental components: a numerical proposal

PLOS ONE

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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

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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: No

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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

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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: Comments

This study highlights the district level biogeographic regionalization of the Asteraceae species in the Balsas regions of Mexico. Study is very interesting and innovative highlighting different environment variables to be responsible for varied species richness and their distribution. This study has potential for identifying smaller biotic regions for endemic and other ecologically important species to conserve and can be replicated in similar regions. However, few points are of concern here and are summarized below to be addressed by the authors.

Abstract:

P2-L42: differ between them,…. Replace with ‘differ significantly’

P2-L43: than in the Upper Balsas… Shouldn’t it be ‘lower Balsas’ ? Please check

Introduction:

P3-L59: in terms of their endemic taxa….. I wonder if this regionalization meant to be specific for endemic taxa? Its always in broader terms referring to biota. Please recheck.

P4-L109: regionalization …….BD. insert ‘of’ before ‘the SDTF’.

P5-L115: The regionalization………..Replace ‘DB’ with ‘BD’.

Materials and methods:

Spatial data

P5-L143: [55]: 1) This is confusing. Please insert ‘as:’ before 1)

As per point no.1 How did you geo-reference the points with no co-ordinates? Please clear.

P6-L154: ‘Environmental variables’. Should you be consistent with the terms i.e. variables/predictors?

P7-L182-184: We used the dissimilarity…….Biodiverse program. This looks redundant with the previous paragraph (P6 L160, L165-166). Could you try to club these together and put extra information in the sentence?

Ordination analysis

P7-L195: along of reduced ….. Replace ‘of’ with ‘the’.

P7-L201-202: We extracted…… NMDS. Replace ‘ArcGis’ with ‘ArcGIS’.

P7-L202: Should you add any figure no. for refence?

Selection of SDTF environmental predictors

P7-L204: First we considered……… (S1 Table). This is confusing as I observed there are only 32 uncorrelated variables and not 58 in S1. Therefore mention the ‘S1 table’ reference after uncorrelated variables (P8-L214).

Results

P8-L234-235: The differentiated…….. species. Rephrase the sentence i.e. the differentiated groups shown in the dendrogram (Fig 3, a) represent exclusive species of the groups (S2 Table).

P8-L234: Replace ‘Fig 3’ with ‘(Fig 3, a)’.

P8-L229-230; P9-L251-257: Although……… Balsas; The biogeographic tracks…… composition. Be consistent with the use of words. i.e. in the MS mostly groups and districts are used alternatively which might be confusing for the readers with abrupt appearance in the paragraph.

P9-L253-257: Each identified……. Altitudes. Same as previous comment. The sentence becomes very confusing for the common readers because of the use of alternative terminology e.g. lower Balsas or track. Insert ‘in the upper Balsas’ after eastern track.

SDTF environmental predictors

P10-L270: The most parsimonious …….. Here 10 variables are mentioned however, in the table 1 only 9 variables are shown. Please confirm.

Discussion

P11-L297: Our results….. Rephrase the sentence i.e. Our results are in congruence with……

P11-L297: Replace ‘DB’with ‘BD’.

P11-L309: Remove ‘BD’.

P11-L312: These results…….. China. Is the study mentioned represent similar region i.e. SDTF. Also the China study highlights the richness correlation with annual precipitation however in the Balsas the dominance of herbs (58%) might be influenced by seasonal environmental variable as rightly captured in this study. You may use other reference for this.

P12-L334-335: It has been….. (Fig 4). Should you replace the “(Fig 4)” with (Fig 3)? Since there is no descriptive label to represent group 3.

Figures

Figure 3 b: Could you add labels for group ? i.e. Group 3: Upper Balsas District etc. for readers understanding.

Table

S1 table: Are there no representative species in group 2? How it was delineated as separate district based on the analysis?

Reviewer #2: This study analyzed patterns of bioregionalization for Asteraceae in the Mexican Balsas Depression. The authors found bioregions and explored environmental correlates of species turnover and richness. Overall I found the approach correct and the results interesting.

I have only a few comments.

It is not clear if SDTF is distributed only within the BD limits or also occurs outside of it (and where). If it has a wider distribution than BD, then clarify in the Introduction if the region of interest is BD or SDTF and why. Moreover, in the first objective, it is hard to tell if the unity of study is BD or SDTF.

Authors opted for the WPGMA clustering algorithm, however, UPGMA was found to have a higher performance for bioregionalization than WPGMA (Kreft & Jetz 2010 A framework for delineating biogeographical regions based on species distributions, J. Biogeography 37:2029-2053). Other potential approaches are those based on network analysis (Edler et al 2017 Infomap bioregions: Interactive mapping of biogeographical regions from species distributions. Systematic Biology, 66:197–204) or DAPC (Maestri & Duarte 2020 Evoregions: Mapping shifts in phylogenetic turnover across biogeographic regions. Methods in Ecology and Evolution 11:1652-1662).

Lines 80-81: Regionalization can find regions defined by the endemicity of very few species, and thus unlikely to serve as ‘biodiversity hotspots'.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE-D-21-01262.docx

Biogeographic regionalization by spatial and environmental components: a numerical proposal

PONE-D-21-01262R1

Dear Dr. Flores,

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.

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Kind regards,

Ji-Zhong Wan

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

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 #2: All comments have been addressed

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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 #2: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #2: 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 #2: (No Response)

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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 #2: Yes

**********

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 #2: (No Response)

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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 #2: No