PONE-D-21-32985Prediction of Potential Geographic Distribution of Relict Plant Pteroceltis tatarinowii in China Based on MaxEntPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Yuxia Yang,

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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: Yes

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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: No

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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: The MS is technically valid and author have used appropriate modeling techniques and validations criteria. Also the MS is written in proper English language. All the methods and analysis are described well.

Reviewer #2: Abstract seems to qualitatively stated. Pls speak numerically.

The authors predicted the future using the emission scenarios. How about the past? What happened during the calibration period?

The title says site suitability analysis for Pteroceltis tatarinowii. Should the paper only be concerned with this? The first sentence of the introduction gives me the impression that authors are evaluating the impact of climate change on the distribution of this plant. If so, the title and abstract need to change accordingly.

English usage needs serious improvement.

The authors need to provide a better literature review on Maxent application in china the results obtained. The advantages and disadvantages of this model should be provided in comparison with other similar models.

I believe the intro part for the Pteroceltis tatarinowii species could be briefed.

What is the innovation of this research?

The methods section could be improved. The readers are only concerned with the general flow of the work. Small details like saving a file in .CSV format is not relevant.

How did you identify the inaccurate sites in the distribution records of P. tatarinowii. What criteria did you use?

Figure 1 legend if not informative. What are those high and low values? If possible, use a graded symbology for the distribution points in terms of frequency. Larger circles indicating higher numbers of this plant. This way the reader can guess which part of China are more suitable for this plant. If the study area is the whole country of china, I believe the first part of the methods section must be concerned with describing the distribution of environmental factors across China.

“…scenarios could describe the prediction results of future climate change more scientifically.” Citation pls.

The terms used in table 1 should be clarified in the text.

It would be useful to have a flowchart for the analysis. The details can be provided in this chart instead of the text.

“… The closer the AUC ...simulation accuracy were divided into four grades: poor….” Citation pls.

Section 3.2 is the repetition of Fig 6. Pls provide only the results not noticeable on the map.

Based on your results in table 2, precipitation in China will increase significantly in the future under the climate change. The results in this table are only valid if there will be no more expansion of human activities in China which is highly unlikely.

A lot of the results are repeated in the discussion section. Pls only elaborate on your findings and avoid restating the results. This section has become long and tedious.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Masoud Jafari Shalamzari

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PONE-D-21-32985R1Potential Geographic Distribution of Relict Plant Pteroceltis tatarinowii in China under Climate Change ScenariosPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Yang,

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.

==============================

Revise the manuscript

• Indicate which changes you require for acceptance versus which changes you recommend
• Address any conflicts between the reviews so that it's clear which advice the authors should follow
• Provide specific feedback from your evaluation of the manuscript

Please ensure that your decision is justified on PLOS ONE’s publication criteria and not, for example, on novelty or perceived impact.

For Lab, Study and Registered Report Protocols: These article types are not expected to include results but may include pilot data. 

==============================

Please submit your revised manuscript by Apr 03 2022 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: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Randeep Singh

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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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

Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #4: (No Response)

Reviewer #5: (No Response)

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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

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

Reviewer #5: No

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

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: No

Reviewer #5: No

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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: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: No

Reviewer #5: Yes

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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

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: No

Reviewer #5: No

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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: I have reviewed the file and it seems that you have done a great effort in enhancing the quality of your paper. Thanks for considering my comments.

Wish you all the luck in your future endeavors.

Reviewer #3: As a unique single species genus in China, Pteroceltis tatarinowii is scattered or scattered in 19 provinces and regions in China. Due to the destruction of natural vegetation, it is often cut down in large quantities, resulting in the gradual reduction of the distribution area, the forest appearance is broken, and there are few residues in some areas. Therefore, the author uses MaxEnt, which is widely used at present, to simulate its distribution, which is of great significance for the resource protection of this tree species. The manuscript method is accurate, the result is reasonable, the discussion is sufficient, and has high scientific value. After review, I think the author has carefully revised the comments of the reviewers and reached the standard of publication. So my suggestion is to accept.

Reviewer #4: The manuscript title “Potential Geographic Distribution of Relict Plant Pteroceltis tatarinowii in China under Climate Change Scenarios” model the potential distribution of Pteroceltis tatarinowii using MaxEnt and 11 environmental variables. The manuscript is still some distance away from publication.

There are some errors need to address.

1. Page4, line 127: “second” this part might be needs a reference to confirm your method.

2. page4, line133：Please explain why choice environment variables from worldclim? Where you get the Al, aspect and slope?

3. page4, section 2.3: Considering the uncertainty of future climate scenarios, assessments of the impact should incorporate data from a range of climate models that represent different climate sensitivities to various possible future climate change projections. Thus, to reduce this impact on global circulation models (GCMs) on which the future climate datasets are based, an ensemble forecasting procedure was need to use in current study.

4. page5, line144：please list the result of Spearman correlation analysis in your manuscript. How to implement the Spearman correlation analysis? Which software? Please list in manuscript.

5. page5, section 2.4: please list the detail parameters of maxent were used in your study.

6. page5, section 2.4: which method were used to confirm the RM and feature? and how to implement? How to get the LQHPT?

7. page5, section 2.5: AUC have many disadvantages to assess the performance of model, especially for Maxent. Thus, the pROC, TSS or Kappa were used to assess the model.

8. page14, references: Please keep the reference format consistent. Thank you!

Reviewer #5: I read the MS with interest and I noticed that the authors tried to address all the points highlighted by the reviewer; however, I note again several critical points and even the English stile is critical and a thorough revision is necessary to make the text suitable for a scientific community.

Here are my main observations:

- I imagine that “absence points” (together with those of occurrence) were also used to build the model but nothing is said about this in the text. Please also clarify this aspect which is not mentioned in the text (how they were generated or directly detected).

- even the creation of the buffer does not convince me since it is a relict tertiary plant. why was it necessary to do this (and how does it relate to the altitude, slope and aspect reported in table 1?)

- all variables were imported into the MaxEnt and repeated 3 times (L141): pls justify this procedure.

- In the method section “223 effective distribution points of P. tatarinowii and 11 environmental variables” were considered, but in the results only “96 distribution points” were mentioned. What happened?

- L322: the authors refer of "the gravity center of P. tatarinowii's potential suitable habitat"; this treatment upsets me and I do not understand how it is possible to associate the potential habitat of a tertiary relict plant with a “center of gravity”. They seem to me to be two extremely different and unrelated concepts. My suspicion is that a good graphic picture of the model is being used to try to define something ecologically much more complex. So that, the authors refer to “potential geographical distribution (L388). The authors should clarify this fundamental aspect. Curiously, in fact, the authors declare (LL363-366) that “vegetation coverage, also have certain influence on the potential geographical distribution of P. tatarinowii. However, this variable is not included in the simulation because ... .. "but this is a primary trait that defines the habitat of the species. There is a lot of literature on this aspect which should be carefully considered.

- L418: one of the main results of this study is that “the future suitable area of P. tatarinowii simulated in this study is wider than the actual situation”. this seems counterintuitive to me: I expect a tertiary relict plant to be damaged by global change and not the other way around. Assuming that the model is accurate (as stated on the basis of its values) how can this ecological contradiction be explained? if it doesn't make sense I would think the model is beautiful but absolutely not predictive. In this section of “limitations” this point should be explored in detail because curiously other studies, in other contexts (see for example https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-020-02029-y + https://doi.org/10.3390/d12040157), highlight that many models are considered without a critical evaluation while, verified in the field, they reveal only unrealistic simulations

- considering what has just been said, it does not seem to me that it can be stated that "Using SDMs to simulate the past, current and future changes of suitable habitat of relict plants is an effective method". Much precaution should be used on this issue.

I expect the authors to convince me of the soundness of their study.

Minor points:

- the authors speak of a rare species but I observe very large distribution areas and therefore we should speak only of threatened species (specifying what it is threatened by).

- LL54-57: this sentence is not clear and, indeed, in its present form it seems just wrong / contradictory.

- L58; pls add the year after IPCC

-LL72-73: …among others

- L82: add patronymic

-L86: I believe that the ecological interest prevails over the other two.

- L89: only one population?

- LL99-101: delete this sentence

-L118: the occurrences of

- Table 1: Altitude, aspect and slope mean values (on not)?

- L373: add year of publication

-L391: meta-analysis

-L405: not all tertiary relict plants are “living fossil plants”.

-LL407-413: add nothing to the MS and should be eliminated.

-L422: mini?

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Reviewer #2: Yes: Masoud Jafari Shalamzari

Reviewer #3: No

Reviewer #4: No

Reviewer #5: No

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Potential Geographic Distribution of Relict Plant Pteroceltis tatarinowii in China under Climate Change Scenarios

PONE-D-21-32985R2

Dear Dr. Yang,

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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Randeep Singh

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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