https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2507-1935
Peer Review History
| Original SubmissionApril 22, 2021 |
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PONE-D-21-12656 Cavefish Hydrodynamics and Behavior: A Study of the Chinese cavefish Sinocyclocheilus rhinocerous PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Xu, First, I would like to sincerely apologize for the delay in the review process. Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. We feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. We invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Please, address and take into account all reviewers comments. Reviewer2 has numerous suggestions that will significantly improve the quality and impact of your manuscript, and Reviewer1 raises some fundamental points that should be addressed for acceptance of the paper. Moreover, I, as the Editor, would like to ask you to justify that "light did not modify fish behavior" (Methods), i.e. state what type of controls have been performed to support this statement and to rule out multimodal control of behavior (visual system-lateral line interactions). Please submit your revised manuscript within 2 months. 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:
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We will change the online submission form on your behalf. Please know it is PLOS ONE policy for corresponding authors to declare, on behalf of all authors, all potential competing interests for the purposes of transparency. PLOS defines a competing interest as anything that interferes with, or could reasonably be perceived as interfering with, the full and objective presentation, peer review, editorial decision-making, or publication of research or non-research articles submitted to one of the journals. Competing interests can be financial or non-financial, professional, or personal. Competing interests can arise in relationship to an organization or another person. Please follow this link to our website for more details on competing interests: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/competing-interests Additional Editor Comments (if provided): [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: Partly Reviewer #2: Yes ********** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: N/A ********** 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: No 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: No ********** 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: 1. The study presents the results of the original research. This study describes a new insight into the horn of Chinese cavefish, which receive much attention but does not have a conclusive explanation of its function based on the experiments. This study first provided solid evidence of a hydrodynamic advantage of this hone. 2. Results reported have not been published elsewhere. As far as I know, there is no comparative study based on Chinese cavefish. 3. Experiments, statistics, and other analyses are performed to a high technical standard and are described in sufficient detail. The statistical part is unclear. How many individuals did this study used (Exp1 and Exp2)? How many were the casted models generated based on the different individuals of each of two species (how many biological replicates)? In other words, the sample size must be shown. As I assume the authors are from the engineering field, the sample size can be N=1 per species. If so, it should be noted so. Other technical standards, such as PIV imaging, animal behavior tracking, and CFD modeling, seemed to provide detailed explanations. 4. Conclusions are presented properly and are supported by the data. The authors conducted appropriate experiments and computer simulations to draw their conclusion; however, further data is needed to support it. Their major conclusion on the horn advantage is to create the low-pressure area around the cranial region. (1) They conclude that canal neuromasts are located there, but I cannot clearly see them in Fig. 8B and 8C due to the low resolution of the images. It is also hard to believe the canal neuromast locations at the nose to head region: only a single line on the dorsal top of the cranium or bilateral? (2) Authors are also ambiguous about the arguments between superficial neuromast and canal neuromast and how they gain sensitivity due to the horn structure. For example, at L501, “slow swimming behavior may improve the sensory capabilities of the lateral line system, in particular the superficial neuromasts.” But, at L525, “the buttressed head horn structure in its entirety enhances perception of pressure changes by the canal neuromasts (Fig 8E).” The conclusion of L525 was, I assume, made because the authors only measured the pressure differences and the canal neuromasts but not superficial neuromasts are the pressure sensors (superficial neuromasts are for flow sensing). Authors need to aware that flow sensors can be stimulated between different pressures, although they are unlikely sensitive as the level as the canal neuromasts are (different pressures generate flow) – dipole pressure field generated by a vibrating rod could be detected by superficial neuromast (Yoshizawa et al., 2012., BMC Biol 2013, 11:82). Accordingly, please describe and address the (potential) sensitivity gains of both the superficial and canal neuromasts 5. The article is presented in an intelligible fashion and is written in standard English. Yes 6. The research meets all applicable standards for the ethics of experimentation and research integrity. Yes 7. The article adheres to appropriate reporting guidelines and community standards for data availability. No. The authors should upload their scripts used in these analyses, such as to Github and raw data for behavior-tracking, PIV analysis, to the public database (ex., Zenodo) to make them available to the public. Other minor points: L80: Authors should describe how they perform the 3-D rendering as other researchers can repeat their experiment. L117: “there have been numerous observational, live-specimen studies of the sensory capabilities of the Mexican cave characin [29-43].” Please consider including a significant sensitivity work of (Yoshizawa, M., et al. (2014). The sensitivity of lateral line receptors and their role in the behavior of Mexican blind cavefish (Astyanax mexicanus). J. Exp. Biol. 217, 886–895.) L301: With my expertise, I don’t understand “The CFD control volume was set to be ten times the fish’s body size (…) to ensure that the flow field was fully developed.” I hope other reviewer(s) look into this point. L532: the discussion is a little too much, such as a statement about the deep-sea fishes, whose discussion does not conclude clearly. Please review and make this section (Horn function and other horn-bearing fish species) simpler and clearer. Reviewer #2: This is an interesting paper on the potential role of the conspicuous horn-like structure on the head of a Chinese cavefish. The authors analyzed videos of the swimming behavior of the fish to obtain data on swimming style and velocity and combined this with 3D-scans of the fish and with Computational Fluid Dynamics simulations to support the notion that the horn alters the flow around the fish and thus the magnitude of the perceived stimulus at distinct locations on the fish surface. Although this is intuitively expected, it needs to be shown, and this is what the authors did. It appears that all experiments and analyses were properly performed and that the data are solid. The only problem with the manuscript is the style of writing which makes it in places hard to follow. I have attached a lin-by-line list of comments. Title Is too general and promises more than the paper can keep up with. Try to find a title that is more adequate and more precisely addresses the content of the work performed. Abstract Needs to be streamlined and brought to the point. Line 20,23: Avoid abbreviations (CFD, PIV) in the Abstract. Rather spell out. Line 21: Explain the term “other” hydrodynamic aspects. Line 23: PIV is not particle image “velocity”. It is “velocimetry”. Line 25: Remove “carefully-constructed”. The reader assumes that your science was carefully conducted. Line 25: What type of simulations were done? What was simulated? Water flow? Then say so. Line 26: What are “analogous simulations”. Line 27: What is a “typical velocity”? Line 27: Velocity and 3-D trajectories may be “features” of the swimming behavior, but “drag coefficients” and “sensing distance” are not. These are estimates derived from the simulations, right? Line 38: “positively-correlated”. How can one correlate a single morphological aspect to anything? Rather say that this particular cranial morphology may lead to or provide greater sensitivity compared to fish that do not have such a morphology (if this is what you mean). Introduction Needs to be streamlined and brought to the point. Lines 49-54 and Figure 1: I do not see the connection of the content of this paragraph to the main aspects of the paper, i.e., the horn and its role in sensing. I suggest to leave this out. Line 64: “subdivided” instead of “bifurcated” Line 72: Unclear. What is a “overall sculpted morphological form”? Do oyu want to say that all troglobite species have such a horn? Line 86: “hyperthrophied” What exactly do you mean? In which way are the eyes hypertrophied? And in comparison to what? The eyes of troglophile species? Line 90: I suggest to refer to Figure 2C here instead of line 93 where the figure does not really fit. Line 95: “as opposed to” So there are no canal neuromasts? Line 96: “hyperthrophied” See above: What exactly do you mean? In which respect and compared to what? Lines 96-99: Do you have data on this, e.g., DASPEI stainings? If yes, it would be great to show. Line 101: Reference 15 is not appropriate in this context. This is a modelling study and not a morphology paper. Line 102: Context of this half-sentence to previous half-sentence not clear. Line 107: remove “of course”. Line 111-120: Context of this chapter on Astyanax to present study not clear. I suggest tp spare this for the Discussion. Line 129: Strictly speaking, a morphological structure cannot directly enhance the sensitivity of a neuromast per se. As a matter of fact, this is not even necessary. A morphological structure can, however, affect the water flow in such a way that the stimulus to the sensor gets stronger, for instance by directing the flow to the sensor or by exposing a sensor that is located on the structure more to the flow. Lines 131-139: Again, the context of this chapter to the present work is not evident and can be omitted. Lines 140-172 (end of introduction): This part contains mainly Methods. By moving most of this to the Method section, this part can be streamlined and shortened substantially. Line 143: “carefully-configures” See comment above. No need to stretch this point. Methods Lines 181,183: As stated above, figure 1A and 1B can be removed because it does not contribute to the data. Line 185: Why only average length? Give range of lengths of animals. Lines 191ff: Give the number of animals from which you obtained 3-D scans? Line 199: Figure 3 does not show experiments. It rather shows the work flow. In any case, the figure is highly unusual and near-incomprehensible without much more explanatory text. In my opinion it does not help the paper but rather makes things more complicated. Remove it. Line 213: Were the 3 trials run with 3 different fish? Specify. If only one fish, were the data from the 3 trials comparable? Line 214: Not clear why the analysis window was reduced to the first 2 hours. Why measure 3 hours if you do not show the data? Line 217 and fig. 4: What was the orientation/angle of view of the camera? From top, side, left, right? Please specify Line 228: Line 213: Were the 6 trials run with 6 different fish? Specify. If only one fish, were the data from the 6 trials comparable? Line 229: What was the particle diameter? Line 232: Delete “the” Line 232 ff: What type (model, manufacturer) of laser was used? Line 242: What is an “ANN (U-net)”? Results Line 350-357: From how many fish were swimming data obtained? Did all fish show the same type of behavior? Were distances to wall and swimming velocities the same for these fish? Did all fish show the same burst and coast behavior? Line 352 and Fig. 5A-D: Avoid extensive sub-divisions of figures. Here, A, B, C and D can be removed since each sub-figure has its own header. Line 357 and Fig. 5F: Apparently, Fig. 5F shows something different from Figs. 5A-E. I suggest to make this a separate figure and relabel Figs. 5A-D as Fig. 5A and Fig. 5E as Fig. 5B. Line 376: Chapter title unclear: “experiment 2 versus CFD”. This sound illogical. Line 384: must be “were similar to …” Line 385-386: Make sentences simpler by deleting “the morphology of” and “does that of” Line 396: The red star in Fig. 6 appears in a boxplot. Thus, I assume it shows the median and not the mean. Line 399: What is a “regressive best fit”? Do you mean that a linear regression was fitted to the data? Line 404: “that” instead of “the! Line 413: I am confused by this sentence. It is evident from Fig. 7C stage 3-M3 that the water is NOT quiet (see lower right side of figures with water velocities up to 2,8 cm/s). Please reconcile. Line 417 and Fig. 7: The Figure is difficult to understand without further explanation. Fig. 7A, X-axis: Is this distance of the fish to the laser plane? Why does it take 0.2 body lengths for the fish to enter the laser plane? Should this not be a single point at which the fish head touches the laser plane? How long does it take for water velocity to decrease completely to pre-entering values? Fig. 7B, Y-axis “Sense ability” is a strange term. Should this be sensing distance? Lines 425-448: I assume that the canal pores drawn into Figure 8 are virtual pores. I suggest to state this again here. Discussion Line 450: Include a reference for the 1st sentence. Line 452-457: What is the context of this part to the paper? One ´might as well leave this out and start the entire Discussion on line 457 with “Understanding the …” Line 471: is comparable “to” that Lines 503-510: Refer to and cite previously published data with similar findings for Astyanax. Lines 511-531: What would be the driving selective force for developing such a horn for hydrodynamic reasons? What would be the stimulus that the fish is adapted to detect with this horn? ********** 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: Yes: Masato Yoshizawa 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/. 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PONE-D-21-12656R1Cavefish Hydrodynamics and Behaviors of the Chinese cavefish Sinocyclocheilus rhinocerous which possesses a head horn structurePLOS ONE Dear Dr. Xu, 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. ============================== ACADEMIC EDITOR: As you will see, the two reviewers have found very substantial improvements in your manuscript. Rev1 insists on the submission of raw data and code. Rev2 still has a list of suggestions on the writing and also on some scientific aspects of your study. Please, respond and change the manuscript according to all these comments. We will be happy to receive your second revised version shortly. ============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by Mar 12 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:
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, Sylvie Rétaux 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: All comments have been addressed Reviewer #2: (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 Reviewer #2: Yes ********** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: I Don't Know ********** 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: No Reviewer #2: 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: Yes 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 #1: The authors made significant efforts to improve this manuscript following both reviewers' comments. It is very nice to see this version. The authors still have a struggle to upload/share their raw data and analysis scripts/codes. I will ask the editor for looking into whether the PLoS One guideline is OK with it. Reviewer #2: This is an improved version that is much more comprehensible than the previous one. However, there are still a number of minor, but also some more serious issues that need to be addressed and/or corrected. Title: Just another suggestion. Simply “Swimming Behavior and Hydrodynamics of the Chinese cavefish, Sinocychlocheilus rhinoceros” or maybe “Swimming Behavior and Hydrodynamics of the Chinese cavefish, Sinocychlocheilus rhinoceros, and a possible role of its distinct head horn structure” Abstract Abbreviations (CFD, PIV) are still present in the Abstract even though the definitions are spelled out. In most other journals this is not common. Abbreviations are normally given at the first site in the main text body where they are defined first, but not in an Abstract. Line 25/26: “Particle Image Velocimetry”. Start each word with a capital letter. Line 34: “sensing distance”. Do you mean sensing distance of the lateral line? If so, include this. Line 36: Use past tense when reporting own data. Line 36: If you include lateral line in line 34, then you should delete the text in parentheses here. Line 44: The following comment applies to the statement that the sensitivity of sensing is increase in S.r. (i.e., here, in Methods, Results and Discussion). If I understand the paper correct, then there is greater pressure (pressure gradient) on the head of S. rhinoceros as compared to S. angustiporus. Thus, there is a stronger stimulus to this region in S.r. than in S.a. But this does not mean or show in any way that the neuromasts in this region have greater sensitivity. This can only be shown by comparing data from e.g., neuronal recordings from these neuromasts, or from observing neuromast motion in response to identical stimuli applied to both species. One could also do a histological survey of the neuromasts in that region and compare neuromast numbers, size, innervation etc. and from this conclude on sensitivity. The fact of a greater stimulus is no proof for greater sensitivity. Introduction The beginning of the Introduction is much clearer now due its shortness. However, the end of the Introduction can still be streamlined further. Presently there are numerous methodical aspects presented at the end of the Introduction, that should be reported in the Methods part (see comments below). Line 85 and elsewhere in manuscript: There is no need any more to refer to the field survey (except at one site in the Discussion) Line 102 ff: I appreciate the description of the lateral line morphology of S.r.. But (and perhaps I made this comment before), you nonetheless need to give the original reference here or instead show your own data. I checked references 13-15 but S.r. is not mentioned in any of these references. Line 130: I suggest a line break here after (NACA0013). Line 139: “increase the sensitivity”. Same comment as in Abstract line 44. There is a greater stimulus on the head but this is no proof of greater sensitivity of the receptors (see also comment above and elsewhere in this list). Line 150 and also 136: You tend to repeat “This paper” or “In this paper”. Try to avoid these repetitions. E.g., here you can simply delete it. Also, lines 150-152 are more or less the same as lines 113-120. Go through the manuscript and remove such redundancies wherever they occur. Lines 152 ff: I suggest to keep the end of the Introduction as straight-forward as possible by moving all the methodical details to the Method section. For example, one could simply say: “In this paper, a combined approach of laboratory observations including fish tracking, PIV and CFD modeling was used to characterize the swimming behavior and hydrodynamics of S. rhinocerous. The results of our data analysis suggests that …” All the rest, the pros and cons and the good and bads of your methods can go into the Methods section. Materials and methods Line 187: “field survey”. Not needed any more (see above). Line 202: Must be specimen, not speciemen. Line 206: “scanned to obtain digital modeling”. Do you mean “scanned for imaging and subsequent digital modeling”? Line 211-215: It is too bad that behavioral data were collected on only a single fish. Results probably differ quite a bit when fish of different size were used. It would good to have a feeling for this variability. Line 215: Should be specimen, not specimens since all experiments were done on a single fish. Line 215: “not affect behavior”. What exactly is meant here? Which aspect of behavior? How do you know? How did you control for possible effects? Line 225ff: Here you could include all the details of the tracking system. Lien 232: I guess this is length x width x height? What was the water level? Also 8 cm? Or lower? This would then essentially be a 2D-pkane in which the fish was moving. Line 236ff: Did camera 3 really have a frame rate of only 10 Hz? This then limits you PIV analysis to 10 Hz. Lines 241ff: In this section you can include all the details on the PIV system. Line 251: “A laser pulse operated continuously”. This sentence is ambiguous. Be more specific. Also, the information provided here is rather limited. Did you use a PW or a CW laser? I assume it was a PW laser that was turned on for the entire recording session? Please make this clear. Also, what laser model did you use? What was the wavelength (IR, red, green)? How did you produce the laser sheet? I assume you used a dispersion lens? What was your level of analysis (pixel size, interrogation window etc.)? Line 261: “50 times per second”. If camera 3 was operating at 10 Hz, then you cannot be faster than this. Line 308ff: I am not sure if I understand this correctly. You measure an abrupt change in energy across the laser plane caused by the approaching fish (Fig. 7A). This depends on swimming velocity. The faster the fish, the earlier you detect this. In other words, the faster the fish, the further the fish is away from the laser plane when you detect the disturbance (Fig. 7B, � increase in BL). I assume this is the case because the stimulus produced by the fish, most likely the bow wake, increases with swimming speed? But I still do not understand why this translates into sensing distance for the fish lateral line system? Please help the reader here. Do you want to say that the fish detects its own bow wake? But then why does it need 0,2 BL for this? Are there no neuromasts near the tip of the snout? Line 317: It would be helpful if you make clear that this was a simulated flow that was continuously on and not a real flow in a flow channel. The reader may have forgotten or overlooked this here. Line 352: “2% of body length”. Why do you make such assumptions? From your writing further below, I infer that you do have the real data on canal pore spacing. So why not use the real data? Line 358: reference 50 is a book chapter by Jorgensen. While Jorgensen does refer to DASPEI stain as a method, I have not found any reference to S. rhinoceros in that chapter. As requested further up, I ask for the original reference or show you own data. Results Line 369: “more randomly”. There is no comparative to random. Also, how did you test for randomness? Lines 368ff: You analyzed the data from the 3rd hour but you show the data from hours 1 and 2. Where are the data from the 3rd hour? Show! Line 403: must be “shows” Line 403ff: Do I understand correctly that Fig. 6A show data from one example? So what is the drag coefficient that results from this example? Line 407: Can’t be the same Re value because data points in figure are not aligned on the X-axis. Line 408: “consistent with that obtained from Experiment 2” Line 409: “tended”. Why tended? I think it is very clear from the figure that they did decrease. Line 410/411: “were similar to, but consistently higher than those …” Line 422: “indicates” Line 428 and subsequent paragraph: sensing distance. See my questions above. Line 429ff: The description of the data still does not match the data shown. The text reads as if the velocity in stage 3 is similar to that in stage 1, which is evidently not the case. During stage 3, the velocity is still greater than during stage 1, and this should be described as such. The figure does not show if velocity decreased eventually to values similar to this in stage 2, but you can say this but have to make it clear. Line 443ff: What part of the 40x8x8 cm tank is shown in the lower part of the figure? Is this a vertical or a horizontal laser plane? Can you draw the outlines of the fish into the lower figures? Line 450: “Lateral stimulus”. Do you mean “Lateral line stimulus”? Line 451 and figures 8 and 9: Apparently, part A of Figure 8 shows a DASPEI stain. You need to say this somewhere in the text or legend. You also need to indicate that the upper two photographs show a dorsal view and the lower two show a side view of the fish. By the way, are these from the same fish or from two different fish? Also, separate the upper two photographs as you did the lower two. I assume the scale bar of 1 cm in the upper right photograph refers to all 4 photographs. This means that the upper magnification (dotted rectangle) is ca. 5x5 mm and the lower one ca. 3x2 mm. Now, by looking at the magnifications (left photographs in 7A), I do see lines of dots extending from left to right on the head and from dorsal to ventral on the side. However, I do not see something like a trunk lateral line canal. Moreover, each line in the lower figure has at least 10, if not more dots, i.e., at least 5 dots per 2 mm. This all makes me assume that these are not canal neuromasts that are stained here, but rather superficial neuromasts. In any case, the spacing is much greater than the 2 mm pore distance assumed for the CFD analysis that is shown in part B of Figure 8. If the stained neuromasts in Fig. 8A are indeed superficial neuromasts, then showing this is not helpful. Instead, the reader needs to see a stain of the canals, the canal pores and/or the canal neuromasts. To show the canals and the pores, one could simply fill the canal with methylene blue to visualize its course. The pores and the canal neuromasts normally also are stained in a DASPEI stain, but in Fig. 8A I do not see them. But it is necessary for your conclusions to show that indeed there are canal neuromasts in that region. Line 482, figure legend Fig. 9: “Lateral line stimulus”? You may also point out here, that the Y-axis is plotted reversed (from negative to positive values). Figures 8-9: At some point you should explicitly write, how you come from the data shown in Fig. 8B to the curves shown in Fig. 9A. I assume that you plotted normalized pressure along the putative canal neuromasts (dots in Fig. 8B)? But you do not explain this. Help the reader here. Figure 9: I compared that curves in Fig. 9A with those in Fig. 7 by Windsor et al (2010a). While the blue curve seems to be the curve from the Hassan-data. The green curve seems to be a curve that is derived from a NACA airfoil. The actual 2D fish data look different. Check red curve in Fig. 7 by Windsor et al). It actually does have two negative peaks but the positive peak in between is very much smaller than the one here in S. rhinoceros. Also, I recommend to label all curves with the species name (A. mexicanus in both cases) and give the respective references in parentheses). Discussion Line 495-496: The sentence reads odd. Maybe you need to shorten this to “Understanding the …. may help to discern …” Line 509: Unclear. Do you mean that the wall-following phase is the exploratory phase? Line 525: Delete text in parenthesis. You explain the methods a few lines further below. Line 545-546: slow swimming may improve sensory capabilities. Why? Give a rational or a logic why this is so. Line 553: “It is conjectured“. Do you want to say “We therefore hypothesize…”? Line 563: pressure fields matched the locations of the canal pores. Unclear description. Be more explicit. What exactly do you mean? Line 573: “It is conjectured“. Do you want to say “We propose that…”? After all, the data do not and cannot show this. Line 607: Why should this not have a similar function. If the form is similar to the form in S.r., then one would expect similar hydrodynamic effects. And as you hypothesize yourself, better sensing may lead to increased fitness, even if thus a trait only found in males. Lines 656ff: I really think that the future plans can be omitted. By all due respect for your research, but it is really not important for the present paper what you want to do next. If these plans contain arguments relevant for the interpretation of the present data, then these arguments can be discussed in those sections of the Discussion where they are appropriate. If this future research is essential for the data, then maybe one should perform this research now and include it in the paper. ********** 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. 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| Revision 2 |
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PONE-D-21-12656R2Swimming Behavior and Hydrodynamics of the Chinese cavefish Sinocyclocheilus rhinocerous and a possible role of its head horn structurePLOS ONE Dear Dr. Xu, Thank you for submitting the second revision of your manuscript to PLOS ONE. Please know that PLOS ONE requires that all code be made available without restrictions upon publication of the work in the Supporting Information files or in a publicly available repository. You may view the following link for more information: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/materials-software-and-code-sharing. Additionally, it looks like the authors are giving an unacceptable restriction regarding the availability of their data. We do not allow authors to restrict their data because of personal restrictions, such as patents or future publications. For more information, please see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. Therefore, if you do not wish to comply with these requirements, I am sorry to say that PlosOne will have to reject your manuscript. Please submit your revised manuscript by May 26 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:
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| Revision 3 |
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Swimming Behavior and Hydrodynamics of the Chinese cavefish Sinocyclocheilus rhinocerous and a possible role of its head horn structure PONE-D-21-12656R3 Dear Dr. Xu, 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. I also wish to sincerely thank the two reviewers for their help in improving the manuscript. 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, Sylvie Rétaux Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): The full code for analysis has been submitted as Supplemental material, therefore the manuscript is now conform to PlosOne policies; and the changes suggested by reviewer 2 have been added. Reviewers' comments: |
| Formally Accepted |
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PONE-D-21-12656R3 Swimming Behavior and Hydrodynamics of the Chinese cavefish Sinocyclocheilus rhinocerous and a possible role of its head horn structure Dear Dr. Xu: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. 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. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Sylvie Rétaux Academic Editor PLOS ONE |
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