PONE-D-22-15010Better sturdy or slender? Eurasian otter skull plasticity in response to feeding ecology and climatePLOS ONE

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Bogdan Cristescu

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PLOS ONE

Academic Editor's (Bogdan Cristescu) Comments:

Two expert reviewers have provided positive assessment of the manuscript. Please address their comments in the revision.

The Abstract is a bit long, please provide less detail especially with regard to methodology.

Please consider a different color scheme for Fig. 3, as right now the colors coincide with some of the geographic localities from the other figures.

For clarity of Figs. 5 and 7, please indicate what the skull schematics (edges and nodes) as well as view angles represent to justify their inclusion.

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We are particularly grateful to Andrew Kitchener, curator of the Scottish Natural Museum who provided assistance and access to the otter collection. LFR was funded by PhD scholarship from University of Molise.  

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Reviewers' comments:

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Comments to the Author

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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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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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: The authors did a great job with the methodology and results section. I had very few minor comments and two major comments for the discussion.

Minor Comments

Line 46: Add a comma between “mammals and skull shape” or change to “Several studies have shown that the skull shape in mammals is closely related…”

Line 51: Add a comma between “expected” and “especially”.

Line 62: Maybe removed the sentence “Here, we used 3D GM…” as this is stated again in the next paragraph when describing the objectives of the research. It sounded redundant.

Line 96: What is the fixed distance on the tripod?

Line 103: Add a space between “data” and “[41,47]”.

Line 114: Add a period after “[48,49]”

Line 125: Add a comma between “size or shape” and “we used…”

Line 140: Add space between “factors” and “[56]”

Line 141: Be consistent with subtitles. I recommend using “Shape and climate.” to be consistent with the “Shape and diet.” in line 128.

Line 156: Add “being” between “always” and “larger”… “with male skulls always being larger than female’s…”

Line 224: Change “an” to “and” and put a comma after “Shetland”?

Line 225: Remove “,” after (BIO4). Capitalize “the”. I believe this is a new sentence.

Line 225: Remove the space between “values” and the period.

Line 226: “scottiesh”?

Line 248: Add a space between “sizes” and “[25,67]”

Line 253: Add space between “morphometry” and “[69]”

Line 269: Change “durophage” to “durophagous”.

Line 291: Name the authors for reference 14, like Stanton et al. 2014 to be consistent.

Line 294: Remove space between “resources” and the period.

Major Comments: I would like to see more information in the discussion section.

Line 51-53: The authors mention that cranial and mandibular morphology are expected to have modifications in dentition and masticatory muscle attachment area. It would be a nice addition to include hypotheses in how these morphological modifications affect the masticatory muscles in the discussion based on diet. A lot can be discussed on muscle attachment and the feeding biomechanics per group based on dietary differences.

The authors showed that there was variation among skull morphology based on climate, but it is not well discussed in the discussion area. It would be a great addition to the overall manuscript if this was better explained in the discussion with more detail. I was interested in knowing more details about climate variation among the groups and thought it would be better explained in the discussion. How did climate specifically affect the morphology between the groups?

Reviewer #2: Manuscript review

Better sturdy or slender? Eurasian otter skull plasticity in response to feeding ecology and climate

Line 49: Add cite to the sentence.

Line 96: Change the citation (Loy et al. 2021) to the journal numeric format.

Line 131: Change (Suppl. Mat. 4) for (Suppl. Mat. 3).

Line 141. Change (Suppl. Mat. 3) for (Suppl. Mat. 4).

Line 189. Change (Suppl. Mat. 4) for (Suppl. Mat. 5).

Line 223. Change (Suppl. Mat. 5) for (Suppl. Mat. 6).

Introduction:

This sentence is a bit repetitive with the paragraph in line 71: “Here, we used 3D GM of the skull to investigate the morphological variation of otters across the mainland and the islands of Great Britain, and to explore the ultimate drivers of the observed patterns in terms of the genetic, latitudinal and ecological differentiation revealed by recent studies”. Change the wording so that the information does not sound repetitive.

Supplementary material:

The legend of Supp. Mat. 6 need check the redaction and format.

Questions

All your specimens were adult individuals or did you not consider that variable? since it can affect the results, especially in the variation in size between males and females.

It is true that they did not find a relationship with Bergman's rule, but they did not consider that the specimens that lives in Shetland are on an island far from the mainland and that several species of mammals that inhabit islands have dwarfism or smaller sizes than their congeners. who live on mainland.

I suggest that you further enrich the discussion of paragraph 273, I think you could cite works related to climatic-diet-morphology variation to further support your discussion.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Better sturdy or slender? Eurasian otter skull plasticity in response to feeding ecology and climate

PONE-D-22-15010R1

Dear Dr. Meloro,

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,

Bogdan Cristescu

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

The authors adequately incorporated the suggestions from the reviewers and academic editor. Congratulations on your paper.

Reviewers' comments: