Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJuly 11, 2022
Decision Letter - Sergio N. Stampar, Editor

PONE-D-22-19553Temperature and feeding frequency impact the survival, growth, and metamorphosis success of Solea solea larvaePLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Sardi

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.

The two assessments suggested commonalities and should be accepted or addressed in a separate letter. I believe that the modifications are quite simple and can be performed quickly.

Please submit your revised manuscript by 12/20/2022. 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.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Sergio N. Stampar, Dr.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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2. In your Methods section, please provide additional information on the animal research and ensure you have included details on : (1) methods of sacrifice (2) methods of anesthesia and/or analgesia, and (3) efforts to alleviate suffering.

3. We note that you have indicated that data from this study are available upon request. PLOS only allows data to be available upon request if there are legal or ethical restrictions on sharing data publicly. For more information on unacceptable data access restrictions, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions.

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5. Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments Section of your manuscript:

“This study was funded by the IdEx Bordeaux International Post-doctorates program attributed to A. E. Sardi. The authors wish to thank Dr. Véronique Loizeau, Dr. Pierre Labadie and Dr. Florence Mounier for the fruitful conversations we held, which helped with the conceptualization of this work. “

We note that you have provided additional information within the Acknowledgements Section that is not currently declared in your Funding Statement. Please note that funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form.

Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows:

“A.S. was funded by the IdEx Bordeaux International Post-doctorates program. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript”

Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf.

6. Please include your full ethics statement in the ‘Methods’ section of your manuscript file. In your statement, please include the full name of the IRB or ethics committee who approved or waived your study, as well as whether or not you obtained informed written or verbal consent. If consent was waived for your study, please include this information in your statement as well.

7. Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information.

8. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

9 We noticed you have some minor occurrence of overlapping text with the following previous publication, which needs to be addressed:

- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0304380020302945?via%3Dihub

In your revision ensure you cite all your sources (including your own works), and quote or rephrase any duplicated text outside the methods section. Further consideration is dependent on these concerns being addressed.

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

Dear Dr. Sardi

We just received two reviews of your manuscript and both suggested minor modifications. Please address these changes or explain why you are not making changes in a separate letter.

After this step, we will be able to proceed with the evaluation of your manuscript.

Kind regards

Sergio Stampar

[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: The manuscript “Temperature and feeding frequency impact the survival, growth, and metamorphosis success of Solea solea larvae” by Sardi et al is a laboratory experiment with S. solea larvae targeting to endpoints such as survival, growth and metamorphosis.

The manuscript is well written and carefully justified in their procedure and findings. The authors also use a novel approach (proposed by other authors using 24 well plates) to be applied in ecotoxicology of larvae. They also propose a marine species as sentinel, other than the most frequently used fresh water model fish. The use of a more realistic natural species with high economic interest validates their effort as it could be applied in aquaculture and more particularly in larviculture. Nevertheless, their study also has some limitations such as the low quality of the stock egg production in some of their trials. They justify this as naturally occurring phenomena also in natural populations.

Their findings are not conclusive but their protocol and justification seem sound to me. Overall it is evident the large number of variables to be considered in laboratory experiments trying to predict biological consequences due to environmental variables fluctuations.

Other minor suggestions are:

Line 298. The sentence seems unfinished.

Fig 2. The results for Temp of 20ºC are missing.

Fig 3 and 4 might be better replaced by a table informing on the characteristics of the slopes, correlations and significances under the different temperatures and feeding regimes in a more comparative way that the Figures reflect.

Reviewer #2: Overall, this study was well designed and well written. I think it will contribute to this field.

However, some parts need minor revisions.

I will summarize some of them below,

The expressions in the abstract part but not suitable for this part should either be rearranged or moved to the relevant place.

There are some errors in the use and spelling of references in some parts. These need updating and editing.

Adding photos of Solea solea larvae as figures can support the study visually.

Other recommendations are detailed in the attached file.

********** 

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

**********

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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.

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: PONE-D-22-19553 sy.pdf
Revision 1

Dear Dr. Stampar,

Please find below the reply to all the reviewers’ comments specifying the modifications made in the revised manuscript as also the modifications made to meet Plos One format style.

Reviewer #1: The manuscript “Temperature and feeding frequency impact the survival, growth, and metamorphosis success of Solea solea larvae” by Sardi et al is a laboratory experiment with S. solea larvae targeting to endpoints such as survival, growth and metamorphosis.

The manuscript is well written and carefully justified in their procedure and findings. The authors also use a novel approach (proposed by other authors using 24 well plates) to be applied in ecotoxicology of larvae. They also propose a marine species as sentinel, other than the most frequently used fresh water model fish. The use of a more realistic natural species with high economic interest validates their effort as it could be applied in aquaculture and more particularly in larviculture. Nevertheless, their study also has some limitations such as the low quality of the stock egg production in some of their trials. They justify this as naturally occurring phenomena also in natural populations.

Their findings are not conclusive but their protocol and justification seem sound to me. Overall it is evident the large number of variables to be considered in laboratory experiments trying to predict biological consequences due to environmental variables fluctuations.

Response: Thank you for your comments and your positive opinion on our work, which as you has mentioned targets to validate laboratory experiments for ecotoxicology, larviculture and in the general to contributing on using marine fish species as model species.

Other minor suggestions are:

Line 298. The sentence seems unfinished.

Response: Indeed, it was incomplete, thank you for noticing.

Fig 2. The results for Temp of 20ºC are missing.

Response: Apologies for this mistake, it seems to be an error while uploading the figure.

Fig 3 and 4 might be better replaced by a table informing on the characteristics of the slopes, correlations and significances under the different temperatures and feeding regimes in a more comparative way that the Figures reflect.

Response: We appreciate the reviewer suggestion, but consider that for our objective —comparing the growth and weight among treatments— a figure is more appropriate than a table. Using figures allows for rapidly visualizing the differences, particularly because the axis limits are the same for all the figures, which gives a common ground for easily comparing the slopes.

Reviewer #2: Overall, this study was well designed and well written. I think it will contribute to this field.

Response: Thank you for your time and for supporting our research.

However, some parts need minor revisions.

I will summarize some of them below,

The expressions in the abstract part but not suitable for this part should either be rearranged or moved to the relevant place.

Response: We have placed the highlighted sentence in the first paragraph of the introduction as suggested.

There are some errors in the use and spelling of references in some parts. These need updating and editing.

Response: Updated, thank you for noticing.

Adding photos of Solea solea larvae as figures can support the study visually.

Other recommendations are detailed in the attached file.

Response: We have included a figure of a fully metamorphosed larva in the revised version.

Other formatting request from Plos One:

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

In addition to the comments from the reviewers, we have done the following formatting modifications in line with PlosOne guidelines.

1) Change the size of headings and subheadings to 18 and 16 pt respectively

2) Remove all points after the Fig citations

3) Bold the figure number and title of all figure legends. Include a figure title.

4) Move the figure legends immediately after the first paragraph citating the figure

5) Remove the figures from the manuscript file

6) Moved the tables from the end to immediately after the first citation

7) Swapped the order when citing figures or tables from the supplementary information document (i.e., S1 Fig instead of Fig S1)

2. In your Methods section, please provide additional information on the animal research and ensure you have included details on : (1) methods of sacrifice (2) methods of anesthesia and/or analgesia, and (3) efforts to alleviate suffering.

We have included details about the methods of sacrifice and concentration and chemical for anesthesia (line 239).

3. We note that you have indicated that data from this study are available upon request. PLOS only allows data to be available upon request if there are legal or ethical restrictions on sharing data publicly. For more information on unacceptable data access restrictions, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions.

In your revised cover letter, please address the following prompts:

a) If there are ethical or legal restrictions on sharing a de-identified data set, please explain them in detail (e.g., data contain potentially sensitive information, data are owned by a third-party organization, etc.) and who has imposed them (e.g., an ethics committee). Please also provide contact information for a data access committee, ethics committee, or other institutional body to which data requests may be sent.

This is not our case.

b) If there are no restrictions, please upload the minimal anonymized data set necessary to replicate your study findings as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and provide us with the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories.

We have included the necessary data on supplementary information as an xls file.

We will update your Data Availability statement on your behalf to reflect the information you provide.

4. 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

Done

5. Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments Section of your manuscript:

“This study was funded by the IdEx Bordeaux International Post-doctorates program attributed to A. E. Sardi. The authors wish to thank Dr. Véronique Loizeau, Dr. Pierre Labadie and Dr. Florence Mounier for the fruitful conversations we held, which helped with the conceptualization of this work. “

We note that you have provided additional information within the Acknowledgements Section that is not currently declared in your Funding Statement. Please note that funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form.

Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows:

“A.S. was funded by the IdEx Bordeaux International Post-doctorates program. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript”

Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf.

The funding statement is correct. I have removed the funding information from the acknowledgements section.

6. Please include your full ethics statement in the ‘Methods’ section of your manuscript file. In your statement, please include the full name of the IRB or ethics committee who approved or waived your study, as well as whether or not you obtained informed written or verbal consent. If consent was waived for your study, please include this information in your statement as well.

The Research and High Education French Ministry evaluated and approved all animal experimentations. The committee from the department of practical research activities licensed the project “Flatfish adaptation to temperature, feeding and pollution stress” led by Dr. Marie-Laure Bégout from Ifremer under the number reference APAFIS #38190-202208082103879.

This section is now included in the revised version of the manuscript.

7. Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information.

The list of captions for the supporting tables and figures are now included at the end of the revised manuscript.

8. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

9 We noticed you have some minor occurrence of overlapping text with the following previous publication, which needs to be addressed:

- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0304380020302945?via%3Dihub

In your revision ensure you cite all your sources (including your own works), and quote or rephrase any duplicated text outside the methods section. Further consideration is dependent on these concerns being addressed.

Done

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Cover letter_Comments to reviewer.docx
Decision Letter - Sergio N. Stampar, Editor

Temperature and feeding frequency impact the survival, growth, and metamorphosis success ofSolea solealarvae

PONE-D-22-19553R1

Dear Dr. Sardi,

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,

Sergio N. Stampar, Dr.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Thank you again for your interest in publishing your manuscript in PLOS One.

After a detailed review of the modifications made by the authors in response to the suggestions, I am pleased to inform you that the manuscript can be accepted for publication.

Reviewers' comments:

Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Sergio N. Stampar, Editor

PONE-D-22-19553R1

Temperature and feeding frequency impact the survival, growth, and metamorphosis success of Solea solea larvae

Dear Dr. Sardi:

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. Sergio N. Stampar

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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