PONE-D-23-00408Habitat isolation interacts with top-down and bottom-up processes in a seagrass ecosystemPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Carroll,

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.

Both reviewers highlighted methodological issues (sampling design, use of transects, etc.) that must be fixed before publication. In addition, I noted that “ppt” has not been in use for salinity measures since decades: please check if you can adopt PSU, instead.

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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: 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: 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 manuscript “Habitat isolation interacts with top-down and bottom-up processes in a seagrass ecosystem” showcase an interesting and current topic worthy to be object of detailed studies. Hypotheses are well argued in the introduction; however, I believe the authors could provide a clearer description of the sampling design used and add a cautionary paragraph in the discussion to critically consider weakness and results of the study.

Below you will find more detailed comments and suggestions.

Lines 77-81: I suggest to add more recent and updated references to support these statements.

Lines 113-123: It is not clear where are located the three field sites in which the study has been carried out. Are all the three sites included in the Island Beach State Park meadow? Maybe a map and a more detailed description of the study area could help.

Lines 127-129: were the five transects repeated in each field sites (x 3)? The sampling has been carried out in August, are epibionts affected by the seasonality?

Lines 129-132: The sampling design is not clear, 10 blades at the beginning of each transect so totally 50 blades? X 3 site (150)? They represent the sampling effort for the “continuous meadow”, and what about the “isolated” and “very isolated”? 18 patches have been found, totally? How many isolated and very isolated? Please clarify the sampling design and the sampling effort.

Lines 148-151: If it is available, I suggest to add a picture of the placed ASUs.

Lines: 153-154: How many ASUs at each isolation level?

Lines 234-235: I suggest to not speak of the results in the caption of the figure (applies to all figure captions).

Lines 256-259: same comment (see above). As you always consider three levels of isolation, I suggest to uniform them in all the graphs (i.e., meadow, low isolation, high isolation), then you can specify in the caption to which distance they refer to.

Lines 320-321: add references.

Reviewer #2: The paper by Carroll and Freestone aim at evaluating how habitat isolation modifies community structure and mediates top-down and bottom-up control of primary producers in a marine seagrass system. The topic is interesting and the study is rightly conducted, as data are to be published, although some changes are needed to improve the paper. A list of comment/suggestions is reported below.

Line 95: “Our aim was to use seagrass meadows, a system of high conservation importance, to explore two questions”

Line 121: “temperature from 21 to 25.3°C, and salinity from 20 to 25 ppt” temporal reference for these values should be given

Lines 124-142, Habitat isolation in natural seagrass: the sampling method should be better clarified.

How many replicates for each condition? Five? What is the logic to use transects if these latter are not considered in the analyses? Why do not consider three habitats and collect five replicates for each habitats? Transects should be justified or removed

Line 143, Habitat isolation and consumer-resource experiment: the use of artificial blades could potentially modify the recruitment pattern compared to natural blades. This aspect should be at least considered in the discussion.

Lines 171: The analyses of nutrient levels in water column in ASU and control plots are needed to evaluate the nutrient increase; if the authors have no data, they should at least provide bibliographic references about the use of the same method to quantify the nutrient enhancing in seagrass systems (e.g Journal of Sea Research 63 (2010) 173-179; Scientific Reports (2017) 7, 13732)

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Habitat isolation interacts with top-down and bottom-up processes in a seagrass ecosystem

PONE-D-23-00408R1

Dear Dr. Carroll,

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.

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Kind regards,

Carlo Nike Bianchi

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 #1: All comments have been addressed

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 #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

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 #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: 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 #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: I have read and appreciated revisions the authors have made to the text but I still find some points of confusion that I suggest to clarify for the readers. It is now clear to me that transects were only used as a mean of identifying patches around the main body of the meadow and to define their distance from it: I believe that the supplementary figure 2 well explains the concept idea behind the study and it should be added to the main text. Eventually, patches could be defined in terms of size (what is the minimum size to define a patch or the average size order)

Talking about three field studies at the beginning of methods can be confusing, e.g. initially I thought the authors meant 3 replicates. I suggest specifying that these are three separate studies to investigate 1) Habitat isolation in natural seagrass; 2) Habitat isolation vs. consumer-resource 3) Recruitment.

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.

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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: No

Reviewer #2: No

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