PONE-D-23-26159Diversity patterns of mollusk death assemblages in coral reefs and seagrass meadows and a comparison with living assemblagesPLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments:

Dear Dr. Peraza-Escarrá

Both reviewers have done an extensive analysis of the manuscript with numerous suggestions. Although they disagree on the final evaluation, please address the comments expressed by both of them.

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Reviewers' comments:

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Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Partly

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: N/A

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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

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Reviewer #1: This ms is well-organized and well-written ms, and addresses some important, mostly still-understudied issues in the application of molluscan dead-shell assemblages to the analysis of marine biodiversity. It includes:

(1) a spatially-nested analysis of the diversity (several measures) and structure (not fully clear = relative abundance distribution?) of death assemblages; really nice design, and so great to see new field data from this important part of the Caribbean, on top of the general issues;

(2) an analysis of molluscan death assemblages as a surrogate of the combined dead+living molluscan assemblage; analogous to how benthic foram people approach field samples owing to the challenges of differentiating living and dead individuals, not clear why the authors would do this rather than a more conventional dead versus live comparison, or at least to the exclusion of a more conventional analysis (were sample sizes of living mollusks too small?); and

(3) a test and quantification of the extent of down-slope transport of shelf-dwelling species into deep-sea, i.e. slope, sediments; wonderful to have, for comparison with the few other strong tests of this, most notably field data from Bouchet in New Caledonia, and then a zillion anecdotal-quality observations (summarized 30y ago in Kidwell/Bosence).

The paper thus covers a *lot of intellectual territory and has a rather large number of figures (some could probably go into an appendix, and simply be compared using text to a smaller number of figs published in the main text). But it is well-referenced throughout, connecting the findings well with the large existing literature, both observational and theoretical.

As above, my concerns and suggestions are interspersed below among features that I really like, and were written as I initially read the ms. Overall, I think this would make an excellent paper in Plos-1 and recommend acceptance with only modest revisions, should the editor agree.

Reviewed by Susan Kidwell, thanks for the opportunity.

Methods = field collection methods were actually better than the ‘usual’, with authors using box cores rather than van Veens, which are the standard, although, in the end, the depth of penetration of this gear was still only ∼10 cm. They thus likely missed collecting many larger-bodied, adult, and especially deeper-burrowing taxa – this is a common problem, should be mentioned either here in Methods or in the Dsicussion, as a ‘caveat’, but the authors need not be defensive about it – although it biases the sample, it is an almost universal bias, and thus permits comparison to the many many other, similarly-limited datasets (see Lees 2021 Neth J Sea Res, and Powell &Mann 2016 Cont Shelf Res for discussions). I especially admire that they acquired these samples on SCUBA, allowing for careful ad known placement… and 3 replicates per site. Description of field study areas is exemplary – these authors really describe the areas in useful ways, including extent of physical disturbance and, of course, likely human effects, drawing on earlier work (includes the admirable Table 1)… thus well-chose field areas. The 0.5mm sieve is much finer than is usual (1mm, and in some live-dead studies by geologists/paleoecologists, a 2mm or coarser sieve is used) – only a concern because this likely included juvenile individuals that can be hard to identify AND have unlikely persistence, both as living individuals (persistence to adulthood) and as dead shells (postmortem) – although I appreciate that tropical faunas can have many many ‘micromollusks’ that might be largely missed with a 1 mm mesh. Just something worth mentioning, as a guide to other researchers thinking of repeating this kind of analysis elsewhere.

Live data have already been reported, in Armenteros et al 2018 – those results should be provided in tabular form here because the sample sizes of this living assemblage is critical to evaluating live-dead agreement

Analysis – Richness: I really like the authors’ approach for taxonomic richness, strongly prefer accumulation curves rather than post-hoc rarefaction fittings, AND I like using effective numbers of species for richness – super. Phylo richness – not familiar, feels like a stretch to add this, but no objection. Functional richness – good use of Todd & Mikkelson/Bieler for coding taxa; although the N of categories is (slightly) smaller than the S of species, could still use the same metrics; but I like bringing in these FD metrics from biogeography/macroecology. Beta – many ways to do it, they should also consider (and in discussion compare their results to) the methods used in Tomasovych/Kidwell 2009-2011 (e.g., diversity transfer from alpha to beta, spatial gradient capture, richness/evenness at alpha) – a series of papers by those authors (summarized in Kidwell Tomasovych 2013) explore the effects of time-averaging on the suite of metrics used here, seems to be one part of the paleo/taph literature missed. Evenness – would prefer to see a quantitative metric of evenness, such as the sample-size-independent Hurlbert’s PIE, rather than only a graphical depiction; N singletons and doubletons is a measure of the proportion of rare taxa, which is useful/important, but not the same as dominance/evenness that focus on the proportional abundances of the top few taxa and overall shape of the cumulative richness curve. PIE is now widely used in live-dead analysis.

Ah—structure = simper analysis, not what I’d call structure, but rather inter-sample similarities, series of pairwise comparisons…

Comparison of live-dead – using the ancient, very simple metrics of Kidwell & Bosence 1991. That’s OK as long as include a table with the raw N’s being compared (e.g., how similar is the N of living and dead individuals?), because those ancient authors found that the small-sample size of the living assemblges in most studies was the most important factor explaining (correlated with) the low apparent live-dead agreements (which the later modeling of Kidwell and others showed was true). But a full live-dead nowadays would explore live-dead using standard ecological measures such as (dis)similarity of paired live-dead species lists for a site/habitat/region, ditto in rank-abundance of taxa live&dead, nmds etc. [I do note a NMDS lines469; another use of the word ‘structure’, here meant to indicate *spatial variation in species composition of assemblages, whereas structure also used to indicate RADs… be careful, would be good to sharpen language

**I fear that the omission of such measures owes to very low abundances of living individuals, an especially large challenge in tropical settings in my experience… typically we have to process far more sediment for living than for dead to achieve statistical power (see Powell et al from the early 1980s for the first time this was recognized and acted upon; Gilad et al 2018 did the same thing, sieving many-x more volume of sediment for live than dead, in tropical shelf habitats for the same reason). If this is indeed the situation, the authors, again, do not need to be defensive but simply straightforward and ‘up-front’, that is explain from the start that there are limits to what they can do analytically given extremely disparate live-dead sample sizes (and probably extremely small Ns of living in absolute terms, e.g. anything <50 inds and especially <20 inds).

Results – first para on general features is where the authors should immediately start differentiating their living and death assemblages – e.g., of these 7113 inds, how many dead & how many alive, ditto the S of species orders etc. If all of these numbers and others in the Results section are going to refer excluseively to the death assemblages, then this also needs to be made explicitly clear here, e.g. “All results refer only to dead-shell assemblages unless otherwise noted (e.g., section xx on dead vs total comparison).” I find it hard to proceed without knowing this basic information

Line 333 – ‘fluctuations’ typically would refer to variability in time, whereas here I think the authors mean variability among spatial replicates at a site etc collected during the same season… watch for this

Line 514 Table 2 – Finally! Info on N live and N dead… and indeed the disparity is super high, not shocking for a tropical shallow marine system but very troubling for live-dead comparison. My suspicion re why the authors chose to compare dead versus live+dead are confirmed. This is not a scientifically fair/appropriate test of the ability of the dead to serve as a surrogate of the usual, entirely-live-collected kind of data that biologists typically have – and moreover flips the usual disparity (usually the ‘whole’ is much larger/broader/more inclusive sampling of the target than is the subset being tests as a ‘surrogate’/proxy of i). The results are of course interesting, but mostly for enlightening readers about the challenges of live-dead analysis in such settings. I think the discussion and conclusions from this section will thus need to be very modest, very modulated. ** For the editor: The disparities are e.g. 1500 dead inds versus 5 living ones, etc, with only two sites yielding >20 individuals, with 20 being an absolute minimum N of individuals to do any kind of nmds etc.

In this table 2, I’m most intrigued by the (to me) large number of taxa found exclusively alive, i.e. “alive-only” – I would not expect this given the huge disparity in sample size, i.e. that any taxa would not be encountered among the dead. 2 explanations = (1) new, invasive taxa, populations still small, little opportunity for dead shells to accrue to measurable levels in the death assemblage [given the species, I doubt this, but authors should (in the discussion) indicate if these are all natives or otherwise commonly encountered already by others in Cuba; or (2) taphonomic bias, i.e. these are all taxa with truly exceptionally low preservation potential, e.g. from their especially small/thin-shelled bodies, and/or super-rarity, and/or high-organic aragonitic shell types, and/or life-habit (e.g. I find that commensals have very low preservation potential). From my experience, Solemya has a super-low pres pot (as do lyonsiids, pinnids, some pandoriids), and I commonly find that Bittium, Caecum, and Rissoids/small parasitic & minute herbivores are strongly underrepresented in the dead (but not actually absent) Limaria and Americardia & Codakia should definitely not fall into this category… anyway, a surprising and super-interesting result

523 contribution of shelf species to deep-sea death assemblages – wonderful, super useful observations. It would be super-helpful to provide the typical or maximum known body sizes of these taxa found off shelf, and/or, even better, the typical or max body sizes observed among thte individuals actually collected. Would make a more powerful discussion/conclusions

Table 3 this section – Please provide info at the bottom of each column on the total N of the death assemblage so that readers can get full value from these prop abundance values. E.g. does 100% (“1”) mean 10 out of 10, 100 out of 100 inds, or 1 out of 1? The data on raw N of dead shells from a tropical slope would be valuable in itself.

=Interesting from a taphonomic perspective that all are gastropod species w one exception… because epifaunal, which is long thought to increase the potential for postmortem transport (because they die above the sediment-water interface—idea probably in KidwellBosence)? Some info on life habit, not just gastro-bivalve class membership, would be nice to add to this table, or at least to bring into discussion.

Discussion –

549 hyper diverse, may never reach an asymptote – probably true, although still not a popular idea, but that’s because most people have never encountered the tropics in a first-hand way. Thus am glad to see you say this, is a perfectly good description of your curves!

Regional scale – agree w your interpretation

579 – again, people generally don’t like to talk about high productivity and coral reefs, or the role of upwelling, but am sure this is a factor in a lot of places and here you have independent evidence of upwelling to promote it; nice regional insight

614 – yes Kidwell/Bosence for the even-ing effects of time-averaging (also see the older Peterson paper they cite), but there’s more explicit, rigorous testing of this effect in younger literature, e.g. Olszewski/Kidwell 2007, var Tomasovych/Kidwell (it’s also in SK/ATomas 2013).

620 habitat – by the way, when I first saw ‘coral reef’ in the abstract, I assumed this would be an analysis of mollusks in the reef framework itself (with all of those huge challenges, e.g. see many nice papers by Zuschin). So I was happy/relieved to see that the authors actually meant the sandy seabeds between reef tongues, i.e. the grooves… be sure that this is clear in the abstract and intro, and then again remind reader in the discussion. Lots of potential for shells washed in from adjacent hard substrata/reef framework, but also plenty of taxa that live (and die) in the sands themselves.

640ll – yes, transport *can be important, but commonly less that folks worry about it being; thanks for having read the SK/Bosence paper carefully enough to realize that we concluded it was a relatively minor issue in most level-bottom subtidal settings (ditto even on steep shelves per SK 2008, right!).

657 – indeed, it *is interesting that susp feeders are as unimportant as they are in these sandy inter-reef areas �oh, that’s a term you could use, “inter-reef sand” rather than “coral reef”

To 672 – I really love all the detailed info and thinking about the natural history of your settings, it’s a usefully thoughtful discussion

687 – evenness curves – OK, not crazy about this approach

693 – ‘substantial inter-replicate variability, i.e. small-scale spatial heterogeneity – I find this, too, in tropical shelves… the world is patchier than we imagine, even with time-averaging. Am glad that the authors are being ‘true’, i.e. fully honest about their findings, are not trying to smooth it over

Live-dead assemblages

Tomaso et al 2023 – no need to be defensive, this is an ‘ideal’ work plan, very difficult and expensive to achieve! BTW Adam and I try very hard to get other workers to appreciate ‘time averaging’ as a scaling process, which operates post-mortem, but NOT as a taphonomic process the way people typically mean that. T-avg does not ‘bias’ the record, but rather simply averages the input of shells over time, with a series of predictable effects (as summarized SK/AT 2013). It provides a window of opportunity for taph processes such as transport, fragmentation, bioerosion, etc to genuinely bias the composition of that time-averaged assemblage. But time averaging simply means we’re sampling bio over a period of time longer than the typical snap-shot of a biological survey – if one were to sum many live-collections over time, the effects onn richness, evenness would be the same, *unless one biased that assemblage by e.g. removing many of the fragile-shelled species. Sorry to be this pushy, but the authors are careful thinkers and ambitious, so it would be great to have the time-averaging vs taphonomic-bias language sharpened in this ms.

710—ah, Table 2 discussion! Ok, I see your very good discussion, thanks.

737 – delighted to see this thoughtful discussion of time averaging, AND that the authors proceed to think-through their local situation given the 210Pb data at hand. Logical, fine job.

757 – and dead-only treatment, good. I think they’re completely right… although Kidwell/Bosence is really old, we hit upon a fundamental truth

Shelf-deep-sea spp –

I wondered about changing “deep-sea” to “slope”, throughout the ms, but 1500m is a really deep part of a slope, so just leave it alone. Nice discussion

Congratulations on a really nice piece of work – a *lot of fieldwork, a *lot of lab work to pick/sort/count these dead individuals down to such a small body size… and then looking at so many metrics including some still-novel ones for live-dead analysis, e.g. FD and Phylo-D.

With best wishes, SK

Reviewer #2: The manuscript " Diversity patterns of mollusk death assemblages in coral reefs and seagrass meadows and a comparison with living assemblages." authored by Peraza-Escarrá and collaborators evaluated the diversity patterns of mollusks assemblages in two gulfs and two different habitats. The main questions of the study are to (1) investigate the taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional diversities of mollusk death assemblages at regional and local scales in 19 coral reefs and seagrass meadows; (2) evaluate death assemblages as surrogates of the whole mollusk assemblages (alive + dead); and (3) explore the downslope transport of shelf species to the deep sea. The manuscript is relatively well-written but excessively lengthy. The topic is very interesting to the scientific community, but some issues should be addressed, and missing information should be included before publication.

My main concerns are about how the manuscript is organized, it gives the impression of being organized more like a chapter of a Ph.D. thesis than a scientific article, including too many details often irrelevant to the manuscript's fundamental topic. The main goal is confusing since the title highlights the “mollusk death assemblages in coral reefs and seagrass meadows and a comparison with living assemblages” and there is no specific development of this idea/topic. For example, different analyses with alive and death assemblages separately could be interesting for differentiating them and could be interesting in terms of current ecological differences between seagrass meadows and coral reef mollusks. Finally, for the proposed experimental design is also necessary to provide more specific details that are not yet included.

The paper in its current form needs major revision before publication. Below I provide some suggestions to improve the manuscript.

Specific comments

The authors should carefully review and choose the article's topic and then select the important and relevant information on that topic (seagrass meadows vs coral reef?), discarding the rest. In its current form, I consider the manuscript to be too lengthy, containing a wealth of information without a clear guiding thread. On the other hand, it appears to be a mix of data and interpretations in which, at times, it is difficult to find a common thread. Once the authors focus on the objective of what they want to convey in the article, they should direct the discussion to that topic. It's worth noting that the bulk of the work has already been done, as this should only involve a readjustment and reorganization of content.

A thorough review of the English is necessary to correct mistakes.

Abstract

Authors should integrate better the sentences, sometimes seems to be a succession of sentences without links between them

Introduction

The authors should rearrange the introduction. I consider it very important to include information about coral reefs and seagrass meadows in the ocean and specifically the mollusk assemblages in those habitats, and why is very important to study them.

Authors should reorganize the introduction from the most general to the most specific.

Material and Methods

Why isn't there the same number of replicates in all cases? Because in the case of GB, we have two seagrass sites and two coral reef sites, but in the case of GG, there are 3 and 3? Why wasn't the same number of replicates (n=3) maintained in all cases? Justify it

Give more details of the deep sea sampling

Is a single slope replicate sufficient to address the differences between the communities of the platform and the slope? Shouldn't the study be balanced? Justify it because this fact could compromise the entire comparison

Authors should also consider to conduct multivariate analyses such as PERMANOVA that assess the entire community and separately for living and dead mollusk assemblages.

It should be considered by the authors to give more details of the experimental design used, specifying the fixed factors, random factors, nested and orthogonal factors.

Results

At times, it is stated that there are significant differences between certain factors. What statistical tests have been conducted to assert the existence of such differences?

The title refers to the comparison of living mollusks with the dead ones, but this comparison is not explicitly addressed except in a small section discussing percentages. Furthermore, throughout the manuscript, there is no mention of a separate matrix that differentiates these two distinct communities

Some parts of the results are redundant and some are unnecessary (depending on the topic of the manuscript); for instance, the information provided in Figures 4 and 7 is essentially the same. It would make more biological sense to treat it separately by habitats as it appears in Fig 7 (seagrass and coral reefs) according to the indicated in the title of the work, rather than jointly in GB and GG. The authors should review this idea and provide only the necessary results for the study's topic.

Perhaps it's a good idea to analyze the data in a more general manner without delving into details of differences between replicates and specific gulfs. If the goal is to contribute to the broader scientific community, it might be more important to focus on observable differences in mollusk assemblages between habitats (seagrass vs. coral reef). This approach could involve explaining differences in species number, abundance, and functional traits rather than detailing local differences between the two. With this shift, the almost exclusive local focus of the study can be broadened to a much more global interest

Discussion

Considering the aforementioned points, it might be advantageous to reframe the discussion. Instead of delving into intricate details of differences between replicas and specific gulf regions, a more effective approach could be to analyze the data in a broader context. Focusing on the overarching differences in mollusk assemblages between habitats, specifically comparing seagrass and coral reef environments, would align better with a global scientific community. This approach would involve elucidating variations in species number, abundance, and functional traits, steering away from intricate local disparities. By adopting this perspective, the study's interest could transition from predominantly local to a more globally significant contribution

Figures and Tables

The authors should integrate the Figures and Tables in the manuscript as closely as possible to the reference in the text to facilitate the reading of the manuscript.

The authors should keep only relevant figures and tables, taking in mind that this is a scientific paper rather than a chapter where considering and including all the possible information is necessary and mandatory

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Susan Kidwell

Reviewer #2: No

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PONE-D-23-26159R1Taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional diversity of mollusk death assemblages in coral reef and seagrass sediments from two shallow gulfs in western Cuban archipelagoPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Peraza-Escarrá,

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.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Apr 29 2024 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.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

José A. Fernández Robledo, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

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.

Additional Editor Comments:

Please address the comments of the second reviewer.

Best,

-j

[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 #2: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #3: (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

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

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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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

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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: 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: The manuscript titled "Taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional diversity of mollusk death assemblages in coral reef and seagrass sediments from two shallow gulfs in the western Cuban archipelago," authored by Peraza-Escarrá and collaborators, evaluates diversity patterns of mollusk assemblages in two gulfs and across two different habitats. This topic is of significant interest to the scientific community. Following the authors' thorough addressing of all raised issues from the previous review, as well as the resolution of my concerns, the manuscript has undergone substantial improvement. In my assessment, it has now reached the necessary standard for acceptance for publication

Reviewer #3: This manuscript addresses the diversity (taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional) of mollusc death assemblages in two different habitats in the Western Cuban Archipelago.

The topic is interesting, worth of being published and the manuscript seems to have been well improved after the first round of review. The manuscript is well organized and the analyses are appropriate for the goals of this work. I propose some suggestions aimed at improving the clarity and importance of the work, most of my comments are in the annotated text. Some additional points are below.

1. It would be helpful to better explain why phylogenetic diversity is important - for Cuba & the studied environments - both in the introduction and the discussion.

2. Introduction: it needs to focus more on the problems that this paper is addressing, the Cuban archipelago and the gap in knowledge that this work fills.

3. Figure 9: please change the position of the text so that the letters don't overlap

4. Figures 6, S1, S2 and S4: "sp." should not be in italics

5. Paragraph starting at line 594: what is the relation between the information from the literature and the present work?

6. Lines 638-646: please rephrase for clarity

7. Time-averaging (lines 649-666): this part can be reduce, the information on the subject can be provided in the references used; it would be better to focus on the time-averaging of the studied material.

8. Discussion: refer to the results and the figures that are the main focus of the paper

9. Conclusions: the section can start with a sentence on the present work, so as to present a global view. The section should highlight the importance of the work, what new it brings rather than summarizing the main points of the results and discussion.

Lastly, the English language should be revised throughout the document.

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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.

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 #2: No

Reviewer #3: Yes: Danae Thivaiou

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[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/. 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-23-26159_R1_reviewer_20240311.pdf

Taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional diversity of mollusk death assemblages in coral reef and seagrass sediments from two shallow gulfs in western Cuban archipelago

PONE-D-23-26159R2

Dear Dr. Peraza-Escarrá,

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 will be generated when your article is formally accepted. Please note, if your institution has a publishing partnership with PLOS and your article meets the relevant criteria, all or part of your publication costs will be covered. Please make sure your user information is up-to-date by logging into Editorial Manager at Editorial Manager® and clicking the ‘Update My Information' link at the top of the page. If you have any questions relating to publication charges, 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,

José A. Fernández Robledo, Ph.D.

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 #3: 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 #3: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #3: 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 #3: 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 #3: 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 #3: Thank you for taking into account the previous comments, the manuscript has been greatly improved and is now ready to be accepted. Few very minor comments are in the text.

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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.

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 #3: Yes: Danae Thivaiou (Naturhistorisches Museum Basel)

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Manuscript_R2_2024.04.15.docx