PONE-D-24-09815LIFEPLAN: A worldwide biodiversity sampling designPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Kerdraon,

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Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: N/A

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: The manuscript by Hardwick et al. describes the sampling design of the LIFEPLAN project. I think it is good that the authors share project protocols as this will help other projects to generate data that can be compared with the data that was collected in LIFEPLAN project. This is of course going to be essential as continued and extensive efforts are needed in order to document and monitor the biodiversity in the planet.

On the contrary, in reviewing this manuscript, my main struggle has been that the sampling has been already carried out so I am not sure what a reviewer can feedback other than language, structure and minor details. Future publications of LIFESPAN could cite this study for easy description of the methods but this could have been a preprint as the reviewer serves little purpose but to ask questions about the past. I personally feel that an effective review of this sampling strategy can be done only in context of ecological conclusions and requires the reviewer to assess if the ecological conclusions of the study can be made/supported by this design. This aside, I will use this chance to help ask questions that other studies may ask so that this can be documented by the authors, along with a few minor comments.

1. It would be good to give readers an overview of LIFEPLAN in terms of when the project started, with its aims (“a central aim” is given in L83 but not others) so as to draw the interest of a general reader who is not aware of the project. It would also be good to share when the sampling was carried out, so it is easier for readers to make sense of the tense used in the introduction. There is mention of 2020 in methods (L244) but it comes too late.

2. L158-159: This statement raises many questions: similar geographic area with distinct evolutionary history can be said of many locations. it would be good if authors could suggest what kind of questions can be addressed by comparisons of these two sites, even if broadly, and how can these be robustly quantified when there are only 2 regions studied? The latter is of course understandable given this itself requires a huge scale of sampling.

3. L219: Why is there this difference of triangular and square design in Sweden and Madagascar? What would be recommended for future studies?

4. L284: is LIFEPLAN mobile app/LIFEPLAN Web Admin available for other researchers who would be interested in adopting the described protocols? I tried the app and the website but there is no way to “register”. Alternatively, is there some time in future this will be made available?

5. Table 1/metadata: Is there any plan to convert this to Darwin Core terms and keep it standardized such that these data can be also shared, for example to GBIF and in future be machine readable? The authors have motivated the manuscript by saying that we need consistent data (L83), and one key aspect of this is metadata consistency across studies. Ideally this should be done by following existing standards, unless these do not work for the research.

6. Figure 3B, There is a lone point near bottom left, it is not clear why that is present?

7. Figure 5, (A) square plot shows a distance of 50km, but the (B) distances in some cases look to me >100km. This could be due to difficulty in finding such sites but I think it would be good to mention ranges involved or state the issue.

8. L335: Figure 9 and citation (10) are both about audio data, not images.

Reviewer #2: I have reviewed the manuscript titled “LIFEPLAN: A worldwide biodiversity sampling design” and I found it useful as well as interesting. As a biodiversity sampling design, I think this is timely and can be used broadly worldwide.

The only major comment I have is that the introduction doesn’t seem to address the main topic and the reader is not really “introduced” to the context. For example, the authors highlighted current issues with materials from long-standing process not being identified on time, and yet they are presenting another sampling design and not an identification method. By reading the current introduction, one could argue we don’t need additional sampling methods if we still have decades of samples to identify.

Obviously I agree this work is useful, and the authors should make it more clear in the introduction.

Another example, at lines 73-75, this sentence may be a bit underappreciative of taxonomical efforts,

First of all, if we are talking about species identification only, this is an activity mostly performed by diagnosticians, who identify species (that have been described and discovered by others). The reason taxonomists are focused on smaller groups is due to the fact they also have to perform the species description, which is extremely time-consuming. This should be made abundantly clear in the introduction since your work focuses on collecting more specimens that will require taxonomists to study them if we want species to be identifiable.

I would suggest to replace the term “taxa” with “groups”, to make it clear you are not referring to species but larger taxonomical groups (e.g., families, superfamilies). Additionally, I would replace this sentence “and one human has a finite capacity for classification work” with something more on the line that we don’t have enough taxonomists available to cover all the taxonomical work required (this is a useful reference discussing this issue: https://doi.org/10.1093/zoolinnean/zlab072).

Overall, I would strongly suggest to redraft the introduction focusing on:

- Why do we need more standardised collection methods.

- What this method offers that other methods don’t.

- A bit more discussion on whether this new method could use data from other methods. As it is more and more important to have long-standing studies to record biodiversity, one could argue that yet another method (also quite expensive) may not be the best choice if instead we could adapt other methods/protocols that have already been implemented in the past few decades.

Minor suggestions/corrections:

Line 50: You should be more consistent throughout the MS and decide if you want to use the capital letter (line 178) or not (line 50) for “national” and “nested”. Since you are using these terms as “objects” of your analysis, I would suggest to use a capital letter but to define the concept here.

Lines 75-78: Following to my comment above, please, ensure the references mentioned here [7-8] did not also described new species, as there is a clear difference between species identification and species delimitation.

Line 123: Perhaps replace “foci” with “targets”, as the former is not really commonly used.

Line 154: Could you please list the Nordic countries? Even in brackets after the first mention.

Line 158: I think this is the best place to explain a bit better what you mean with “national”, “nested”.

Line 171: either remove capital letter from “Natural” or make “Urban” the same.

Line 192: not exactly sure what you mean with “realised” here. Could you please clarify or use a synonym?

Line 223: Replace “have” with “had” for consistency.

Line 226: Apologies, but I still don’t understand the meaning of “realised” in this context.. See comment above.

Line 266: “growing season” of what?

Line 305: Please, italicise all genes’ names.

Line 309: Add degree symbol.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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LIFEPLAN: A worldwide biodiversity sampling design

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Dear Dr. Kerdraon,

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Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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