Significance of climate and hydrochemistry on shape variation –  a case study on Neotropical cytheroidean Ostracoda

Wrozyna, Claudia; Neubauer, Thomas A.; Meyer, Juliane; Ramos, Maria Ines F.; Piller, Werner E.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-5489-2018

Articles | Volume 15, issue 17

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-5489-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-5489-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 15, issue 17

Research article

|

14 Sep 2018

Research article |

| 14 Sep 2018

Significance of climate and hydrochemistry on shape variation – a case study on Neotropical cytheroidean Ostracoda

Claudia Wrozyna, Thomas A. Neubauer, Juliane Meyer, Maria Ines F. Ramos, and Werner E. Piller

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Final revised paper (published on 14 Sep 2018)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 10 Nov 2017)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Referee Comments', Anonymous Referee #1, 24 Nov 2017
- AC1: 'Response to Referee #1', Claudia Wrozyna, 25 Jan 2018
RC2: 'General comments', Anonymous Referee #2, 04 Dec 2017
- AC2: 'Response to Referee #2', Claudia Wrozyna, 25 Jan 2018
RC3: 'Referee comments', Anonymous Referee #3, 07 Dec 2017
- AC3: 'Response to Referee #3', Claudia Wrozyna, 25 Jan 2018

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (27 Jan 2018) by Nobuhito Ohte

AR by Claudia Wrozyna on behalf of the Authors (29 Mar 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (19 Apr 2018) by Nobuhito Ohte

RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (09 May 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Authors revised the MS accordance with referee’s comments. Especially, to explain the mechanisms that can change the valve shape, authors revised MS based on a lot of previous studies. However, authors also had to emphasize the novelty of study, in this revised version. Authors introduce a lot of previous studies that show relationships between ecophenotypic variation of freshwater ostracods and environmental variables. This is fine but the value of this study become ambiguous.

In introduction, authors are writing “we apply a thorough approach integrating data from carapace outline and surface details” and there are few studies that adopt this combination method. Authors should discuss the usefulness about this approach in discussion part.

In addition, true, valve shape seems to be influenced by some environmental variables but the effect of random genetic drift was not excluded. Authors should discuss about it.

For the reasons stated above, I think current MS is not acceptable for BGS.

Minor comments
・I commented you should introduce life cycle of Cytheridella. Not every reader is specialist about Cytheridella, especially in journals like BGS that accept variety field studies. Current MS is a little hard to understand the significance of this study, if he/she don’t know ecological information, such as life span and dispersal ability that affect morphological evolution.

・Although paper writing style differ from person to person, I think the word “hypothesize” should not be used in discussion part. Of course, I know this revision was based on another referee’s comment. But I think authors should change this description. For example, “Our results suggest _____ because some previous studies showed ______”.

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RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (13 Jun 2018)

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (29 Jun 2018) by Nobuhito Ohte

AR by Claudia Wrozyna on behalf of the Authors (17 Jul 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (29 Jul 2018) by Nobuhito Ohte

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (03 Aug 2018)

RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (07 Aug 2018)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (18 Aug 2018) by Nobuhito Ohte

AR by Claudia Wrozyna on behalf of the Authors (21 Aug 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (24 Aug 2018) by Nobuhito Ohte

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Short summary

How environmental change affects a species' phenotype is crucial for taxonomy and biodiversity assessments and for their application as paleoecological indicators. Morphometric data of a Neotropical ostracod species, as well as several climatic and hydrochemical variables, were used to investigate the link between morphology and environmental conditions. Temperature seasonality, annual precipitation, and chloride and sulphate concentrations were identified as drivers for ostracod ecophenotypy.