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The authors have addressed all concerns raised by the reviewers. The editor is very satisfied with the revised manuscript. It is now acceptable for publication. The authors have utilized the peer review process to improve their work. This is a brilliant study. Thank you authors for finding PeerJ as your journal of choice, and looking forward to your future scholarly contributions.
Congratulations and very best wishes
[# PeerJ Staff Note - this decision was reviewed and approved by Robert Toonen, a PeerJ Section Editor covering this Section #]
Authors, please kindly find comments raised by the reviewers regarding your work. Kindly attend to them in the very best of detail. The editor also encourages authors to address the following points:
1) Introduction: What is the importance of carbohydrate diet, and why is it important to study this in the maternal, rather than paternal, of course the obvious reason lays on the offspring, however, it is important to clearly explain this. Examples of various carbohydrate diets is important to reiterate here, and which other related seafood organisms that it has been demonstrated in, so that readers know the relevance. So why rainbow trout, why not another, specifically justify why?
You mentioned fishmeal, it is important to expatiate the position of carbohydrate diet in fish meals. It is important to point out why this study is relevant, Which previous studies are near or related to this, where is the gap analysis performed to demonstrate that this specific objective emanated from a specific research gap. Kindly separate the rationale/justification for this work, from the specific objectives, so that readers would know exactly what this study aimed to achieve, Point out the specifics, it must be clear cut.
2) Materials and methods appear ok for now.
3) Results appears ok for now
4) Discussion, please authors should indicate (Refer to Table ?) ,..(Refer to Figure ?) in all the areas where the specific results depicted in either figure or table.
This is a very useful study. Look forward to the revised manuscript. Thank you very much.
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In manuscript entitled ’ No adverse effect of a maternal high carbohydrate
diet on their offspring, in rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss)’, the authors investigated the long-term effect of parental high carbohydrate-low protein dietary exposure on the outcomes of their offspring using a carnivorous fish model. The research topic is quite interesting, and it is surprised to see that such ‘metabolic programming effects’ are very different compared to those in mammals. In general, the experimental design and statistical method are appropriate, results can support the conclusion, the manuscript is well organized and the text is well written and self-explanatory. I only have a few comments for the authors.
1. In terms of the diet composition, the No carbohydrate (NC) diet was used as the control diet. However, actually NC might not be appropriate as a ‘real’ control diet. Because even in the commercial diet there should contain a certain percentage of carbohydrates. And the carbohydrate requirements during gametogenesis or reproduction cycle might be different. The authors may need to clarify this.
2. The authors discussed some sex different effects in male and female offspring and put some metabolic markers in supplemental data. How about the growth parameter? Is there any sex-dependent effect?
3. Line98-Line104, please provide the full name of abbreviations (like SGR, FE…) in the formula. For the survival index, should it be Survival rate (SR)?
4. In Figure 1, please keep the diet name constant in the black box. In the ‘fecondation’ phase, the diet name should also be "HC/LP". And ‘fecondation’ is probably not an English word, please revise it to ‘fertilization’.
5. In Figure 2B, please delete the "in" before the unit in the brackets.
6. In Figure 2C, please provide the unit of "K" in the Y-axis.
7. Line 232, please replace the word "that" with "than".
The basic reporting is mostly fine. Here are a few instances where the English language needs to be corrected slightly:
line 36: change to "able to grow"
line 81: change "was" to "were"
line 189: change "choose" to "chosen"
line 221: change "was" to "were".
line 304: change to "compromise"
It is unfortunate that some unexpected problems with the water caused one NH treatment tank to be compromised, as described lines 89-90. Overall, there has been an effect on mortality as described line 90, but there may be potential effects on other variables as well that will affect the mean of the whole treatment in a way that other treatments were not affected (e.g. maybe a stress event like that would have long lasting effects on condition factor of survivors? etc.). I think there could be more discussion about other potential impacts from this compromise of the water, to reassure the reader that any effects seen in the data involving the NH treatment really were caused by parental dietary differences, and not the compromised water.
line 23 and 351: is this range actually provided somewhere? The only reference to the normal range of a phenotype variable I could find was about plasmatic concentrations and hepatic free glucose content on line 293-294. I think it would be useful to add some more references and discussion to show the reader that the many other variables (e.g. cholesterol, lipids etc.) for offspring of the fish fed more carbohydrates are also within the normal range for salmonids, in order to make sure the findings mentioned in the abstract (line 23) and discussion (line 351) are valid.
line 81-82: please provide a reference for this statement
line 215: I think the first "HH" here is meant to be "NN". Also on line 216 I think "HH" is meant to be "NN". Please double check all other times the combinations of "H" and "N" acronyms have been used to make sure there are no other errors like this.
line 251: It is being repeatedly mentioned how there have been important findings about this in mammals, but the difference between mammals and fish make this comparison possibly have limited usefulness. It should be discussed somewhere how species with internal development should be affected much more than species that broadcast spawn.
line 257-262: this section is confusing. This seems to be the first mention of a Saprolegnia infection, I think this should be clearly mentioned earlier, e.g. the methods or results. Also, was this infection only in one treatment/tank, or spread evenly among the treatments? If it was spread evenly, then it shouldn't affect the experimental comparisons. It may, however, affect the inferences possible from the study (i.e. the results are only applicable to trout that have undergone such an infection, and different results may occur in an aquaculture system free from this infection). There should also be discussion about this possibility.
line 305-306: which particular stress are you talking about here?
line 322: it seems an interesting result that if you reduce the protein content of the diet of the parents, then this will cause a relative increase in tissue protein content of the offspring, and this result I think may be of significance for the value of the aquaculture product. Maybe there should be some more discussion about the potential reasons and implications for this result? The abstract is relatively short and could probably be expanded with some more details of specific results; maybe a potentially important result such as this could be one such addition to the abstract.
line 337: I guess it means here that if the mother and father are both from a given high/low protein treatment, then effects will be greater than if only one was. This could be made more clear in this sentence.
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