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Dear Dr. Miao
I thank you for making the corrections and changes requested by the reviewers. I read and checked your valuable article carefully and am happy to inform you that the article has been accepted for publication in PeerJ.
Sincerely yours
[# PeerJ Staff Note - this decision was reviewed and approved by Kenneth De Baets, a PeerJ Section Editor covering this Section #]
Dear Dr. Miao
The reviewers have commented on your manuscript. You can find the attached reports. Based on the comments and suggestions of the expert reviewers, a minor revision is needed for your article.
I request you check and correct the manuscript based on the reports.
Sincerely
The report have the requirements for being published in PeerJ. Regarding the basic reporting, the authors considered the comments of the reviewers in this topic. They attended the suggestions.
The authors clarified the comments of the reviewers. They attended the comments, mostly to the ethical concerns.
The article have the standard for its publication in PeerJ. The information of this new version was improved with the suggestions of the reviewers.
Thanks for the opportunity to check the new version of the manuscript.
Professional English is used throughout; however, some sections, notably the discussion, are somewhat confusingly written. I have provided in-line edits and comments in the attached document to indicate where I feel additional clarity would aid the manuscript.
No comment
No comment
This manuscript represents a significant contribution to the global understanding of taxonomic and ecological diversity patterns in benthic communities during the Triassic by adding substantially to the record form South China. The authors have made clear efforts to revise the manuscript, and I think their results are communicated well. In this review I have asked for some additional clarity in the discussion as I feel the distinction the authors describe between the synchronicity of taxonomic and ecological diversity changes observed in South China and the decoupling of the substage-by-substage timing of the taxonomic and ecological recovery are sometimes muddled. Based on comments regarding the flow of English for the reader by other reviewers in the previous round, I have also made suggestions and edits in the text to clarify sections that needed additional help with English flow. I think this manuscript needs only minor revisions for clarity in the discussion prior to acceptance, and the authors may take my suggestions for edits to English flow as they see fit.
Dear Dr. Miao
The reviewers have commented on your manuscript. You can find the attached reports. Based on the comments and suggestions of the expert reviewers (especially please clarify the permits of collection), a major revision is needed for your article.
I request you check and correct the manuscript based on the reports.
Sincerely
1. Some sentences are incomplete, so I suggest having a native speaker review the manuscript.
2. Please check that all the references are enlisted in the final section. Some are not mentioned, like Clampham and Bottjer, 2007 (lines 308-309) and Brayard et al (2017) (line 336). Also, some references are incomplete. Be careful with the style of the journal and follow the instructions.
3. The title of the manuscript is not accurate. If the study was conducted in China, the title need to include this information. Also, please include the term “marine”.
4.The title “Recovery and transformation of Triassic bivalve” (line 330) is not precise. Please, propose another title.
1. The objectives are not clear (lines 73-77). The research was conducted at local, regional or global level?
2. Which are the criteria of the selection of the representative shallow facies section in Guizhou? I suggest to include them.
3. The authors mentioned that “studies of the most abundant members were carried out”. Could it be more specific? Did they mean technical reports, theses, researches…?
4. Could it be mentioned some of the bibliographic references consulted for taxonomic identification of the fossil material?
5. According to the Chinese legislation and the policies of the journal PeerJ, the authors need to clarify the permits of collection. Also, the authors need to mention if the specimens were deposited in a museum or an academic institution.
1. Regarding the section “Data Collection”, please include the used references to check the mode of life of each genus.
2. Please clarify how the rates of origin, extinction and net diversification were calculated.
3. In order to synthetize the information of the datasets, the results must include the richness and diversity of the bivalves of the assemblage in the main text.The authors mentioned that “The lower part… comprising over 41% Clraia wangi, was assigned Claraia wangi community in Dienerian-Smithian” (lines 173-174). The description for the rest of the section is similar. In the mentioned case (and in the others similar cases), which other species comprises the 59%?
4. The authors used the term “community” in the manuscript. They need to clarify the reasons to use this term, and not “assemblage” or even “metacommunity” (more accurately in paleontology). The terms differ in the meaning and this have implications in the interpretation of the results and the discussion.
5. I’m not sure if the assignment of the age is because of the presence of the species (fossil index?) or if there was a previous dating. The authors need to argue this part of the manuscript, because it is essential to the discussion and conclusions.
6. In the section of “Discussion”, the authors mentioned that “Previous studies have shown that taxonomic and ecological diversity decoupled to some extent in South China” (lines 306-307). Please mention some bibliographic references.
1. The text mentioned in lines 77-81 could be included in the results or conclusions. I suggest to move the information to another section.
2. A figure with the location of the study area within China territory is necessary, since many of the potential readers may not be familiar with the geography of this country.
3. The legend of the figure 5 is not included. Which species are represented in the figure? The scale is missing.
4. The sentences “Global patterns are, in part, shaped by regional dynamics, including geographic and environmental (Jablonski, 1998; Bush & Bambach, 2004). Therefore, the pattern of South China and globe didn’t show the consistency” (lines 326-328) are not accurate. Please check the consistency.
The manuscript about taxonomic and ecological transitions in Triassic bivalve communities is well-prepared, and the results are interesting.
There are a few points to be clarified and corrected.
It should be good to add more information about bivalve taxonomy or to cite certain references in text (not only in a supplementary data).
Add a paragraph about the Triassic including time intervals (stages and substages).
Check the age and stage in the supplementary excel file.
The Triassic bivalve zonation of South China is somewhat different from the published global scheme; the discussion will be useful.
There are a few typographical errors in the text and figures; please find them in the PDF file.
Acceptable, no comment
The results are reasonable. However, more discussions and comparisons should be added.
Please add details of the figure captions for Figures 1 and 5.
The only place this article falls short in basic reporting is in the background/context for the units sampled. Very little about the lithologic units and facies is described in the introducton or field work and this does not seem to have been a part of this research. If this work was done previously, then more references to how the facies being sampled for the shallow marine benthic bivalve communities need to be included or briefly described.
Otherwise, this paper was professionally written in English, literature was correctly referenced, and the article was professional in its structure.
The only place this article falls short in experimental design overlaps with my concerns for minimal information surrounding the facies sampled. The authors need to describe how they determined the different facies sampled through time (which change lithology significantly) were determined to be directly comparable. Otherwise, the changes in bivalve community through time could be attributed to changes in facies through time.
My only caution to the authors on the validity of their findings are as follows:
Line 220-222: Be careful in how you describe your nMDS results. The actual position on the nMDS shouldn't really matter and should not be compared between nMDS runs, only that the groupings remain distinct. I suggest instead indicating that samples from the Early Triassic stages group closely amongst themselves, but distinctly from groups of Middle Triassic stage samples and Late Triassic stage samples.
Line 224: Clarify that the variability between groups is similar. Additionally, I'm not sure the distance between groups is what you want to use to access variability. The distance on your nMDS is ordination space and indicates that distantly spaced samples are dissimilar from each other. Relatively equally spaced groups would indicate that these samples are equally dissimilar from one another, not equally variable.
I have noted a few places in the results and discussion where some clarification was needed directly in the text attached.
Overall this is an interesting article that addresses taxonomic and ecological trends in Triassic bivalves from South China, which have not been a major part of the global discussion. Their findings that ecological shifts occured in South China during the Anisian and Carnian are particularly interesting in a global perspective. I suggest that the authors could strengthen their manuscript by discussing their results in comparison to the findings of Tackett & Bottjer (2012; 2016) who note a similar shift in ecological community composition from more epifaunal to variably infaunal in the Carnian to Norian of the Lombardian Basin (Italy) and Gabbs Formation (Nevada, USA). The difference in timing of these ecological shifts (if they are suitably similar) is intriguing, and Tackett & Bottjer suggest different potential drivers for the ecological shifts observed in the Tethys and eastern Panthalassa during the Carnian to Norian. I hope the authors consider this addition, as I think it would make for an interesting global comparison.
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