Review History


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Summary

  • The initial submission of this article was received on January 26th, 2025 and was peer-reviewed by 2 reviewers and the Academic Editor.
  • The Academic Editor made their initial decision on February 20th, 2025.
  • The first revision was submitted on March 6th, 2025 and was reviewed by 2 reviewers and the Academic Editor.
  • The article was Accepted by the Academic Editor on March 19th, 2025.

Version 0.2 (accepted)

· Mar 19, 2025 · Academic Editor

Accept

Dear Dr. Zhao, I am pleased to inform you that your article has been accepted for publication. I hope that you will continue your research into nematode diversity and will send your articles to our journal more than once.

[# PeerJ Staff Note - this decision was reviewed and approved by Jennifer Vonk, a PeerJ Section Editor covering this Section #]

Reviewer 1 ·

Basic reporting

The topic of this scientific work is very interesting and relevant. The authors reviewed the literature on behavioral adaptations of Caenorhabditis elegans against pathogenic threats. The Introduction adequately introduces the subject of research.

Experimental design

The survey methodology is fully consistent with the coverage of the subject. The sources were paraphrased accordingly. The review organized logically into coherent subsections.

Validity of the findings

The conclusion is written in a high-quality manner. It identifies future directions.

Additional comments

The authors took into account all comments when re-working the manuscript.

Reviewer 2 ·

Basic reporting

no comment

Experimental design

no comment

Validity of the findings

no comment

Version 0.1 (original submission)

· Feb 20, 2025 · Academic Editor

Minor Revisions

Dear authors, I ask you to make the technical corrections recommended by the reviewers.

Reviewer 1 ·

Basic reporting

The study of nematode behavior using the example of Caenorhabditis elegans in relation to pathogens is a rather promising research topic in the field of medicine and veterinary medicine. Therefore, these studies are of significant scientific and practical interest.

Experimental design

The authors of the article conducted a thorough analysis of the literature on the behavioral adaptation of Caenorhabditis elegans to pathogenic microorganisms. The manuscript is written in a high-quality manner. The authors of the article did a lot of work by searching in the PubMed databases for articles. The authors of this review paid great attention to scientific studies that were conducted in different years.

Validity of the findings

The conclusions should be completely rewritten and shortened. The authors should summarize the results of the literature review they have already conducted for each section. References to literary sources are not allowed in the section «Conclusions». Authors must formulate their own conclusions based on the literature analysis. For example, you can indicate which aspects of the ecology of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans have been studied better, which have been studied worse. And which areas of research on this topic are promising for future study.

Additional comments

I recommend that authors shorten the title of the publication. The title should be short and concise. For example, «Behavioral adaptations of Caenorhabditis elegans against pathogenic threats».
Some of the information in the review is presented in text form and the rest is presented in Table 1. I ask the authors to explain this distribution of literary material.
In the title of Table 1 the nematode species must be indicated in italics.
The text contains a reference to Table 1 and the source at the same time, although the table also contains data from literature sources. For example, line 137: «acquired avoidance mechanism(Table 1)(Zhang et al. 2005a).»; рядок 160: «PA14(Table 1)(Hadziselimovic et al. 2014; Liu et al. 2022)…». Therefore, authors need to choose one way of citations.
Lines 99-104. The statement must be confirmed by literature references.
I ask authors to pay attention to punctuation throughout the text. When citing, a space must be placed before the parentheses with the source, after the author’s last name, and before the year, a comma in parentheses must be placed. For example, on line 52, the following corrections must be made: (Leung et al., 2008; Wernike et al., 2014); line 161: «…signaling pathways (Bai et al., 2022)», 164: «…signal-regulated phenomenon (Hadziselimovic et al., 2014; Kitazono et al., 2017) etc.

Reviewer 2 ·

Basic reporting

All references in the text do not meet the requirements of the publication. For example, Leung et al. 2008 should be Leung et al., 2008 (lines: 52);
Meisel & Kim 2014 should be Meisel & Kim, 2014 (lines: 56-57).

References - needs to be improved, they are made with errors. For example, Adair KL, and Douglas AE. 2017. Making a microbiome: the many determinants of host-associated microbial community composition. Curr Opin Microbiol 35:23-29. 10.1016/j.mib.2016.11.002
It should be
Adair KL, Douglas AE. 2017. Making a microbiome: the many determinants of host-associated microbial community composition. Current Opinion in Microbiology 35:23–29 10.1016/j.mib.2016.11.002

fig1. If possible, you should improve the image quality.

Experimental design

1. The name of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans should be written without abbreviations only when it is first mentioned in the main text (line 48), in the rest of the cases the generally accepted abbreviation C. elegans should be used (lines: 53, 58, 62, 99, 118, 131, 195, 210, 227, 234, 253, 273, 285, 295, 337, 367, 381, 434, 447, 450, scientifically recognized abbreviation.

2. Similar to the names of other pathogens – Pseudomonas aeruginosa and others (lines: 134, 143, 183, 184, 224, 240, 241, 283, 293, 298, 306, 311, 314, 324, 336, 441) should be reviewed throughout the text and corrections made.

3. There are places in the text where spaces are superfluous (lines: 143, 225, 283, 290, 295, 369, 431), and where they are necessary – green underlining (lines: 52, 56, 62, 65, 68,74,77, 106,109, 110, 113, 115-117, 124, 127, 137, 139, 141, 144, 146, 148, 149, 152, 157, 160, 164, 166, 172, 176, 180, 183, 185, 188, 198, 201, 203, 214, 221, 222, 226, 230, 233, 237, 240, 243, 248, 251, 253, 257, 259, 262, 266, 275, 285-288, 295, 297, 301, 310, 317, 319, 322, 330, 333, 338, 347, 349, 355, 357, 371, 373, 386, 393, 400, 405, 408, 410, 414, 418, 422, 424, 431, 435, 442, 446, 448, 454).

4. It is known that the names of genera and species are written in italics, it should be reviewed throughout the text (lines: 218, 241, 293, 348, 356, 451, 452).

5. The spelling of S. Typhimurium species should be corrected to S. typhimurium (lines: 218), C. elegans (lines: 293, 356), B. nematocida (lines: 348), Pseudomonas (lines: 403, 440), LactoBacillus replaced by Lactobacillus (lines: 403), Enterococcus faecalis (lines: 451), Staphylococcus aureus (lines: 452).

6. Periods are missing at the end of the sentence (lines: 74, 431).

Validity of the findings

Conclusions as presented are a smooth continuation of the review. It is worth summarizing what the researchers discovered, possibly in their own words without references to the authors. It is possible to pay attention to what still needs to be studied and the prospects of further scientific research using C. elegan, ....

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