Peer Review #2 of "Obama chez moi! The invasion of metropolitan France by the land planarian Obama nungara (Platyhelminthes, Geoplanidae) (v0.1)"

1 ISYEB, Institut de Systématique Évolution Biodiversité, UMR7205 CNRS, EPHE, MNHN, UPMC, Université des Antilles, Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France 2 College of Science and Engineering, James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland, Australia 3 Service de Systématique Moléculaire, Museum national d'Histoire naturelle, Paris, France 4 Amateur Naturalist, Cagnes-sur-Mer, France 5 UMS Patrinat (CNRS AFB MNHN), Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France

239 They were light cream in colour with fine dark brown stippling, with some aggregation of the 240 fine spots towards the mid-dorsum delineating a fine discontinuous median unpigmented dorsal 241 stripe, with an indication of dark transverse bars. The anterior tips were dark grey, and ventral 242 surfaces pale grey.
243 As previously explained, we received hundreds of photographs of adult specimens taken by non-244 professional contributors and cannot show all images here. However, most can be retrieved from 245 the Twitter feed of one of the authors (@Plathelminthe4). We show here only two photographs 246 of special interest. Figure 11 is a single specimen which shows the dark-brown pattern; this 247 single specimen was found in Paris in December 2013, and this photo was therefore used by 248 many media channels; the specimen was deposited in our collection as MNHN JL094, and 249 sequenced (Table 3). Figure 12 is a photograph of a plastic box with its surface covered with 250 adult specimens, which illustrates the abundance of the species in some gardens. Manuscript to be reviewed 258 is therefore the most often recorded species. Most reports were from non-professionals, while a 259 few were from professionals or scientists.
260 Figure 14 is a map of these records in metropolitan France, with each record shown as a dot on 261 the map. The map includes general colour-coded information on altitude. The records were most 262 abundant along the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts; mountainous areas (Alps, Pyrenees, 263 Massif Central) were devoid of records, which were mainly in the plains. The north-eastern 264 quarter of the country, which has a colder climate, had fewer records than the other three 265 quarters; however, there was a concentration of records around Paris. Figure 14, a number of records may be overlooked when dots are superposed, when several 267 records were received from the same locality, or when they were from neighbouring localities. 277 We used our database to investigate the influence of altitude. Figure 16 shows a chart of the 278 number of records against increasing altitude. More than half of the records were from an 279 altitude below 50 m; records above 250 m were rare, and no records were from above 500 m.  (Table 4). His garden is 175 m 2 in 293 surface area. He mentioned that the garden was enclosed by 2-metre high walls and observed that 294 specimens were only occasionally seen on the wall but never more than 40 cm in height, so we 295 can consider that all specimens found originated from reproduction of species from his own 296 garden, without invasion from the neighbouring areas. He collected a total of 1 442 specimens 297 (10.2/day). After that, he reported that flatworms were still as numerous in the garden. Manuscript to be reviewed 301 individuals only, which suggests that the number of hatchlings was even higher (although 302 mortality of hatchlings was not assessed, we can assume that it is not zero). 303 Trees and distances 304 A tree (Fig. 17) was constructed from a matrix built from a selection of COI sequences of O. Manuscript to be reviewed 343 Another network included 5 haplotypes, each with 1-2 specimens, and corresponded to clade 344 "Argentina 2" of the tree; specimens were only from Argentina (4 haplotypes) and Spain.

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345 One network, with 4 haplotypes, included only specimens from Brazil and coincided with the 346 "Brazil" clade found in the tree.
347 Finally, most specimens from Europe belonged to the "Argentina 1" clade, with only a few 348 specimens from Spain in the "Argentina 2" clade; no specimens from Europe were found within 349 the "Brazil" clade. 357 In our daily work at validating and compiling records from citizen science, our attention was 358 drawn to the fact that mentions of land flatworms in the media were immediately followed by the 359 arrival of numerous records, followed by a calmer period when media reports were not released. Manuscript to be reviewed