Reader Comments

Post a new comment on this article

Referee comments: Referee 2

Posted by PLOS_ONE_Group on 07 Mar 2008 at 18:57 GMT

Referee 2's review:

1. Are the experiments, statistics, and other analyses performed to a sufficient technical standard?

Yes, the methods and statistical procedures used by the authors are correct. However, the authors should state why they used null model I and II in nestedness analysis.

2. Are the conclusions presented in an appropriate fashion with speculations and hypotheses identified as such?

Yes. The manuscript provides interesting hypothesis about how ecological and evolutionary processes affect ecological networks. My only concern is that three different explanations for nestedness are not adequately separated in the Discussion: sampling bias (a methodological problem), abundance effects (a biological effect related to ecological neutrality) and selection for specialization on abundance species (a biological effect related to evolutionary processes). The authors should rewrite the paragraph about the nested pattern, separating these three candidate explanations.

2. Have the techniques used been documented in sufficient detail to allow replication?

My main concern is about "Influence of species phylogeny, abundance, sampling and life-history strategies on position in the network architecture". It is hard to relate the analysis described with some factors that the authors want to investigate (e.g., abundance and sampling). The authors should rewrite this section to improve manuscript's readability.

4. Is the report presented in an intelligible fashion and written in English?

Yes. But the authors should define "connected" and "rank in nested matrix" in Results section.

5. Have the exact results reported been published elsewhere?

No, the results are original, although I miss some discussion of recent papers published about modularity in ecological networks, including Olesen et al. 2007. PNAS USA, 104: 19891-19896 and Guimaraes et al. 2007. Current Biology 17: 1797-1803.

6. Does the research meet all applicable standards with regard to the ethics of human / animal experimentation, participants' consent, and research integrity? Please contact us if you have any concerns.

There is no ethical concern.

7. Has the report adhered to the relevant community standards for research conduct, presentation of results, and deposition of data, where appropriate?

Yes.

**********
N.B. These are the comments made by the referee when reviewing an earlier version of this paper. Prior to publication the manuscript has been revised in light of these comments and to address other editorial requirements.