The effect of the salinity, light regime and food source on carbon and nitrogen uptake in a benthic foraminifer

Lintner, Michael; Lintner, Bianca; Wanek, Wolfgang; Keul, Nina; Heinz, Petra

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-1395-2021

Articles | Volume 18, issue 4

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-1395-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-1395-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 18, issue 4

Research article

|

23 Feb 2021

Research article |

| 23 Feb 2021

The effect of the salinity, light regime and food source on carbon and nitrogen uptake in a benthic foraminifer

Michael Lintner, Bianca Lintner, Wolfgang Wanek, Nina Keul, and Petra Heinz

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Final revised paper (published on 23 Feb 2021)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 25 Aug 2020)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review_bg-2020-306', Anonymous Referee #1, 14 Sep 2020
- AC1: 'Ad Referee #1', Michael Lintner, 10 Oct 2020
RC2: 'Interactive comments on “The effect of salinity, light regime and food source on C and N uptake in a kleptoplast-bearing foraminifera” by Michael Lintner et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 15 Sep 2020
- AC2: 'Ad Referee #2', Michael Lintner, 10 Oct 2020
RC3: 'Review_bg-2020-306 By Michael Lintner', Anonymous Referee #3, 18 Sep 2020
- AC3: 'Ad. Referee #3', Michael Lintner, 10 Oct 2020

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (25 Oct 2020) by Koji Suzuki

AR by Michael Lintner on behalf of the Authors (10 Nov 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (16 Nov 2020) by Koji Suzuki

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (16 Nov 2020)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (27 Nov 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Statistics:
In my understanding, the data do not follow the normality or homoscedasticity or both, as you used log-transformed data for ANOVA (for experiments 1, 2, 3). I think it is dangerous to discuss based on means in such cases. In the first place, parametric testing using a very small sample size (n=3) which does not satisfy the prerequisites on distribution should be avoided. Why not using non-parametric testing instead?
In addition, post-hoc multiple comparison by Fisher’s LSD should not be used for more than 4 groups (since this method does not consider p-value adjustment). Fishers LSD test has been criticized for not sufficiently controlling for Type I error.
If the non-parametric testing will be conducted, and only if it still shows the same outcome, then I would recommend publication after revision.

p-values interpretation:
In the reply comment, you said “p=0.080 is definitively a "trend“ and so we can deal with this result”. Sometimes I also find papers using this kind of reasoning, but it is not correct. Please read the following,

ASA's Statement on p-Values: Context, Process, and Purpose. The American Statistician, Vol 70, Issue 2, 2016.
It says,
・"A P-value, or statistical significance, does not measure the size of an effect or the importance of a result"
・”P-values do not measure the probability that the studied hypothesis is true, or the probability that the data were produced by random chance alone".

Statistics are very helpful for describing and interpreting the results and should be used, but only be used properly. I think it is most important to look at your data themselves and on the variance of each group very carefully. The attitude that solely relies on “statistical significance” is dangerous.

Unit of salinity:
permil is not appropriate as well… As I pointed out before, salinity has no unit. PSU, rather than permil, was still better, though it is not needed. Please follow the guideline of the journal for unit representation if any.

Table 3:
In the previous review, I recommended representing the data as a figure. I still think it should be so.

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ED: Reconsider after major revisions (06 Dec 2020) by Koji Suzuki

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (09 Dec 2020) by Koji Suzuki

AR by Michael Lintner on behalf of the Authors (04 Jan 2021) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (19 Jan 2021) by Koji Suzuki

AR by Michael Lintner on behalf of the Authors (20 Jan 2021) Manuscript

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Short summary

Foraminifera are unicellular marine organisms that play an important role in the marine element cycle. Changes of environmental parameters such as salinity or temperature have a significant impact on the faunal assemblages. Our experiments show that changes in salinity immediately influence the foraminiferal activity. Also the light regime has a significant impact on carbon or nitrogen processing in foraminifera which contain no kleptoplasts.