Time, Mediated through Plant Versatility, Is a Better Predictor of Medicinal Status of Alien Plants

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear editor; The attached articled was checked.

 

I appreciate your effort.  There are, however, a few major changes required.

Very useful information and nicely written manuscript.

The introduction adequately addresses the rationale of the investigation and gives a very good background information.

Methodology is intelligible. References were cross-checked.

It would be better if the article is supported with more index articles. I believe that an effort to enlarge the degree and the depth of the  discussion would greatly improve the manuscript. Here are my suggestions;

In ıntroduction;,

Exp: Recently,  an increasing number of authors are calling for the vast w

ealth of ethnobotanical .....

EY Babacan, R Polat, O Güler, A Moyan, MY Paksoy, U Cakilcioglu 2022.

An ethno-veterinary study on plants used for the treatment of livestock diseases in Genç (Bingöl-Turkey). Indian Journal of Traditional Knowledge 21 (1), 81-88

-The paper should be edited according to the writing rules of the journal.

 

Author Response

Reviewer: I appreciate your effort.  There are, however, a few major changes required. Very useful information and nicely written manuscript. The introduction adequately addresses the rationale of the investigation and gives a very good background information. Methodology is intelligible. References were cross-checked.

Authors: Thank you.

Reviewer: It would be better if the article is supported with more index articles. I believe that an effort to enlarge the degree and the depth of the  discussion would greatly improve the manuscript. Here are my suggestions;

In ıntroduction;,

Exp: Recently,  an increasing number of authors are calling for the vast wealth of ethnobotanical .....

EY Babacan, R Polat, O Güler, A Moyan, MY Paksoy, U Cakilcioglu 2022.

An ethno-veterinary study on plants used for the treatment of livestock diseases in Genç (Bingöl-Turkey). Indian Journal of Traditional Knowledge 21 (1), 81-88

Authors: We thank the reviewer for this suggestion. However, this paper Babacan et al. 2022 did not make any call for the available wealth of ethnobotanical knowledge be used for theory-inspired or hypothesis-driven studies. Therefore, we did not include it.

Reviewer-The paper should be edited according to the writing rules of the journal.

Authors: We have re-edited the manuscript following as suggested by the reviewer.

Reviewer 2 Report

I read the paper carefully and realized that it needs a major revision.
In this relation, my general remarks have been listed below:
The authors have proposed, developed, and formulated a new theory, namely time-since-introduction theory. Briefly, the whole manuscript provides some valuable data concerning the topic of the research. However, there are some minor changes and or modifications and corrections which should be addressed and regarded in the next revision of this work.
The keywords should be sorted alphabetically.
What does the following statement mean in the abstract part?
"with which to understand different part"
To gather the relevant data, the authors have searched some reliable resources and databases like ISI-WOS, etc. What about the huge data available in Scopus?
The authors have implied the flora of some African countries, e.g., South Africa, Zimbabwe, etc. in 2017. Did the authors revisit them in 2022 before submitting this article? If not, there is a five-year time interval gap.
L78-80: the relevant sentence should be rewritten again to make a deeper insight to the topic of the research.
What does this style of citation mean? By ref. [30]
Of course, in this case, and similar cases, it would be better to mention the name of the author(s) considering the general guidelines of the Journal.
P-value → p-value (all through your revision!)
So, when discussing P value, the P should be considered in lowercase all through the next revision and different parts of the revised paper, e.g., tables, figures, etc.
In the introduction part of this manuscript, the authors have discussed the term ethnobotany. But I think the first two sentences should be extended and reorganized again. In other words, this critical term deserves more attention, and a comprehensive definition should be given in the next revision of this work. By the way, many reports are found in the literature dealing with this important keyword in a variety of herbal-based disciplines among them the following one's definitions can enrich the relevant tabulated data and definition.
doi: 10.1016/j.jep.2005.05.031.
doi: org/10.1016/j.indcrop.2018.12.012.
doi: 10.1007/s12231-020-09498-w

Since this paper proposes a new theory in the ethnobotany field, the corresponding conclusion part should be extended. In this relation, the future perspectives of this attempt are missing in the conclusion part. Therefore, the authors should provide a substantial phrase concerning the future aspects and perspectives of this work for the researchers worldwide. Besides, the first and second sentences in the conclusion part may be shifted to the relevant introduction part since they are not the concluding remarks of this report. So, the authors are expected to organize a comprehensive conclusion considering the main outputs of this study. The main relevant challenges should be also pointed out in this report.
The authors have suggested a new theory "time-since-introduction". I'm so interested to be informed about how the authors concluded such a theory. I do believe that this theory could be highly extended regarding some of the other relevant parameters in the future.
e.g. Also in italics. exempli gratia
Some minor corrections are required in the English style of this paper, I have listed some of them below:
has also been showed → has also been shown
we formulated → we formulated

Author Response

Reviewer: I read the paper carefully and realized that it needs a major revision.
In this relation, my general remarks have been listed below:
The authors have proposed, developed, and formulated a new theory, namely time-since-introduction theory. Briefly, the whole manuscript provides some valuable data concerning the topic of the research. However, there are some minor changes and or modifications and corrections which should be addressed and regarded in the next revision of this work.

Authors: We have addressed all the comments as indicated below.

Reviewer: The keywords should be sorted alphabetically.

Authors: Keywords are now sorted alphabetically

Reviewer:
What does the following statement mean in the abstract part?
"with which to understand different part"

Authors: The expression "with which" has been changed to "which can be used to understand...."

Reviewers: To gather the relevant data, the authors have searched some reliable resources and databases like ISI-WOS, etc. What about the huge data available in Scopus?

Authors: All sources of information were explored.

The authors have implied the flora of some African countries, e.g., South Africa, Zimbabwe, etc. in 2017. Did the authors revisit them in 2022 before submitting this article? If not, there is a five-year time interval gap.

Authors. We thank the reviewer for this point. Actually our data collection lasted 5 years (from 2012 to 2017). We indicated 2017 in the paper because it was in 2017 that we concluded all our data collection and did all the statistical analyses. However, we did do a quick search in 2022 before we re-submitted the paper and we can confirm that there was no much new information to add to the data.

Reviewer
L78-80: the relevant sentence should be rewritten again to make a deeper insight to the topic of the research.

Authors: The L78-80 reads as follows: "The question now is: how could ethnobotanical knowledge be valuable in conservation science [28] if we have poor or limited understanding of the mechanisms driving plant selection and use by local people?" We really do not understand why the reviewer asked that this statement be re-written. We would appreciate it if the reviewer can tell us what exactly is wrong in that statement, and we would definitely re-write it.  

Reviewer: What does this style of citation mean? By ref. [30]. Of course, in this case, and similar cases, it would be better to mention the name of the author(s) considering the general guidelines of the Journal.

Authors: Since we can not use authors name, we preferred to rather write "ref. [30]" for "reference number 30 in the reference list". We found it odd to write "a previously published study by [30]......" 

Reviewer: P-value → p-value (all through your revision!) So, when discussing P value, the P should be considered in lowercase all through the next revision and different parts of the revised paper, e.g., tables, figures, etc.

Authors: "P-value" has now been rewritten as "p-value".

Reviewer: In the introduction part of this manuscript, the authors have discussed the term ethnobotany. But I think the first two sentences should be extended and reorganized again. In other words, this critical term deserves more attention, and a comprehensive definition should be given in the next revision of this work. By the way, many reports are found in the literature dealing with this important keyword in a variety of herbal-based disciplines among them the following one's definitions can enrich the relevant tabulated data and definition.
doi: 10.1016/j.jep.2005.05.031.
doi: org/10.1016/j.indcrop.2018.12.012.
doi: 10.1007/s12231-020-09498-w

Authors: As opposed to what the reviewer wrote, we actually did not discuss the term ethnobotany in the study because this was not the point we intended to make. In the first 2 sentences of the Intro, we rather went straight to the point of the study by indicating that most ethnobotanical studies document plant usages and recent studies are now calling for these documented information be used to test hypotheses and theories.

However, we thank the reviewer for suggesting these 3 papers on the definition of ethnobotany. We read all 3 thoroughly. However, only the first ones actually provides a definition of ethnobotany as a concept or discipline (not the other 2). Even the first one indicated that ethnobotany focused originally on the utilitarian relationships between human and plants and further indicated that, in the modern definition, this relationship has gone beyond the utilitarian aspects to include the symbolic, ecological and cognitive as well as all sort of human-plant relationships. For our study, this utilitarian relationship is what is of interests and not the symbolic of the ecological aspects. Overall, since we did not aim to discuss concepts, we do not see the need to open a discussion on the definition of concepts of ethnobotany and how it has evolved over time. We would have done so if the focus of our study was on the what the ethnobotany has become (from utilitarian to symbolic and ecological). We hope the reviewer agrees with us on this point.

Reviewer: Since this paper proposes a new theory in the ethnobotany field, the corresponding conclusion part should be extended. In this relation, the future perspectives of this attempt are missing in the conclusion part. Therefore, the authors should provide a substantial phrase concerning the future aspects and perspectives of this work for the researchers worldwide. Besides, the first and second sentences in the conclusion part may be shifted to the relevant introduction part since they are not the concluding remarks of this report. So, the authors are expected to organize a comprehensive conclusion considering the main outputs of this study. The main relevant challenges should be also pointed out in this report.

Reviewer: The authors have suggested a new theory "time-since-introduction". I'm so interested to be informed about how the authors concluded such a theory. I do believe that this theory could be highly extended regarding some of the other relevant parameters in the future.

Authors: We do not fully understand what the reviewer meant by "...how the authors concluded such a theory". We assumed he/she meant how we came up with the theory. If that is the case, we did provide detailed information in paragraphs 2 and 3, and we also provided a framework (Figure 1) that summarizes the theory.

In addition, the reviewer also wrote "I do believe that this theory could be highly extended regarding some of the other relevant parameters in the future". We definitely agree with the reviewer that alternative theory can actually be proposed with other parameters that are not included in ours. We actually hope that other researchers will aim to improve or propose additional theories to further our knowledge of how alien plants become medicinal in their recipients environments.

Reviewer: e.g. Also in italics. exempli gratia

Authors: We have now italicized 'e.g.' in the revision.

Reviewer: Some minor corrections are required in the English style of this paper, I have listed some of them below:
has also been showed → has also been shown

Authors: We have replaced "showed" by "shown"

Reviewer: we formulated → we formulated

Authors: We do not understand what the reviewer meant here.

Reviewer 3 Report

Attached

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Reviewer: The manuscript showing some novelties. However several corrections seems to be necessary:

Introduction

Clearly applied aims: The aim of the study is clearly highlighted, which is to propose a new ethnobotanical theory.

The needs for study should be clearly stated: The need for the study is highlighted in Paragraph 1 of the Introduction as follows: "Some authors even questioned whether ethnobotany, as a scientific discipline, has a unifying theory, since the discipline remains, for too long, largely descriptive without clearly defined theoretical frameworks [13-16]. Consequently, there has been repeated calls for a paradigm shift towards more theory-inspired or hypothesis-driven research in ethnobotany [12]". 

Literature review should be improved: Unfortunately, the reviewer did not indicate which aspects must be improved or what exactly is missing in the literature review.

Material and methods

This section need to improve including

Detailed description of the area: We have added the following information to the study area section: "South Africa is found at the southern tip of Africa stretching from 22°S to 35°S in latitude and 17°E to 33°E in longitude. Its neighboring countries are Namibia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Botswana".

Geographical as well distribution maps should be add: The reviewer did not indicate the distribution maps of what exactly must be provided.

For the geography of the study area, we have now provided the GPS coordinates of South Africa. As of the map of South Africa, we did not provide it since we do not see the values it will add to the theory we have tested in our study.

What are the basic sources to analysis? Flora, herbarium records, online database? All our sources of data are provided in the section "Data collection".

Results and discussion

This section need to revision deeply: We would have appreciated if the reviewer provided us with information on which aspects of the discussion is weak and needs revision.

Your achievements should be compared with last studied: We do not fully understand what the reviewer meant here. However, our findings were indeed compared with existing knowledge in the literature .

Reviewer: In my opinion paper including valuable results that a revise can be effective to improve it. The results of the study should be explained more clearly and accurately. The applied achievement the study should be add to discussion.

Authors: In term of application of our findings,  this is a theoretical study that demonstrates that more versatile alien plants are more likely to be included in local medicinal flora quicker than non-versatile alien plants. 

We thank the reviewer for his/her time to improve our manuscripts.

 

 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The attached articled was checked.The author made necessary corrections. Manuscript can be published in this form.

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for this positive feedback.

Reviewer 2 Report

As I checked it out, I realized that many of my recommended points have not been followed or remain unchanged in this revision. So, the authors are invited to take a look again at my recommended points as being listed below

The authors have implied the flora of some African countries, e.g., South Africa, Zimbabwe, etc. in 2017. Did the authors revisit them in 2022 before submitting this article? If not, there is a five-year time interval gap.

What does this style of citation mean? By ref. [30]

In the introduction part of this manuscript, the authors have discussed the term ethnobotany. But I think the first two sentences should be extended and reorganized again. In other words, this critical term deserves more attention, and a comprehensive definition should be given in the next revision of this work. By the way, many reports are found in the literature dealing with this important keyword in a variety of herbal-based disciplines among them the following one's definitions can enrich the relevant tabulated data and definition.

doi: 10.1016/j.jep.2005.05.031.

doi: org/10.1016/j.indcrop.2018.12.012.

doi: 10.1007/s12231-020-09498-w

Since this paper proposes a new theory in the ethnobotany field, the corresponding conclusion part should be extended. In this relation, the future perspectives of this attempt are missing in the conclusion part. Therefore, the authors should provide a substantial phrase concerning the future aspects and perspectives of this work for the researchers worldwide. Besides, the first and second sentences in the conclusion part may be shifted to the relevant introduction part since they are not the concluding remarks of this report. So, the authors are expected to organize a comprehensive conclusion considering the main outputs of this study. The main relevant challenges should be also pointed out in this report.

The authors have suggested a new theory "time-since-introduction". I'm so interested to be informed about how the authors concluded such a theory. I do believe that this theory could be highly extended regarding some of the other relevant parameters in the future.

Author Response

Reviewer comment: The authors have implied the flora of some African countries, e.g., South Africa, Zimbabwe, etc. in 2017. Did the authors revisit them in 2022 before submitting this article? If not, there is a five-year time interval gap.

Response: We have already responded to this question in our first response letter. We indicated that we did have a look at those flora, and there was no new medicinal knowledge reported since 2017 where we first collected our data.

Reviewer: What does this style of citation mean? By ref. [30]

Response: Again, we responded to this question already in our first response letter, and it doesn't look like the reviewer did look at our response letter. The sentence reads as follows: "Our dataset of alien woody plants and their years of introduction to South Africa were obtained from a previously published study by ref. [30]". ref.[30] stands for "reference number 30" in the reference list.

Reviewer: In the introduction part of this manuscript, the authors have discussed the term ethnobotany. But I think the first two sentences should be extended and reorganized again. In other words, this critical term deserves more attention, and a comprehensive definition should be given in the next revision of this work. By the way, many reports are found in the literature dealing with this important keyword in a variety of herbal-based disciplines among them the following one's definitions can enrich the relevant tabulated data and definition.

Response: We have now provided the definition of ethnobotany at the beginning of the Introduction, and it reads as follows: "Originally, ethnobotany referred to the study of the traditional utilitarian relationship between humans and plant resources, focusing on how and which plants are used for by humans [1]. Ethnobotany has now branched out of this restrictive view to include a broader human-plant interaction beyond a utilitarian relationship, e.g., the symbolic, ecological and cognitive relationship [2,3]". 

Reviewer  Since this paper proposes a new theory in the ethnobotany field, the corresponding conclusion part should be extended. In this relation, the future perspectives of this attempt are missing in the conclusion part. Therefore, the authors should provide a substantial phrase concerning the future aspects and perspectives of this work for the researchers worldwide. 

Response:  We did provide future perspective when we called for future studies to collect different datasets from different parts of the world to test the validity of the theory. This call is in the last sentence of the conclusion and it reads as follows: " Here, we formulate, test, and provide evidence for the role the factor time plays in the process of including alien plants into local medicinal flora. We then provide a theoretical framework, termed time-since-introduction theory, that integrates three ethnobotanical hypotheses in support of the theory and call for more studies to test the theory with different datasets across different geographies".

Reviewer: Besides, the first and second sentences in the conclusion part may be shifted to the relevant introduction part since they are not the concluding remarks of this report. So, the authors are expected to organize a comprehensive conclusion considering the main outputs of this study. The main relevant challenges should be also pointed out in this report.

Response: We do not think the first 2 sentences should be moved. We have to remind the readers very briefly what the background of the study. That's what we did with our first 2 sentences.

On challenges, we have now added challenges in the last sentences of the conclusion, and this reads as follows: "The main challenges reside in the fact that data on the introduction dates of alien plants into a new environment are not always documented. This will make the test of the theory less frequent, unless we start documenting such data from now on". 

Reviewer: The authors have suggested a new theory "time-since-introduction". I'm so interested to be informed about how the authors concluded such a theory. I do believe that this theory could be highly extended regarding some of the other relevant parameters in the future.

Response:  The reviewer asked how did we conclude the theory. Here it is: "we formulate, test, and provide evidence for the role the factor time plays in the process of including alien plants into local medicinal flora. We then provide a theoretical framework, termed time-since-introduction theory, that integrates three ethnobotanical hypotheses in support of the theory and call for more studies to test the theory with different datasets across different geographies".

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Editor

The manuscript is corrected. After below minor corrections is acceptable

Geographical as well distribution maps should be added                

Best Regards

Author Response

Reviewer: The manuscript is corrected. After below minor corrections is acceptable Geographical as well distribution maps should be added .

Response: We have now added the geographic location of the study area including the biomes types in the region.            

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

Unfortunately, after two major corrections, I have not been convinced with the authors' corrections and medications. The data are insufficient as the manuscript. So I have to recommend rejecting this manuscript.