Analyses of Stalked Jellyfish in Kitsunezaki, Japan: Calvadosia nagatensis, and Two Lineages of Haliclystus inabai with Early Life Stages Observed in an Aquarium in Canada
, Yayoi Hirano 2, Allen G. Collins 3,4, Marie-Lyne Deshaies 5, Delta Putra 6, Shu Sekiguchi 6, Shuhei Ikeda 7, Kazuya Okuizumi 7, Mitsuko Chikuchishin 8, Masakazu Aoki 6 and Cheryl L. Ames 2,6,*Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
I only suggest a final review of the text and a question in pdf
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
We appreciate your valuable review.
No surveys were done of the Kitsunezaki survey site, although we mention that "In addition to the above two species (Uchida 1938) reported, but with some doubt, a single specimen of Calvadosia tsingtaoensis (as Sasakiella tsingtaoensis) from Onagawa Bay which is located a little north of Kitsunezaki on the opposite side of the peninsula. This specimen was identified as such because of general agreement in body shape with the species from China, albeit lacking both interradial and perradial primary tentacles leaving open the possibility it instead corresponded to C. nagatensis (Uchida 1938). No further report exists for C. tsingtaoensis in Japan. The absence of biodiversity census data for the Kitsunezaki study site just prior to the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami in 2011, precludes our ability to pinpoint the origin or introduction timeframe of C. nagatensis and H. inabai (either lineage) in this geographic locality. "
Reviewer 2 Report
- It is not sure which lineage, H. inabai lineages 1 and 2, is the real H. inabai (Kishinouye, 1893) in accordance with the results of the present study. It seems the lineage 2 has a broader distribution, inclusing Japanese waters, but the type locality of this species is also in Japan, as well as the collection locality of the lineage 1. The authors need to check the samples and compare with the type specimen of the species. Besides the difference of 16S rRNA and COI sequences between the two lineages, the morphological differences should be provides.
- some writing mistakes need to be corrected, such as, sometimes the specific name "inabai" is not italic; it seems that the reference "Kishinouye, 1893" was not listed completely, it ends with ";", not a "." as usual.
Author Response
We appreciate your valuable review.
- "We appreciate and agree with the suggestion that an examination of the type material might reveal morphological details in H. inabai that could have been overlooked in our study. Unfortunately, no type material exists for this species, leaving the 1893 illustration (which we reproduced in the manuscript) as the “holotype”. Although we would like to establish a neotype for the true H. inabai, until we can decipher its true identity, we think it not prudent to do so at this time. Given the H. inabai has been documented exhibiting a lot of variation (Mayer 1910, and other authors), we conducted an initial examination to see if variations in morphology were related to differences in molecular sequences, and found nothing obvious. Currently, a student in my lab is conducting a large-scale comparative study of many H. inabai samples from Kitsunezaki in an attempt to correlate molecular differences with morphological differences. We expect to publish those findings at a later date. For now, we prefer not to add to the complexity of the current manuscript with taxonomic details.”
- some writing mistakes need to be corrected, such as, sometimes the specific name "inabai" is not italic; it seems that the reference "Kishinouye, 1893" was not listed completely, it ends with ";", not a "." as usual.
We removed commas from citations, e.g., “Kishinouye 1893”.
We have edited all non-italicized species names in the text.
We also made extensive revisions to the text correctly all typos and other errors.
Reviewer 3 Report
“Analyses of stalked jellyfish in Kitsunezaki, Japan: Calvadosia nagatensis, and two lineages of Haliclystus inabai with early life stages observed in an aquarium in Canada” by Adriansyah et al. is an exceedingly well-written and well-researched manuscript dealing with the identification and life histories of several stalked jellyfish found off the coast of Japan. The authors find that one of the species (H. inabai) is actually likely two species and are a case of cryptic species. Extensive descriptions and color photographs of relevant structures and the whole organisms are included, as are results of molecular analyses. The authors due a nice job of supplementing their field and lab studies with information gained from an aquarium. Finally, the authors performed a comprehensive literature search to determine which types of macroalgae and other substrates that these staurozoans live upon and posit that the Great East Japan Earthquake may have negatively affected these taxa, as was documented for other invertebrate epibionts. This last part of the study seems the least supported by data, as the authors do not have a pre-earthquake baseline for staurozoans. However, the authors are very frank in noting that this is a flaw in the study. I recommend that this manuscript be published as long as the editors of the journal are amenable to publishing a paper that will likely have a very narrow audience.
Author Response
We appreciate your valuable review. We trust that this work will be a major contribution to medusozoan research, and widely cited for its relevance to studies on delineation of cryptic species and marine biodiversity monitoring.
