Development of an Environmental DNA Assay for Prohibited Matter Weed Amazon Frogbit (Limnobium laevigatum)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper is well structured and presented. Just minor comments:

After the first mentioning of the scientific name I would suggest to carry on with: L. laevigatum.

Table 1: size column refers to the size of the amplicon, correct?

Line 143: I didn't get why these samples were obtained in a different way.

Table 2 footnote: I suppose it is "Cq"

Line 186: I would remove the word "slightly"

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript presents a study on the detection of an invasive aquatic plant by means of the study of environmental e-DNA. The subject matter is related to the scope of the journal and the development of the document is adequate.

The introduction is well written, and presents the problem to be studied, but does not indicate the advantages of using qPCR to identify the invasive species, since it is easy to recognize it visually.

It should end by clearly stating the objectives at the end of the introduction, as well as indicating the importance of the contributions presented.

The methodology is well explained in terms of the sampling and post-processing procedure.

Table 2 is the results of the study, and should be placed at the beginning of section 3. You indicate in the head of the table what Cq means. However, the details regarding the characteristics of the sampling points should be indicated in the methods found in table S2, and this detail is not necessary in the head of the table. In any case, this table S2, since its size is small, could be placed in the main text of the manuscript, merging it with table 2.

As for the results, check that paragraph 185-187 is well written, in agreement with the results in Table 3.

The discussion is well presented in accordance with the academic aspects of the study.

Finally, regarding the list of references, it is observed that some of them do not have the name of the journal abbreviated, so they should be presented in the correct style.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx