Response to "Assessing the role of Piscine orthoreovirus in disease and the associated risk for wild Pacific salmon"

Equally important is a recognition that the respiratory and oxygen transport indices in our dataset are measures of an integrated and complex biological system for which redundancies are expected as is the case for most physiological systems. [...]statistical analyses and conclusions/perspectives focusing on variations of isolated parameters — for which Mordecai et al. suggest we have overlooked regarding PRV — ignores the holistic and allostatic nature of the vertebrate respiratory system. [...]aerobic capacities during exhaustive exercise were uncompromised by PRV while the oxygen used during recovery was putatively reduced. PRV has not affected metabolic transcriptomic signaling [3], nor has PRV altered IHNV load or morbidity/mortality outcomes during superinfection for which reduced SMR would be expected to provide a functional benefit [2, 4]. [...]we conclude that it is unlikely that PRV functionally impacted basic metabolic requirements of host salmon as measured by SMR. Biologically speaking, Hct and Hb of teleost fish are not only plastic (to optimize oxygen delivery while minimizing cardiac energy demands [5]), they are highly labile to handling perturbations. [...]these statistical changes must be placed in a biological context by juxtaposing the Hct values of PRV-infected tank fish in this study (mean 44% ± 5% SD; minimum 35%) relative to a previously proposed lower threshold for functional harm to prolonged swimming and ṀO2max in a salmonid. [...]probability estimates were intentionally presented in this context without false-discovery rate adjustment to demonstrate relaxed type-1 and stringent type-2 error controls as a partial means of mitigating the increased potential for type-2 error associated with low power. [...]these analyses provided a visually appealing way to present time- and treatment-specific variability, as well as a cautious means for specifying temporal and pathway-specific resolution identified by ANOVA.