I was not one of the original reviewers of the manuscript, but have read through the comments and responses to reviewers and see that the author has done a fairly good job at responding to these. I have a few others, however, that would help tighten up the paper and clarify a few minor issues.

Line 9 – should be “questions of biodiversity”

Line 16 – says “allow us” – should rephrase and maybe say “allow researchers”?

Line 17 – should read: “This overview sheds light on both the poor….”

Line 22 – keywords should be lowercase unless proper nouns

Line 34 – instead of using the term “started”, which is a bit more colloquial, I would instead use the terms “begin” or “began”

Line 23 – The Introduction is one long paragraph that should be split into 2 or 3 smaller paragraphs

Line 46 – suggest splitting into a new paragraph at “While zooarchaeological…”

Line 49 – replace “representivity” with “representation”

Line 65 – remove “in order” as it is unnecessary here

Line 69 – awkward phrasing – needs revising

Lines 74 – 82 – the compartmentalizing of the Caribbean into northern and southern sections is a bit awkward. The Bahamas, while culturally Caribbean both historically and before European contact, are technically in the Atlantic Ocean and very different geologically from both the Greater Antilles, Lesser Antilles, and other smaller islands. Is it even useful chronologically, culturally, biogegraphically, or geologically to group the Bahamas with the Greater Antilles? Would be worth noting too that the Lesser Antilles are a classic island-arc system which is why they geologically young and still volcanically active.

Lines 88-93 – the term “Lithic” really is not used too much anymore given the ephemeral nature of the evidence and weak linkages to Central America where it is still unknown where peoples living in the islands at this time originated. This can probably be subsumed under “Archaic”. While Wilson et al. (1998) argued for “Preceramic” origins to the Greater Antilles from Belize, the evidence is for the most part circumstantial and not well documented.

Line 94 – there are a number of place names such as “South America” and Puerto Rico” where there is a strange hyphen placed between the two names. These should be removed throughout the paper.

Line 104 – should be “origin INTO the Greater Antilles”

Line 105 – should be “led to THE gradual emergence…”

Line 107 – should be “period BEGINS” (not “starts”)

Line 113 – might want to end this sentence and note that Indigenous populations were replaced by Europeans and African slaves, which later led to significant admixture of the populations

Line 117 – replace “over” with “more than” which is technically correct; also should say “species, THOUGH diversity is low…”

Lines 135 – 137 – capitalization of NISP and MNI should be removed when spelled out (i.e., should read “minimum number of individuals (MNI)”, etc.

Line 146 – remove “undoubtedly”; replace “works” with “projects”

Lines 147 and 152 – uses singular “I” but later plural “us”

Line 151 – replace “specialist” with “specializing in”

Line 175 – change sentence to read: “Terrestrial (non-aquatic) taxa are less well-represented and are a majority of bone remains…”

Line 183 – should be “occur” (not “occurs”)

Line 201 – instead of using the term “mentions” throughout the paper, it would be better to say “reports”

Line 205 – use “did not” instead of “didn’t”

Line 207 and below – again, this is one really long paragraph that should be split into at least 3 different paragraphs

Line 234 – should be “gecko” (not “geckos”)

Line 252 – should be “snakes”

Line 281 – change “this” to “these”

Line295 – should be “sometimes”

Line 306 – change to: “is not impossible if time is invested…”

Line 308 – “implicated” is an odd choice of words; I would replace with another word, perhaps “involved”?

Line 311 – remove “legitimately” which is unnecessary

Line 344 – maybe change “the Indigenous” here to “local populations”?

Lines 456 and 465 – remove “very” as the term here is unnecessary

Line 476 – replace “extend” with “extent”

Line 481 – “poor image” is a little colloquial; suggest replacing with “The Caribbean archaeological does not accurately reflect the past biodiversity….”

Line 510 – should say “bodies of evidence allow researchers to document…”