Please see attached comments.

Please see attached comments.

Review of Gasparini et al (second revision)

Summary
I thank the authors for their diligence in providing photographic documentation of their labeling patterns, which is compelling. The authors have addressed all of my additional concerns and I only list here as a professional courtesy some recommended but very minor changes (mainly of syntax) to the manuscript.

Recommendations for minor changes

Title: Consider changing the title to “Central afferents to the nucleus of the solitary tract in rats and mice” so that readers know which taxonomic groups were studied

Abstract: Change “In both species,…” to “In both taxa…”, since, strictly speaking, mice and rats are not species designations but taxonomic groupings.

Methods:
• A numerical aperture value should be listed in parentheses after the magnification value of each objective mentioned. The reason for this is that two objectives of equal magnification but different numerical aperture values have different resolving powers.
• For every buffer, a pH value that is reported should be accompanied by the temperature of the solution at which that pH was measured. This is because pH changes with temperature.
• ddH2O should be defined after its first mention, and listed as ddH2O
• In the section titled “Nissl counterstaining”:
o change “…graded series of alcohols to rehydrate..” to “…graded series of alcohols of descending concentrations to rehydrate…”
o change “Next, we rinsed with tap water until…” to “Next we rinsed the slides with tap water until…”
• In the section titled “Image acquisition, figures, plots, and counting”:
o Consider replacing the word “imaged” with “photographed”

Discussion: p. 28, 1st complete paragraph: Change “…in all mammalian species studied, including monkeys…” to “…in all mammalian taxa studied, including monkeys…”, since “monkeys” is not a species, but a taxonomic group.

Multiple locations: “Kolliker-Fuse nucleus” should be written as “Kölliker-Fuse nucleus” in: (1) p. 20, 3rd paragraph of the Results; (2) the legend for Figure 1; (3) abbreviations list; and (4) the references for Geerling et al 2017 and Song et al., 2012.

Figure 2f. The inset is missing a small red box indicating the larger field of view, which has been used in all of the other insets of this figure.