Floristic Homogenization and Differentiation under Deer Grazing in a Subalpine Zone in Central Japan

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Dr. Nagaike!

I found your manuscript correctly written with just few minor comments.

I think you should add in the Introduction few sentences mentioning that some vegetation types are actually dependent on the herbivores presence, unlike vegetation you have surveyed.

Although you have cited few relevant references, please consider adding some info/conclusion from those papers, what are the causes of sika deer expansion (e.g. lack of predators; climate change; avoiding human disturbance;...) to provide that information to readers.

You have sufficiently described your field sampling, hence please consider replacing term "lines" with the more commonly used "sample plots".

Lines 56-57 - I am little confused with the message you would like to communicate with the sentence "However, some studies...". To me, it seems like something is missing here.

Conclusions - in the second paragraph, I do not see appropriateness of mentioning how far your study sites were from the roads. Instead, some thoughts/recommendations what could be actually done (if anything) to increase impact of sika deer grazing on the sampled vegetation would be more appropriate.

With kindest regards.

Author Response

Please see the attached file as replies to the comments.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear author,

I found your manuscript very interesting. It is clearly focused and simple, aiming to reveal the change in plant α- and β-diversity due to deer grazing in a subalpine zone in central Japan. The English language and style are flawless, the overall structure of the manuscript is sound, and the statistical methods applied are suitable and sufficient.

I do not have any major or minor comments and find this manuscript suitable for publication in its present form.

Author Response

Please see the attached file as replies to the comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The present paper entitled: “ Floristic homogenization and differentiation under deer grazing in a subalpine zone in central Japan “ by  Takuo Nagaike, studies the changes in vascular plants composition (changes in diversity) in two types of subalpine vegetation communities: the understory of Betula forests and grasslands. The paper presents sufficient data to conform an interesting study; however, the presentation of those results in this manuscript are very difficult to follow, and therefore, extremely difficult to evaluate their relevance.

The text is not well organized and shows abundant general statements from references which are not accompanied by specific examples in the context of this study. The document is missing interpretation of the most relevant results (in the discussion) or a clear purpose of the study (in the introduction). For example, Table S3 is relevant and some specific findings of those results could be used and included in the discussion to argument the most relevant results. Furthermore, some of the results are difficult to understand because of the lack of details in explanation. What the author marks with “*” in figures to denote a significant difference is often not very clear; neither the captions are (a caption should be clear enough for a reader to be able to interpret a figure) . It seems that those differences are checked for each vegetation type to denote significant differences only between 2010 and 2018. Have differences between vegetation types and the effect of year of study (i.e. year x vegetation interactions) been checked?. Author refers to differences between plant diversity of grasslands and Betula forests, but if those are significant or not don’t show always coherent in the figures. More detail is needed in the discussion making sense of the main findings in the study in a more concrete way. On another note, the word “might” is excessively used in the discussion “as a possibility” in the interpretation of the results, and thus, this section does not show much of a solid interpretation of the results themselves.  Specific comments can be found in the pdf attached.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attached file as replies to the comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The author have included graphs now that help to follow better the content of the manuscript. However, there are suggestions in the first review (i.e. those that required a bigger effort from the author to make the manuscript scientifically sound) that have been ignored and not even argüed in this second round of review. You can easily see those comparing the two versions and in some of the comments that I added to the new revised version.

Table with lists of species in supplemental material was not corrected as I pointed out because there are species presented that have no data.

Please see some comments added in the enclosed pdf.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 3

Reviewer 3 Report

I still believe that discussion could have been enriched with some relevant interpretation of the data, but I understand that is how the author consider the best it can be, and therefore I consider this manuscript acceptable based in the effort of the survey and interest of the data.