How Do Nematode Communities and Soil Properties Interact in Riparian Areas of Caatinga Under Native Vegetation and Agricultural Use?

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Title : Nematode communities and soil properties in riparian areas of caatinga: an outline of soil under native vegetation and agricultural use

 

I considered the paper to be original and engaging, thus, I endorse its publication in the journal following a minor revision. My detailed observations and recommendations are outlined below.

 

Specific recommendations :

-lines 2-4: Could you please change the title to the interrogative form; it will be more attractive for the readers.

-Line 43: Please add ‘Nematode’ to the keywords.

-Lines 108-115: Please add the economic value of the study area (some values, if any).

-lines 163-164: ‘This is based on the consideration that, on average, organic matter accounts for 58% of total organic carbon’: add a reference to support this assumption.

-Line 250: Did the authors check for homogeneity of variances? If yes, which test?

-Line 252: Did the authors check for multiple comparisons? If yes, which test?

-Line 264: ‘n’ in NMDS must be in small letters.

-lines 265-266: why ‘Sørensen–Dice distance’ and not ‘Bray-Curtis’? Please add a reference to support this.

-Line 328: give the order number and name also, please.

-lines 343-344: ‘Only bacterivores and omnivores did not show significant differences between the study conditions (p < 0.05)’: significant or not!! The probability is less than 0.05! if it is a mistake, please give the exact probability value.

Table 3: Why are standard deviations frequently higher than the average values?

Fig. 2: Enlarge the figure to better see the data. Things overlap.

Please avoid using ‘our’. Consider instead the passive voice.

-References: check it again; there are some mistakes (journal name in full and not in abbreviation, commas, …).

Author Response

Reviewer 1

 

Title : Nematode communities and soil properties in riparian areas of caatinga: an outline of soil under native vegetation and agricultural use

 

New Title: How do nematode communities and soil properties interact in riparian areas of caatinga under native vegetation and agricultural use?

I considered the paper to be original and engaging, thus, I endorse its publication in the journal following a minor revision. My detailed observations and recommendations are outlined below.

 Specific recommendations:

-lines 2-4: Could you please change the title to the interrogative form; it will be more attractive for the readers.

Answer: How do nematode communities and soil properties interact in riparian areas of caatinga under native vegetation and agricultural use?

 

-Line 43: Please add ‘Nematode’ to the keywords.

Answer: We have implemented the requested change.

 

-Lines 108-115: Please add the economic value of the study area (some values, if any). The economic value of the areas has not been determined to date.

Answer: The economic values of the studied áreas has not been determined to date.

 

-lines 163-164: ‘This is based on the consideration that, on average, organic matter accounts for 58% of total organic carbon’: add a reference to support this assumption.

Answer: Thank you for the suggestion. We have included a reference to support the assumption that, on average, organic matter accounts for approximately 58% of total organic carbon. This estimate is commonly used in the literature, as indicated by Nelson & Sommers (1996) in the chapter on methods for analyzing organic carbon in soils.

 

-Line 250: Did the authors check for homogeneity of variances? If yes, which test?

Answer: We appreciate the reviewer’s observation. The homogeneity of variances was not explicitly tested in the initial analysis. However, based on the descriptive statistics and normality tests (Kolmogorov–Smirnov), we applied data transformations to reduce variance and ensure robustness of the analysis. We acknowledge the importance of testing variance homogeneity and will consider including Levene’s test or similar in a future revision, if required.

 

-Line 252: Did the authors check for multiple comparisons? If yes, which test?

Answer: No multiple comparison test was performed. It was not necessary.

 

-Line 264: ‘n’ in NMDS must be in small letters.

Answer: We have implemented the requested change.

 

-lines 265-266: why ‘Sørensen–Dice distance’ and not ‘Bray-Curtis’? Please add a reference to support this.

Answer: The requested change has been implemented and addressed in the text.

We used Sørensen–Dice distance because it analyzes the presence or absence of species in the areas, instead of Bray-Curtis distance which analyzes the abundance of species.

 

-Line 328: give the order number and name also, please.

Answer: We have implemented the requested change.

 We added the table number (Table 3) at the end of the sentence, which contains all the names of the nematode taxa.

 

-lines 343-344: ‘Only bacterivores and omnivores did not show significant differences between the study conditions (p < 0.05)’: significant or not!! The probability is less than 0.05! if it is a mistake, please give the exact probability value.

Answer: We corrected de p-valor.

 

Table 3: Why are standard deviations frequently higher than the average values?

Answer: The distribution and multiplication of nematodes occurs for different and diverse reasons, including feeding, relationships with environmental variables and soil management. Therefore, there is a possibility of having a huge variation in the population in a small space. Thus, when performing descriptive analysis, to understand the behavior of nematodes, and observing that there is no normality, we perform data transformation to reduce the variation that may or may not continue with high values.

 

Fig. 2: Enlarge the figure to better see the data. Things overlap.

Answer: We have implemented the requested change.

 

Please avoid using ‘our’. Consider instead the passive voice.

 

-References: check it again; there are some mistakes (journal name in full and not in abbreviation, commas, …).

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

See attached file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

We sincerely thank the reviewers for their thorough and constructive comments on our manuscript titled “Nematode communities and soil properties in riparian areas of Caatinga: an outline of soil under native vegetation and agricultural use.” We appreciate the time and effort invested in providing detailed feedback, which greatly contributed to improving the quality and clarity of our work.

We have carefully considered all suggestions and have addressed each point raised. All requested revisions, including the reformatting of the title, addition of keywords, clarification of statistical methods, corrections in figures and tables, and improvements in language and formatting, have been implemented accordingly. Additionally, we have moved some tables and figures to the Supplementary Material as recommended to streamline the manuscript.

We believe these changes have strengthened the manuscript, and we are grateful for the opportunity to submit a revised version. Thank you again for your valuable input and support.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx