Transgenerational Induction of Resistance to Phytophthora cinnamomi in Holm Oak
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
I have no suggestions to improve your article on transgenerational induction of disease resistance in Quercus ilex. The editing of the article is excellent. You lay out a solid argument for induced resistance in the progeny of diseased trees going beyond acorn provisioning through thoughtful experimentation and careful analyses of results. With the exception of one grammatical error in line 280 on page 9 in the Discussion, I could find no instances of any necessary changes. Since the message in this sentence is of such importance, you might want to alter the sentence to make it perfectly clear.
This is an interesting article concerning transgenerational induction of disease resistance in Quercus ilex to the notorious tree pathogen Phytophthora cinnamomi. The topic of the paper is a fairly new concept, and should be of great interest to the community of forest pathologists and ecologists. Proving that the increased survivability of seedlings derived from diseased mother trees was due to some factor other than acorn provisioning was not easy. However, the experimental design and careful data analyses were sufficient, in my opinion, to support the conclusions of the authors. I found only one minor editorial suggestion on line 280 on page 9 of the Discussion. As I said to the authors, I have no suggestions to improve on the article. Being able to review the description of a novel, well designed study was a rare treat!
Author Response
Thank you so much for your kind comments.
As suggested, we corrected the grammatical error in line 280 on page 9 in the Discussion.
Yours sincerely, alejandro
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript is a useful and interesting addition to the limited literature on transgenerational induction of resistance in trees. Overall, the, the manuscript is well written and the sections contain appropriate content. Data analysis and interpretation is mostly robust. There are some aspects of the English that require revisions, but that is beyond the scope of the reviewers tasks, A native English speaker needs to read it critically (although it is almost all easily comprehensible already, it needs some finesse). There are a few comments for the authors to consider:
L56-7 What global change? Climate?
L75 Common garden experiment. Not appropriate terminology for scientific writing. Just call it an experiment, or field experiment, or container experiment.
L81-2 Woodlands and Forests can be synonymous unless defined as different previously. Delete one. Also, probably best to stick to one term throughout for consistency.
L101 Photoperiod?
L103 Substitute ‘such as’ with ‘including’.
L106 Not weighted, weighed.
L120 Manufacturer of the multivitamin juice broth?
L121 Deminearlised water is usually called deionized water.
L125 Replace about with approximately.
L126 Rewrite as “…plant containers were allowed to drain normally, but were flooded…” How long were they flooded for on this occasion?
L131 There is a botanical term for “aerial part”. Use it.
L138 Need a reference for PARPH-V8 selective medium.
L139. How long were plates incubated for?
L140 Describe how the P. cinnamomi species was identified as that inoculated. Morphology? DNA sequence?
L145 How was the fit of the LMM assessed? Was REML used, or ML?
L174 Presumable Tukey HSD tests were at alpha = 0.05?
L185 Use term seedling instead of plants. Best to use it throughout as it implicitly indicates young trees – plants is too generic in this case. Also instead of offspring use seedlings throughout for consistent use of terminology. It is important for the reader to follow easily what is being described.
L197 Should be covariance not covariation (same in Table 3).
L200 On average,…..
L280 Delete gives.
L292 Seedling were only grown for 28 weeks? April 2012? What about survival beyond this time? Might smaller seedlings succumb later. It seems that the authors are making a huge assumption here about long-term survival in the presence of Pc. This is acknowledged in the conclusion but really ought to be discussed too.
L302 Why is it ignored? Nothing should be ignored – it should be discussed or argued in some way, but certainly not ignored.
L313 It would be useful to know more about the breeding nature of Q. ilex. Is it open pollinated? How might the breeding traits affect maternal inheritance, if at all?
L333 There are 79 references. That is excessive for a relatively straightforward research article of this type. The authors should be able to reduce these to 50 at the very most.
Author Response
Thank you for your comments. As suggested by the reviewer, the whole manuscript has been sent to a native UK professional for English editing. We hope the text it is now more clear and readable.
L56-7 What global change? Climate?
Corrected
L75 Common garden experiment. Not appropriate terminology for scientific writing. Just call it an experiment, or field experiment, or container experiment.
Corrected
L81-2 Woodlands and Forests can be synonymous unless defined as different previously. Delete one. Also, probably best to stick to one term throughout for consistency.
Corrected.
L101 Photoperiod?
It was dark all the time, 24 h, this info is now provided.
L103 Substitute ‘such as’ with ‘including’.
Corrected.
L106 Not weighted, weighed.
Corrected.
L120 Manufacturer of the multivitamin juice broth?
Provided.
L121 Deminearlised water is usually called deionized water.
Thank you, replaced
L125 Replace about with approximately.
Done.
L126 Rewrite as “…plant containers were allowed to drain normally, but were flooded…” How long were they flooded for on this occasion?
Corrected.
L131 There is a botanical term for “aerial part”. Use it.
Yes, thank you, done.
L138 Need a reference for PARPH-V8 selective medium.
Done.
L139. How long were plates incubated for?
Provided.
L140 Describe how the P. cinnamomi species was identified as that inoculated. Morphology? DNA sequence?
Morphology. It is now ndicated.
L145 How was the fit of the LMM assessed? Was REML used, or ML?
We ignore this, and the program does not privide this info. We gess it is REML, but we prefer not to fall into a mistake. We feel this is not relevant, no article provides this info.
L174 Presumable Tukey HSD tests were at alpha = 0.05?
Yes, thank you.
L185 Use term seedling instead of plants. Best to use it throughout as it implicitly indicates young trees – plants is too generic in this case. Also instead of offspring use seedlings throughout for consistent use of terminology. It is important for the reader to follow easily what is being described.
Done.
L197 Should be covariance not covariation (same in Table 3).
Right. Thank you.
L200 On average,…..
Thank you. Done.
L280 Delete gives.
Corrected.
L292 Seedling were only grown for 28 weeks? April 2012? What about survival beyond this time? Might smaller seedlings succumb later. It seems that the authors are making a huge assumption here about long-term survival in the presence of Pc. This is acknowledged in the conclusion but really ought to be discussed too.
This is a fact. We did not carry our research with older plants, in consequece we ignore what will happen. This is acknowleged. Any further discussion will fall into speculation.
L302 Why is it ignored? Nothing should be ignored – it should be discussed or argued in some way, but certainly not ignored.
We corrected this. We meant it was not known why this happened.
L313 It would be useful to know more about the breeding nature of Q. ilex. Is it open pollinated? How might the breeding traits affect maternal inheritance, if at all?
Yes, it is open pollinated. We ignore how might breeding traits affect maternal inheritance. It is a good idea when desinging our next expeeriment!
L333 There are 79 references. That is excessive for a relatively straightforward research article of this type. The authors should be able to reduce these to 50 at the very most.
Forests does not have a limit for references, and this is one of our main reasons to publish here. The more the citations the more info is available for the reader. Since other authors use more than 80 citations per article, we prefer not to change this.
Yours sicererly, Alejandro
Reviewer 3 Report
I appreciate the care and attention that has been paid to the writing of this article and have relatively minor suggestions regarding the text.
63- delete "the" before "holm"
74 - hypothesize
81 - woodland (delete plural s)
106- replace weighted with weighed.
There are several instances where the authors use language such as "approximately" or "about" that are, in my view, inappropriate. I would appreciate clarification of these items. Was there some variation in methodology? Please account for any variation in approach, or indicate why, for instance, the amount of inoculum would not be identical.
101 - Approximately
125 - About
127 - 4-5 weeks
Another note is that the discussion mentions the existence of different morphotypes of Q. ilex. (Lines 260-267). Was the morphotype of acorns collected in this study uniform? If not, did morphotype have any influence on survivorship?
Overall, this was a very interesting article, and presents findings which present the potential for application in management and preservation of the subject species. I concur with the authors that it would be interesting and valuable to investigate this topic from clonal stock, as well as using different isolates of the pathogen.
Author Response
Thank you so much for your comments. We sent the manuscritp for English correction.
I appreciate the care and attention that has been paid to the writing of this article and have relatively minor suggestions regarding the text.
63- delete "the" before "holm"
74 - hypothesize
81 - woodland (delete plural s)
106- replace weighted with weighed.
All four suggestions done, thank you
There are several instances where the authors use language such as "approximately" or "about" that are, in my view, inappropriate. I would appreciate clarification of these items. Was there some variation in methodology? Please account for any variation in approach, or indicate why, for instance, the amount of inoculum would not be identical.
101 - Approximately
125 - About
127 - 4-5 weeks
This has been corrected. We were more precise now.
Another note is that the discussion mentions the existence of different morphotypes of Q. ilex. (Lines 260-267). Was the morphotype of acorns collected in this study uniform? If not, did morphotype have any influence on survivorship?
Interesting point. Yes, the morphotype of acorns collected in this study were uniform (ie rotundifolia), and this is now indicated.
Overall, this was a very interesting article, and presents findings which present the potential for application in management and preservation of the subject species. I concur with the authors that it would be interesting and valuable to investigate this topic from clonal stock, as well as using different isolates of the pathogen.
Thank you again.
Yours sincerely, Alejandro
