Influence of Water Limitation and Provenance on Reproductive Traits in a Common Garden of Frangula alnus Mill.
, Marc Schouppe, Stefaan Moreels, Yorrick Aguas Guerreiro, Laura Decorte and Marie StessensRound 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This paper explores the important topic of fecundity in terms of adaptation to drought in the context of climate change. The work has been carried out carefully and analysed appropriately. It advances our understanding of adaptation of fecundity to water deficiency. However, I have the following comments which need to be addressed before it can be accepted.
Major comments
1. Why was this species chosen for the study? What ecological conditions does it prefer? What features makes it particularly suitable for this study?
2. Was the trial carried out outdoors?
3. The authors do not comment on what the effect of pruning is likely to be on the results of their experiment. It seems rather an unnatural intervention if the aim is to assess how shrubs respond to drought in natural conditions. How does pruning alter the subsequent root:shoot ratio and could this influence fecundity?
4. Are these the same plants that have been used for previous papers authored by Mijnsbrugge et al. which are quoted in this draft? If so, how much might previous treatments interfere with the results presented in this paper.
5. The plants used are cuttings of the original plants. Are cuttings likely to give identical results to plants grown from seed?
6. It is well known that within population variation in adaptive traits is high. The results are only based on a restricted number of genotypes from three provenances i.e. 8 from Italy, 9 from Belgium and 12 from Sweden. Four cuttings per plant were used for the experiment. Why were cuttings of the same clone used rather than 116 different genotypes? I think the latter would have been more informative. It seems that the conclusions are based on very few genotypes per provenance. Were the seeds from different mother trees per provenance. Some more details of the seed collections and greater justification of the choice of material for testing would be helpful. Also cuttings of the same clone should be called ‘ramets’ rather than ‘clones’.
7. The tables all have a column labelled ‘Estimate’ but it is not clear to me what this means. Could you provide an explanation?
8. I have a list of minor changes that might clarify the text as follows:
i. l27 Replace ‘face’ with ‘context’
ii. l36 Replace with ‘is predicted to become more challenging’
iii. l39 Replace ‘scarcity’ with ‘deficiency’
iv. l43 Replace with ‘help in predicting’
v. l45 Replace with ‘tree and shrub species’
vi. l48 Replace with ‘help in predicting’
vii. l54 Replace with ‘types of experiment’
viii. l54 Replace with ‘are grown’
ix. l58 Replace ‘provenances’ with ‘those’
x. l62 Replace with ’a stronger adaptation to drought’
xi. l66 Replace ‘better’ with ‘faster’
xii. l71 Add ’However, counter to expectation’
xiii. l85 Replace with ‘Nevertheless, reproduction is a key component’
xiv. l89 Replace ‘trees’ with ‘woody species’
xv. l90 Replace with ‘Recent studies demonstrate a lack of consistency in longterm response of seed production to drought
xvi. l118-l129 Suggest this could be tresented as a Table.
xvii. l140 What is a container field?
xviii. L142 and l149 Why wasn’t the trial arranged as blocks with one ramet of each genotype per block?
xix. l161 No reason for why the pots were weighed is provided.
xx. L167 Replace with ‘the progress of bud burst was recorded’
xxi. L204 Replace with ‘the data were modelled’
xxii. L218 Should say ‘for every ramet within a genotype’
xxiii. Figure 4 and 5 have the red and green boxes in a different order, need to be consistent.
xxiv. L363 Replace ‘as’ with ‘and’
xxv. L370 Drought escape should be in inverted commas
xxvi. L370 Replace with ‘which enables plants to complete’
xxvii. L371 Replace ‘assumes’ with ‘involves’
xxviii. L372 Replace ‘progressive’ with ‘accelerated’
xxix. L372 Replace with ‘is often the trigger for drought escape’
xxx. L373 Replace with ‘higher’
xxxi. L374 Replace with ‘water shortage is often the trigger for drought escape’
xxxii. L376 Replace with ‘seems to have activated’
xxxiii. L380 Remove ‘to’ in ‘adapted to’
xxxiv. L381 Replace with ‘may have acted as the trigger to accelerate the completion of’
xxxv. L395 Replace ‘less’ with ‘fewer’
xxxvi. L398 Replace ‘upon’ with ‘to’
xxxvii. L405 Replace ‘as’ with ‘and’
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Frangula alnus is widely distributed in Europe. In this study, water-limited experiments were carried out on three different provenances of F. alnus using homogeneous garden, and the mechanism of drought escape and drought avoidance was confirmed. The three selected provenances have large geographical span and are representative. The control experiment design is reasonable, while the analysis is rigorous and the chart is clear. Moreover, the research conclusion is accurate. It has reference significance for the introduction of F. alnus under climate change.
Some suggestions for modification:
1. Please make a natural distribution map of F. alnus, so that readers can understand its provenance distribution more clearly.
2. Similar charts can be merged, such as Table 1, Table 2 and Table 3 can be merged; figure 4 and Figure 5 can be merged.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
