Global Warming Favors the Development of a Rich and Heterogeneous Mycobiota on Alien Vines in a Boreal City under Continental Climate

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Several paragraphs of the Results chapter are plenty of citations. 

Please avoid the use of citations in the Results chapter as you should only explain your own results in this part of the manuscript. The comparison with other works should be made in the Discussion chapter.

Change the style and move the following paragraphs for the Discussion chapter:

In the Subchapter 3.2:

“Totally, 110 species have been found and identified during 100 years of studying the macrofungi diversity on vines in Ekaterinburg [8] (Table S2). They can be subdivided into the following ecological groups: 87 saprobic species, 5 symbiotic species, and 18 phyto-pathogenic ones. Also, 63 species of microfungi on living leaves and stems were collected [10,14] (Table S3). The dynamics of the species richness of aphyllophoroid fungi is similar to that for the entire macrofungi group (Figure 5B), and the represented by aphyllopho-roid fungi that were collected and identified on vines in the 1920s and all subsequent dec-ades [8].”

“The comparison of the lists of macrofungi found and identified over 100 years [8] indicates that the vines have united into two basic clusters: woody and herbaceous vines (Figure 7).”

“All these species are common native species at the Urals and Siberia [18,19,20,21,22].”

“The record of the cosmopolitan poroid fungus Cerioporus scutellatus (https://www.gbif.org/species/2547190) on Hardy Kiwi is extremely interesting because this species was treated as Arcto-Alpine, associating to deadwood of Alnus fruticosa and A. viridis in Europe, Urals and Siberia [18,23,24].”

In the Subchapter 3.3:

“During 40 years, the largest number of fungal species was found on woody vine spe-cies that cover the largest areas in the city (1970s: r = 0.84, p = 0.0002 vs. 2010s: r = 0.64, p = 0.003) (Figure 10A), and the same pattern was revealed for the woody plants in the boreal part of Russia [39].”

“The largest number of macrofungal species in the history of the research (36–38 species) was recorded on the four above-mentioned species of the vines [8].”

In the Subchapter 3.4:

“Totally 81 species of phytopathogenic fungi were recorded on living vines during the last 100 years [8,10,13,14] (Table S3), including 49 species found on the plants of Cucurbi-taceae and Vitaceae families (Table 1).”

“Many species of phytopathogenic fungi have long been an element of the mycobiota of Ekaterinburg and vicinities [8,10,13,14].”

Author Response

Reply to reviewer # 1.

We are deeply grateful to the reviewer for carefully reading our manuscript.

I agree with all your suggestions for improving the text of the manuscript.

1) We sent the manuscript to a colleague in the US, who checked and corrected the English text of the manuscript.

2) In the "Results" section, links to publications were removed, and part of the text was moved to the "Discussion".

Reviewer 2 Report

Nice job addressing comments

Author Response

Reply to reviewer # 2.

We are deeply grateful to the reviewer for carefully reading our manuscript.

In your text, there is only a proposal for a small correction of the English language. We sent the manuscript to a colleague in the US who corrected the English. We have taken into account all his suggestions in the new version of the manuscript.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have performed a study to establish a list of fungal species which develop on vines in Ekaterinburg city and their evolution along the years 1966, 1972, 1979, 141 1986, 1993, 2001, 2012 and 2020.

My overall opinion is that the paper’s state of the art is updated. Nevertheless, there are shortcomings that need to be addressed before its publication:

GENERAL COMMENTS

Please to correct along the manuscript some different size of letter (i ex lines 237, 601…….).

The Results and Discussion chapters of the manuscript are not accurately planned and structured. In some parts of results there are several paragraphs (plenty of books and internet references) with discussion character, and the opposite with the Discussion chapter with references to figures, the inclusion of figures 11 and 12 and several paragraphs with character of Results. Even some parts of both chapters are quite similar.

Please change the style of both chapters by following the recommendations below or add the 2 chapters in just one: Results and Discussion Chapter..

MATHERIAL AND METHODS

Please complete “2.1. Climate of Ekaterinburg city” subchapter with the evolution of the number of days by year with precipitations (including snow).

Line 142: Was the study only done on just 10 plants ???

To include the full scientific name of fungus and plants the first time were cited in the manuscript, mainly in the whole subchapter 2.3. Fungal sampling

The sampling protocol needs some improvements. Include the dates of fungal sampling and the time of year they were conducted.

RESULTS

Please revise the italics in the fungal/plants names of the captions (i. ex lines 224, 281) in the text and the figures (i. ex Figure 7)

The lines from 307to 347 have a discussion character as are plenty of references. It should be moved to the discussion chapter. The same with lines from 387 to 395.  

To avoid include references in this chapter.

DISCUSSION

References to tables are included in various parts of the discussion chapter (eg, Line 435) and some figures (Figures 11 and 12) were included with paragraphs explaining these figures. Move this part of the manuscript to the Results chapter.

To avoid including Figures in this chapter.

CONCLUSIONS

To delete the first conclusion as it has and introduction chapter.

Please summarize the conclusions more concisely.

Reviewer 2 Report

This was an interesting study describing mycobiota of vine species in a Siberian city. Vines are often an overlooked pathway for invasive pathogens to persist beyond their native range and propagate these pathogens to herbaceous and woody crops. The manuscript is well written, results support hypothesis and conclusions. My only minor suggestion is to include "fungal species" in the y-axis of graphs because both vine species and fungal species are discussed and it could be confusing to readers. Also, throughout the manuscript there are changes in font size, for example lines 237, 259, and 620.