Nitric Acid Rain Increased Bacterial Community Diversity in North Subtropical Forest Soil
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript entitled Nitric acid rain increased bacterial community diversity in north subtropical forest soil is, in my opinion, very interesting and well written. I have no specific comments about it, only small suggestions for corrections:
Figure 2a – At first, this figure was confusing to me, and until I read the text in lines 154-161, I didn't understand it. However, it represents the common and unique OTUs across the 4 sample types. I think it is better expressed in the form of a Venn diagram, which is universally applicable and immediately understandable across a spectrum of readers without having to read the text for it. There are many freely available online tools for creating a Venn diagram, e.g. Venny 2.1 (https://bioinfogp.cnb.csic.es/tools/venny/index.html) or jvenn (http://jvenn.toulouse.inra.fr/app/example.html).
Line 200 – Correct to “Bray-Curtis” distance
Line 202 – Total variance contribution for PC1 and PC2 is 64.96% and not 69.96%. Please, correct it.
Line 222 – Correct this sentence, because the Simpson index was negatively correlated with soil TC but was POSITIVELY correlated with NO3--N.
Figure 4 caption – Remove the text about “**” from the description of the figure, because there is no significance at the p<0.01 level in the figure itself. However, Figure A1 shows it correctly.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Interesting topic for a research paper. The abstract fully reflects the content of the article, it is written in clear and understandable language. Test methods described in sufficient detail, statistical analyzes also explained and described correctly. The entries in the tables are explained in detail.
High-level discussion, citations from recent years, which increases the value of the work.
Please expand the conclusions as well.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx