Soil Microbial Community Responds to Elevation Gradient in an Arid Montane Ecosystem in Northwest China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Good scientific work, performed by modern microbiological methods. A new information about soil microbial community structure along elevation gradient was presented.

The study is aimed at studying the composition of the soil fungal and bacterial communities along the altitudinal gradient in the arid climate zone. The altitudinal gradient was represented by different ecosystems (desert steppe, montane shrub, subalpine coniferous forest and subalpine shrub), for which climatic and edaphic conditions differed significantly. The study of soils in an altitudinal gradient (at a short distance) reflects, to a certain extent, their horizontal distribution for a certain climatic zone.

The study was carried out using molecular biology methods, which make it possible to assess the composition of fungal and bacterial phyla present in the soil, which is, to a certain extent, of methodological value for soil microbiology. The main conclusions of the work are related to the fact that 1) the microbial community is more diverse in the soil of the lower gradient compared to that of the upper one; 2) along the altitudinal gradient, the dominant phyla of fungi and bacteria turned out to be the same; 3) all studied climatic and edaphic factors affect the composition of the soil microbial community; 4) however, plant diversity has a greater influence on the composition of the bacterial, rather than fungal, community.

The results presented in Figure 5 illustrate well the relationship between the composition of the fungal and bacterial community and environmental factors. This is valuable for illustrating experimental material.

At the same time, I would like to note that the presence and abundance of different phyla of fungi and bacteria does not illustrate their activity in nature (for example, mineralizing, catabolic, enzymatic, respiratory), which is associated with certain shortcomings of this kind of research.

See also small remarks in the text (file attached).

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear，Sir

    Thank you for your kind comments for our manuscript to Forests.We appreciate your valuable comments and suggestions to improve it. We wish to replay the following points:1.as you marked in table1, we correct the  statement that The plant diversity H and D were greatest in the montane shrub vegetation type (at 2077 m) and the lowest in the subalpine coniferous forest (at 2485m).

2. You note that our researche of soil microbial community composition did not illustrate the activity in nature. We would do further researche in the next stage to explore the function of soil mcirobe and its relaitonship to enviroment. We add this information in conclusion section.

   We hope our change could meet to your satisfaction.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors, thank you for your work. Please find attached my review report for suggestions on edits and changes for the paper. There are some incongruences between the abstract and the manuscript especially regarding the taxonomy that need to be addressed.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear，Sir

    Thank you for your kind comments for our manuscript to Forests.We appreciate your valuable comments and suggestions to improve it. We wish to replay the following points based on your attachment:

1.As you marked the minor mistake in English, we have correct them through the whole page. The missed infomations about marker gene, the lab name and the manufactures of equipments were provied. 

2.Base on our result about dominant phyla of soil mcirobial community(fungal :Ascomycota, Basidiomycota, and Mortierellomycota and bacterial phyla:Proteobacteria, Acidobacteria, and Bacteroidetes), the correct name of them were replaced in abstract and conclusion.

3.As you mentioned, the missed introuctary sentence in discussion section was added."Some studies have shown that although the overall composition of microbial communities may differ greatly among different habitats, their dominant groups remain mostly similar in terms of relative abundance".

4. More detail could be found in the reviewed manuscript.

   We hope our change could meet to your satisfaction.

Reviewer 3 Report

Interesting topic for a research paper. The abstract is written correctly. The admission can possibly be extended. Test methods described in sufficient detail, statistical analyzes also explained and described correctly. The research results are presented comprehensively and at a very high level. Please expand the conclusions section, expand the sub-items.

Author Response

Dear, Sir

    Thank your for your kind comments for our manuscript to Forest. We  appreciate your valuable comments to improve it. As you mentioned, we have expanded the conclusion by stating our major insights and expecting to explore soil microbial activity in further research. More details could be found in reviewed manuscript.

   We hope our changes in manuscript could meet to your satisfaction.