Variations in the Diversity and Biomass of Soil Bacteria and Fungi under Different Fire Disturbances in the Taiga Forests of Northeastern China
, Yongzhi Liu 2 and Libin Yang 1,*
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript entitled "Trends in Species Diversity and Biomass of Bacterial Taxon in The Taiga Forests Fire Sites were Consistent with the Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis" is interesting and has the potential to interest readers. The issues presented in this manuscript are consistent with the topics of the "Forests". The "Introduction" chapter provides sufficient background and relevant references, and the study design is appropriate. Also, the results have been well described, and the conclusions correspond to the research goal set by the authors.
The manuscript requires some of the improvements before publication in the Journal "Forests".
1. Please provide more information on the determination of soil microbial carbon (MBC), soil moisture content (MC), soil organic carbon (SOC) and total nitrogen (TN), soil quick-acting phosphorus (SAP), total nitrogen (TN) and soil alkaline nitrogen (AN) in subsection "2.4. Detection of soil physicochemical properties".
2. All abbreviations that are given in the tables are explained in chapter "2. Materials and Methods", but for the sake of clarity of the manuscript, it would be good to explain these abbreviations also below the tables.
3. In the Conclusion section, write one or two sentences about the limitations of this manuscript.
4. Please, be sure that all the references cited in the manuscript are also included in the reference list and vice versa with matching spellings and dates.
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Reviewer 2 Report
The authors refer to the Intermediate disturbance hypothesis in their research, but it is not emphasized much in the discussed research (even though the authors introduce the reader to the issue already in the title of the manuscript). It would be worth referring to this hypothesis in more detail in the Conclusion. The reviewed work is interesting and provides additional knowledge about the formation of microbial communities in areas after fires. Instead of intense/intensity fire, I suggest using the term sever/severity fire.
Line 80: is ….Tt…- please explain the abbreviation
Line 151: in the description of the formulas it is "N is the total number of characteristic fatty acids, and Ni is the proportion of the ith fatty acid to the total number of characteristic fatty acids.", while there is no Ni in the formulas - please explain
Line 178: in the title of table 3, please provide explanations of the abbreviations CK, 00L, 00M, 00H, 10L, 10M, 10H. The same for table 4-line 188, figure 2-line 196, figure 3-line 212, figure 4-line 237.
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Reviewer 3 Report
Comments:
Line 27 Please add name the following abbreviation, Ba G+, G- because these are the first appearance
Line 118 Use correctly the number at in the chemical formula. (“NaHCO3”!) NaHCO3
Line 133 I recommend a new formula:
CFA = [Target Response/(19:0)Response]×(19:0)Concentration×[Dissolved sample volume/Sample dry weight×MFA]
Because you use the molar mass of the fatty acid (MFA) and not the fatty acid methyl ester
Line 137 delete “methyl ester” words
line 145 “Shannon-Wiener (H): H = ∑(Pi)(lnPi)” The “i” must be in the subscript (Pi)
line 146 “Simpson (D): D = 1-ΣPi2” The “i” must in the subscript and the “2” is superscript (Pi2)
Line 149 The “i” must be in the subscript (Pi)
line 151 „the ith fatty” please correct it
Comments for Tables:
Line 140. Table 2 Space characters are missing between some fatty acids.
Line 178 Table 3 The columns of the table are not properly set. Some number with a letter is not in one row
Line 197 Adonis and MRPP are not well described. I recommend to delete the Line 197-209 section
Please carefully check the whole document.
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Reviewer 4 Report
The article entitled “Trends in Species Diversity and Biomass of Bacterial Taxon in The Taiga Forests Fire Sites were Consistent with the Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis” is devoted to current topics and deserves publication in the journal “Forests”. However, there are several comments that interfere with the perception of the article.
The title of the article should be adjusted. Now the name looks like one of the conclusions or one of the tasks.
In Figure 1, the title on the lower left side of the figure should be reduced.
line 133: The formula should be made more compact, and a breakdown of its abbreviations should be given below the formula.
Formulas on lines 145 146, 147, 148 should be numbered and mentioned in the text.
The article can be adopted after the above-mentioned comments are eliminated.
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