Effects of Topography on Radial Growth of Tree Species with Different Mycorrhizal Types
, Songyan Tian 2,3 and Yankun Liu 2,3,*
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 4)
My comments have been addressed.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 5)
The authors improved the manuscript. The English still needs to be improved. Some small notes, mainly grammatical, are in the attachment.
But my two main notes remain relevant, although the authors tried to answer them in the covering letter.
1. I still think that correlation is not a good analysis tool for categorical variables (like upper or lower slope). It is much better to use, e.g., ANOVA. All correlations in Fig.7 are very low, <0.1, but ANOVA could show significant differences between, e.g., upper and lower slope.
2. The effect of namely mycorrhizal type (not occasional combination of species) on tree growth is not well confirmed. For this I strongly recommend to use more advanced statistical tools, e.g. cluster analysis or principle components.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 5)
Let it be like this
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
In this study, the authors analyzed the mycorrhizal type data, DBH data and topographic data of 59 species in a 25 hm2 temperate forest dynamic sample plot in Muling, China, to explore whether different topographic conditions will affect tree growth on a regional scale. This manuscript is well organized and the drawn conclusions are coherent with the obtained results. However, references should be updated to include more recent studies. The manuscript must be revised by a Native English Speaker, there are several grammatical errors.
Lines 9 – 22: To add the aims of the study and to replace the “;” with the “.”
Line 13: After the “:” the word must start with a lowercase letter
Line 23: The keywords should be alphabetically arranged
Lines 26 – 27: I think that you should add these more recent references to support your sentence “The dominant factor in the distribution of plant species, life forms or vegetation types on a regional to global scale is the zonal climate conditions”. I would like to suggest:
Di Pasquale, G., et al. (2020). Coastal pine-oak glacial refugia in the Mediterranean basin: A biogeographic approach based on charcoal analysis and spatial modelling. Forests, 11(6), 673.
Jiang, W., et al. (2022). Drone-based investigation of natural restoration of vegetation in the water level fluctuation zone of cascade reservoirs in Jinsha River. Scientific Reports, 12(1), 1-21.
Line 31: After the dots, the word must start with the first letter in capital letter. Please, check it in all the manuscript.
Lines 61 – 62: I think that you should add these more recent references as an examples to support your sentence “Soil temperature and moisture are the main factors affecting the radial growth of tree species”. I would like to suggest:
Ayaz, M., et al. (2019). Synergistic interactions of phytochemicals with antimicrobial agents: Potential strategy to counteract drug resistance. Chemico-Biological Interactions, 308, 294-303.
Bosso, L., et al. (2015). Depletion of pentachlorophenol contamination in an agricultural soil treated with Byssochlamys nivea, Scopulariopsis brumptii and urban waste compost: A laboratory microcosm study. Water, Air, & Soil Pollution, 226(6), 1-9.
Line 82: To use always only one acronym: EcM or ECM. Please, check it in all the manuscript.
Lines 115 – 124: You should better describe your hypothesis and predictions.
Lines 194 – 196: I think that you should add these more recent references as an examples to support your sentence “The 2013 survey data and the 2018 survey data were compared and analyzed, and the mortality rate, new increase rate and chest size growth rate were collated, and the microtopography data were processed.”. I would like to suggest:
Bosso, L., et al., (2016). Assessing the effectiveness of Byssochlamys nivea and Scopulariopsis brumptii in pentachlorophenol removal and biological control of two Phytophthora species. Fungal biology, 120(4), 645-653.
Markowiak, P., et al.(2019). Probiotic microorganisms detoxify ochratoxin A in both a chicken liver cell line and chickens. Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, 99(9), 4309-4318.
Line 220: In this figure the authors must use colour more differentiated. For example…green, blu, pink, yellow and red
Lines 225: You need to align the pictures.
Line 250: Please, add all the acronyms of the figure in the caption.
Line 374: Please, discuss your results comparing them also with other studies already published in literature. To expand this part of the manuscript.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The essential corrections have highlighted in manuscript.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The manuscript entitled „Effects of topography on radial growth of different mycorrhizal species“ describes relationship between plant composition, radial growth and its distribution and topography, to clarify the survival strategies of plants in different terrains.
In hilly areas, topography is one of the most important factors affecting the vegetation pattern, and also one of the most important environmental gradients providing habitat diversity for plant communities. Mycorrhizal plants are the indicators, participants and promoters of the community succession process. However, there are few studies on the relationship between microtopography and the radial growth of different microbial roots in temperate forests.
One of such investigation was undertaken in this study. Overall, this is an interesting manuscript that presents the findings of a well designed and executed research. Study design and methodology are appropriate for this type or research. Ethical issues do not raise concern.
Some minor remarks:
multipletext editing issues eg.
- line 52 ...attracted much attention.In different forest types...
- line 69 ...the soil.According...
- line 128 ...climate of the north temperate zone at the mid latitude.It is.....
- lines 83-84 Mycorrhizal types have strong biological effects on plant soil feedback. EcM
tree species are common in poor soil conditions (citation needed)
- line 127 ... Heilongjiang Muling Taxus cuspidata National Nature Reserve... Species name should be italic
- line 429. For example, the radial growth rate of Taxus cuspidata... Species name should be italic
- line 458 ...in the north temperate zone in the Taxus cuspidata... Species name should be italic
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
Dear authors, after reviewing your manuscript, I consider that it is not yet of sufficient quality. I propose some suggestions that you should implement in your manuscript to increase its quality:
1.- Abstract: in its current version is merely a description of the results of the article. They should include an introduction and a discussion of the results, as well as specify the meaning of all acronyms used.
2.- Please check the overall style of the manuscript (use of capital letters, clarify all acronyms used at least the first time they are used, check the English, etc.).
3.- An image of the geographical location of the study area must be attached.
4.- Methods: This section should be divided into two sub-sections: area of study and the general procedure (methodology) of the manuscript.
5.- Equations need to be described and explained; in the current version of the manuscript it is difficult to identify their usefulness or meaning.
6.- Tables 2 and 3.- this way of presenting the results makes it difficult for potential readers to understand the manuscript. Authors should find another way to present the results, beyond attaching huge tables of data.
7.- when in the results they talk about the correlation analyses carried out, they do not state the R2 coefficient, nor do they explain the type of regression carried out (parametric or non-parametric). Nor do they attach the corresponding equations. The regression analyses need to be additionally explained in methodology, as a separate subsection focusing only on the statistical analyses (with references).
8.- Fig. 5.- increase font size and resolution, you can barely make out what the figure represents.
9.- Discussion.- In the current version of the manuscript, the discussion is a mere description of the results, supported by some references. Authors should complete this section by outlining the novelties of their manuscript, its implications for the applicability of their study, as well as its limitations.
Kind regards,
Author Response
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Reviewer 5 Report
Generally, the study is incomplete without the stand history, because tree spatial and age distribution can be explained by it. Was it planted (when?) or naturally regenerated after clear cut, or remained unmanaged for longtime (several trees generations) etc.? In lines 141-142 it was stated that “The forest is dominated by Pinus koraiensis, Picea koraiensis and Abies nephrolepi,”. However, according to lines 254-264, Pinus koraiensis counts only 4.85% of the trees and other two species are not mentioned at all. Does it mean that the sample plot is not representative for local forest type? Maybe it is an early succession stage (after clear cut, fire etc.)? The lines 385-387 indirectly indicate it, showing the highest growth of Pinus and Abies.
It must be also noticed if it was any management (thinning, dead wood removal) in the plot, or not, what was the history of the forest –What are the stand parameters (% of each of main species, stocking density, DBH, age, height distributions)?
In the introduction it would be good not only repeat that topography affects vegetation, but also mention briefly the mechanisms of topography effects on vegetation (e.g., decrease of temperature with altitude, higher solar radiation on southern slopes, dependence of soil moisture on the position in relief etc.).
It would be good to show the location of the sample plot on the map (maybe adding it to Fig.1).
The data collection procedure is not fully described (lines 150-153). It is necessary to give the full list of measured parameters. It should be also clearly stated that there were 2 surveys in 2013 and 2018 and changes were obtained as the difference between these surveys (one can guess it from Eq.1, but it must be stated clearly).
Sampling design is not clear. Did you divide the whole 500m x 500m plot into 20m x 20m squares (totally 625 subplots) or you selected some amount of 20m x 20m squares within the plot? What was the unit value for Eq.1 – each 20x20m2 square or each 5x5m square? What was minimum unit area to attributing topography parameters: 20x20 or 5x5? If the minimum unit area was 5x5 then why to mention 20x20 at all?
Are the values in Eq.2-5 calculated per species for the whole plot or per 20x20 subplots and species?
Instead of DBH sum it is more common to use the basal area (S(pDBH2)/4). I also suggest to use the more common term “stand density” instead of “quantity” and express it in trees per ha.
I suggest to replace the term “Important value”, e.g., by “importance value”. Also you should explain, why you used this particular index.
Did you measure dead standing trees in 2013 or you measured only trees died between 2013 and 2018?
Fig.4 is unclear. First, numbers are too small. Then there are no units. E.g., what means -1000 for EcM in Fig.4a – that 1000 trees per 0.25 ha died in 5 years? Et the same time mean DBH of EcM also decreased maximum by 1200 (mm?). Does it mean that old trees died and young trees did not appear (otherwise quantity will increase)? In AM quantity and DBH sum highly decreased and mean DBH increased – does it mean the predominant mortality of young trees?
According to Fig.6, ErM species is growing very locally in one point. So, correlation analysis for it seems to be not relevant. It could be simply the offspring of one tree, which occasionally grew in this place.
The hypothesis that EcM mycorrhiza contributes to survival and AM mycorrhiza contributes to growth, stated in the Introduction, is not discussed in the Results and Discussion.
The correlations on the Fig.7 are unclear. E.g., position is a binary variable (lower slope / upper slope), for such type of variables correlation makes no sense, it is better to use ANOVA; the same for slope aspect.
English must be seriously improved.
Other comments are in the attachment
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Well done!
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
Dear authors, thank for your responses and for improving the quality of your manuscript. One comment, is it possible to change Tables 2 and 3 in some independent subtables accordint, for example, to the microrelief?. It would be a easier way to write your results.
Kind regards,
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 5 Report
The authors gave answers to my notes in the covering letter, but in many cases they were not reflected in the manuscript. In particular, Responses 1 (about stand history), 5-6 (about sampling design; in particular, it is not clear if 20x20m2 plots were used anyway in statistics or all the data collection and processing was done at the level of 5x5 plots), 8 (importance value), 9.
Point 10 (about Fig. 4) was not addressed enough. (1) Please write the units of x-axes. (2) The changes of variables on Fig. 4 are resulting from 3 processes: growth, mortality and regeneration. E.g., quantity can change I think it should be discussed in the text. E.g., mean DBH can change because of the growth and because of the mortality in a particular DBH classes, sum of DBH change because of growth, because of appearance of new trees and because of mortality etc. I think for the topic of the paper it is more interesting to follow these processes separately and not only their results. At least you should discuss their interaction in the text. (3) I also think that quantity and sum of DBH should be shown normalized by the areas of corresponding microtopography sites.
Point 13 was not addressed. What means the correlation for slope position having only 2 values: upper and lower? How did you calculate correlation with aspect (taking into account that 0o = 360o)? Or you took it as deviation from south, what can be more reasonable?
Concerning point 12, it is, I think the key question. In fact, primarily you showed in your study the spatial variation of different individual species, which can be determined in particular (but not only) by topography. Each species has its own ecological niche in terms of light, moisture and nutrients (assuming other factors, as temperature, not changing considerably within the study plot), which, in their turn, are partially affected by topography. So, the result shows first of all the requirements to environment of INDIVIDUAL SPECIES. The correlations on Fig. 7 are indeed very low. So, if you somehow classify the species, e.g., into coniferous and broadleaved or evergreen and deciduous) you can get occasionally comparable correlations. If you want to show that namely classification according to mycorrhiza types matters, you must state the direction and mechanism of mycorrhiza effect (e.g., that EcM mycorrhiza contributes to survival and AM mycorrhiza contributes to growth) and show that your data confirm this particular hypothesis. Otherwise to show that “different mycorrhizal tree species have different responses to different microtopography habitats” makes no much sense – the same way you may find it for any other classification. I recommend you at least to do cluster-analysis of species and compare it with mycorrhiza types. For future I strongly recommend you also to measure soil properties (humidity, nutrients) and compare them to microtopography.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
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