Review Reports - Soil Springtail Communities Are Resilient to Forest Tent Caterpillar Defoliation in Quebec Mixed Hardwood Forests

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Bonjour,

Veuillez consulter la pièce jointe.

Cordialement,

Essivi Gagnon Koudji

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

I must say that the work carried out seems to me of enormous interest, both for the approach and for the possible results. I think that they will not be very different from those found, despite the suggestions that follow.

A Table seems necessary, even if it is complementary, with the actual specimens (number) obtained in each of the 8 samples per place and per horizon (Litter, 0-5cm, 5-10cm), and significant differences may occur in the Collembola populations. It could happen that by being more abundant in Litter, this could mask relevant results in depth. In addition, in the absence of this table, everything exposed in the paper is an act of faith to the authors, for the reader, since he cannot verify that the data, the percentages, and the conclusions are what they say.

The statistical analyses carried out as in Figure 1 and others should be carried out only with the changes in the springtails of the litter, and repeated with the deep springtails, in this case, joining the two soil horizons, since it has been known for a long time that at more than 5 cm in clayey soils, usually there are not many specimens. This is because two different types of sampling have been carried out, for the litter and for the soil. They are different in sample size and methodology. Extraction also behaves differently if the material is unstructured like litter, or is a compact core.

After these not minor considerations I have found some errors or misprints throughout the text: in the pdf file with corrections