Environmental Drivers of Landscape Fragmentation Influence Intraspecific Leaf Traits in Forest Ecosystem
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)
The suggestions were attended. The manuscript has been significantly improved and now warrants publication in forests.
Author Response
Thanks for your suggestions.
Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)
This work mainly explored the influences of tree size and landscape heterogeneity on the leaf functional traits (including SLA, LA, LDMC and Lth). The authors used 28 sampling plots of Robinia pseudoacacia stands, and analyzed the influences based on the linear mixed models. In general, this manuscript was written well, and the study topic is interesting. I did not see large flaws from this manuscript. I suggest accepting it after minor revisions. My line-specific comments were listed below.
Line 13: Delete “between”.
Line 16: Were the 135 individual trees randomly sampled from the all samples or the all the sample? I think, it should be in total.
Line 67: I think that related to the landscape composition heterogeneity, a continuous Shannon-Wiener index is worthwhile to be cited:
Shi, P., Quinn, B.K., Chen, L., Gao, J., Schrader, J. (2023) Quantifying α-diversity as a continuous function of location − A case study of a temperate forest. Journal of Forestry Research, in press. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11676-023-01642-1
Line 75: About the relationship between plant functional traits especially leaf functional traits and environments, I think, the following two references deserve being cited:
Huang, L., Ratkowsky, D.A., Hui, C., Gielis, J., Lian, M., Yao, W., Li, Q., Zhang, L., Shi, P. (2023) Inequality Measure of Leaf Area Distribution for a Drought-Tolerant Landscape Plant. Plants, 12, in press.
Lian, M., Shi, P., Zhang, L., Yao, W., Gielis, J., Niklas, K.J. (2023) A generalized performance equation and its application in measuring the Gini index of leaf size inequality. Trees – Structure and Function, in press. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00468-023-02448-8
Line 79: The following references can be considered to cite:
Guo, X., Shi, P., Niinemets, Ü., Hölscher, D., Wang, R., Liu, M., Li, Y., Dong, L., Niklas, K.J. 2021. “Diminishing returns” for leaves of five age-groups of Phyllostachys edulis culms. American Journal of Botany, 108: 1662−1672.
Jiao, Y., Niklas, K.J., Wang, L., Yu, K., Li, Y., Shi, P. 2022. Influence of leaf age on the scaling relationships of lamina mass vs. area. Frontiers in Plant Science, 13: 860206.
Huang, W., Reddy, G.V.P., Li, Y., Larsen, J.B., Shi, P. 2020. Increase in absolute leaf water content tends to keep pace with that of leaf dry mass—Evidence from bamboo plants. Symmetry, 12: 1345.
Shi, P., Li, Y., Hui, C., Ratkowsky, D.A., Yu, X., Niinemets, U. 2020. Does the law of diminishing returns in leaf scaling apply to vines? – Evidence from 12 species of climbing plants. Global Ecology and Conservation, 21: e00830.
Yan, D., Jiao, Y., Shi, P. (2023) Can lamina fresh mass be used to represent lamina dry mass? Evidence from Photinia serratifolia. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 11, 1208039. https:// doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2023.1208039
Line 83: The following references can be considered:
Huang, W., Reddy, G.V.P., Li, Y., Larsen, J.B., Shi, P. 2020. Increase in absolute leaf water content tends to keep pace with that of leaf dry mass—Evidence from bamboo plants. Symmetry, 12: 1345.
Lines 105 & 106: Please provide the data source for calculating these measures of leaves, and the sample size.
Between lines 193 & 194: In general, there is a relationship between DBH and tree height. Do you consider only using one to replace two? If I did the analysis, I would like to use the generalized additive mixed model to replace the linear mixed model so that the nonlinear effects of DBH and height may be reflected. Of course, here I did not request the authors to do what I had thought of. I just remind the authors of think more in future studies.
Line 196: Please provide the ‘car’ package version number and the authors of this package. You can type citation(“car”) in your R Console to find these information. Please add the corresponding information of version numbers and authors for other R packages used in this manuscript. I know many Chinese investigators usually neglect this kind of citation.
Line 215: You also need to cite R Core Team (202X) when using the R software.
Line 222: In the x-label, “confident” should be changed to “confidence”. The correct expression is the 95% confidence interval.
Lines 225 & 226: p should be italic and there should be two blanks before and after “<”.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
The paper is generally well-written.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
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
The authors need to attend the following suggestions in order to support the the relationship among introduction, objectives, methods, results, discussion, and conclusions:
They need to improve the introduction, literature review, and objectives. They must include more international and national background about the research topic.
Specify with more details the stuty problem and justification (multidimensional).
Precise methodology: How did they define sample size?. They need to support it.
The results must be explanatory in reference to the reality of the potential benefits.
The discussion requires more strong support with others researchers and experiences related to the topic reserach in order to strength the discussion and conclusions, including more international and national references.
They need to discuss more the desired real impacts of this kind of actions with criteria of sustainable development.
It is necessary to include multidimensional strategies proposals to guarantee the aplication of th obtained results in order to contribute to sustainable development.
In addition, they need to discuss what it would happen if the problem is not attended, considering social, ecological, economics, legal and environmental policy impacts.?
What are the strategies proposal in order to promote and advancing toward a real application of the results?? sustainable development as a total system?.
What is the practical use of the obtained results from this study? What is the true contribution to knowledge fontier and the solution of real problems?
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments for the Author:
Review on” Environmental drivers of landscape fragmentation influence intraspecific leaf traits in Loess Plateau forests” provide us with results of habitat fragmentation on black locust. Generally, I think that the topic of the paper is very interesting and brings new original data for this topic. In the entire article, the Latin name of the species is not mentioned even once, which is certainly important for the scientific level. I recommend a minor revision.
Further comments:
Keywords:
Delete keywords that are already in the title. It's a duplication.
Abstract
Line 13: The sentence is very difficult to read.
Materials and Methods:
Line 125: Height? Which or whom?
Line 124 – 126: If author do two sentences will be more transparent sentence.
Line130: Author writes about sample plots. What it is the size of the plots?
Line 131: For plant functional traits (PFT) are standardized protocols of N. Pérez-Harguindeguy et all., 2013 published in Australian Journal of botany. Way author did not use them. Or how did they measure it?
Figure 1: There is a lot of empty space in the image. Is it not possible to enlarge the image and thereby improve visibility? The left picture above, or the area, should be named with at least a few areas so that the reader can orient himself to what he is looking at. We are not all from this area.
Figure 3: The data would be more transparent in the form of a table.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Reviewer 3 Report
Manuscript ID: forests-2511634
Type: Article
Title: Environmental drivers of landscape fragmentation influence intraspecific leaf traits in Loess Plateau forests
Authors: Huifeng Guo , Dantong Duan , Hangyu Lei , Yi Chen , Jiangtao Li , Xiang Li *
The manuscript entitled "Environmental drivers of landscape fragmentation influence intraspecific leaf traits in Loess Plateau forests" has studied the variations in intraspecific leaf traits of black locust individuals from 28 sites to comprehend which functional resource-use strategies were adopted by individuals in response to environmental changes by selecting plant development (DBH and height) and environmental factors (landscape configuration, landscape composition, and landscape heterogeneity) under the influence of fragmentation as predictor variables to investigate their effects on response variables that characterize leaf traits (leaf area (LA), specific leaf area (SLA), leaf dry matter content (LDMC), and leaf thickness (Lth)) on the Loess Plateau.
Statistical analyses have done. Results showed the environmental factors influenced by fragmentation had a more important impact on intraspecific trait variation, compared with plant development and forest type significantly influenced variations in all leaf traits in our study. Also, black locust individuals in fragmented forests adopted a more conservative resource-use strategy, with smaller LA and SLA and larger Lth and LDMC, compared with continuous forests. Authors concluded that by the increase of landscape heterogeneity, SLA became larger and LDMC became smaller.
The subject of the research work is original and has been able to provide a lot of new information in the field of fragmented forests and landscape heterogeneity. The authors were able to answer the research questions due to the review of suitable sources, the study method of the region and the sufficient number of samples, and there is no need for additional items in the method and also other controls. The authors were able to match the research conclusions well with the evidence and arguments presented and address the main question raised. References were well presented and good previous researches were listed, however, some related references proposed that should be mentioned in the manuscript. Tables and figures are well organized and logically consistent with the content of the text.
The study design is robust and the topic fits well to the scope of the journal. The manuscript is generally clearly designed, written and illustrated. The discussion of the manuscript also well written.
Best regards
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript has been sufficiently improved to warrant publication in Forests. I don not have any inconvenient. I don't have any problem. it is accepted by me.
