The Distributional Range Changes of European Heterobasidion Under Future Climate Change

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article looks very interesting. I have some minor queries which authors need to incorporate in the finalized manuscript before proceeding. There are a lot of grammatical problems that persists throughout the manuscript. The manuscript needs to be checked for Grammer and mistakes.

Abstract section does not give proper information. The statements look confusing e.g., Heterobasidion is one of the most threatening forest pathogens in coniferous forests of the Northern Hemisphere, capable of infecting 27 species of coniferous trees and causing large-scale forest mortality. It seems wrong to put “is” with the word “Pathogens. The introductory part needs to be rephrased. Also, highlight essentialities and future perspectives of the study.

The introductory section is certainly very long. It is better to make it precise and crispy.

Study limitations

Authors needs to mention as how these limitations affect the study and how can they be addressed.

Conclusion

Please update your conclusion in the light of recent reports from different studies.

Future perspectives

Please add a section to the manuscript.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Minor corrections required.

Author Response

 Please see the attachment. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The study shows the impact of climate change mainly on temperature and precipitation

The influence distribution range of Heterobasidion is based on modelling prediction method. In my opinion, this study is a good study as a baseline study of the impact of climate change on the pathogen and I believe this study can be referred by other researcher to study the impact of climate change for other region and not only for pathogen but also diffent organism such as insect pest, invasive species and etc. I really enjoyed reading the manuscript which provided very in-depth input and methods for analysing the impact of climate change on forest pathogens. The study limitation in the discussion is acceptable. Here is my comment on the improvement, good luck and well done.

 

Title: Revise the detail, avoid wording study in the title, and suggest to delete the Study on. “The Distributional Range Changes of European Heterobasidion under Future Climate Change”

 

Abstract:

Please simplify and include this sentence in the abstract as part of the methodology This study employs an optimized MaxEnt model in conjunction with six Global Climate Models (GCMs) to simulate and predict the potentially suitable distributions and changes of three Heterobasidion species in Europe (H. abietinum, H. annosum s.str., and H. parviporum) under current conditions and four future climate scenarios (SSP126, SSP245, SSP370, and SSP585) for the period 2081-2100. The reason for this is when the reader reads the abstract somehow the result pop up except for the SSP585 scenario. And no explanation of SSP585 before the result is difficult to follow.

 

 

Keywords: Please arrange in alphabet order

 

Introduction:

 

The first part of the introduction is well written, next paragraph starting with conifer root and butt rot seems like be not align with title and abstract, the starting part of introduction of conifer root and butt rot is too rough. Please revise this, start with the introduction of Hererobasidion and follow by explaining the conifer root and butt rot. (Line 58). You may start with Heterobasidion  has caused significant economic losses ………..and after this introduction you can explain the local referring to such as conifer root and butt rot.

 

Line 60: northern Africa, please double check this, this is northern Africa or Northern America?

 

Methodology:

Figure 1: Please change the colour of H. abietinum to red, yellow or bright colour, the current colour is difficult to spot. Oc changes the symbol just for H. abietinum to ‘x’ with a bright colour so it make it easy to spot on the map.

 

Results:

Line 218-219, the result explained here for example biol2 contributed significantly to the distribution patterns of all three Heterobasidion species. But known of the results from lines 220 -224 showed any significant results for three Heterobasidion. Please recheck and verify this.

 

Figure 7: Very nice result. Could you include the current scenario and compare it with the predicted four scenarios for three Hererobasidion? If yes this result reflect the study and explains the current situation and prediction.

 

Discussion:

Line  351-361 moves to the result section. These seem to be more to result elaboration instead of discussion and this is one of the important results as shown in abstract the distribution depending on the changes of the temperature.

 

Conclusion:

Line 452: rainfall change to precipitation

 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper presents predicted/ potential changes in Heterobasidion distribution across Europe via ecological niche modelling. This is an interesting area given the impact that this pathogen could have on Forestry. The analysis appears robust but the description of the data, it's presentation, interpretation of results and discussion are not adequately delivered to showcase the findings and the very interesting work that has been done that could potentially be used to help the management of this pathogen.

Key areas to address:

- aims and objective of the paper could be clear/ have more emphasis

- impact of Heterobasidion in general is not described in the intro

- results section should be improved to explain what work was performed and why

- Discussion is difficult to interpret what are novel findings and what is evidence from previous studies

- key/ main findings and their significance to forestry/ epidemiology of the pathogens not adequately described

-climate scenarios not defined 

-structure is often awkward and certain parts should be relocated to other areas of the paper

There is merit in this paper but a lot of work needs to be done to justify publication. I have added below my more detailed comments.

General Comments

Key results and their implications of the paper are not well defined or clearly presented

The novelty of the paper and this analysis is not well presented and defined in results or discussion sections. Not always clear what statements are referring to the current study or evidence from previous studies. This should be addressed to highlight the interest in the paper.

Define the scenarios somewhere please? Without this information it is impossible to understand the significance of the different scenarios, please add why these particular scenarios were used and why they are interesting for Heterobasidion in particular.

Is 45 occurrence records for H. abietinum really enough to infer ecological niches and inform climate model? Are you conifdent that that sampling rate gives a good representation of that species. Please discuss in discussion and justify. This could explain why one factor accounts for 0.9096 of the model variation?

Generally a good job describing the models and the significant factors but some gaps or inconsistencies could be improved to help understand the models used, aims and objectives/ function of the model and process/ methods.

I find the materials and methods section and results sections are often overlapping/ not well defined. I.e. some things included in mats and methods for me would be better suited in results. There is a lot of read across necessary between mats and methods and results which I think would be facilitated by making it clear how the initial analysis affected decisions made in the full analysis/ final results.

Figure legends and table titles should all be review to ensure they are describing the figure or table in a way that enabled interpretation of the figure or table in isolation and to help the reader understand the method and aim of the presented data.

Most results paragraphs would benefit from a short sentence reinstating “what was done and why” to aid understanding of the work and its aim

Discussion: not clear which bits are novel findings from this paper and which parts are already established knowledge from previous studies. This requires clarity to really showcase the novelty of the new analysis present in this study throughout the discussion.

The lack of host data incorporation into the model should be addressed further and justification for not using this should be added, this could significantly later the distribution of the pathogen depending on presence or absence of the host in an environment/ region.

 

Abstract

Line 21 – define what this scenario is looking at?

Line22 – can “expansion trend” be elaborated on to be more descriptive?

Line 25-27: This should be expanded on in the discussion/ conclusion

Line 28 – “potential effect” seems like a very vague keyword to include, similar comment but less so for “range changes”. I would pick a new keyword to replace, suggest “Spruce” “ecological niche”

Intro

Line 47 – can remove “population”

Line 58 – Define significant economic losses, are there exact figures or estimates?

Line 58-62 – Suggest including that these diseases are cause by Heterobasidion

Line 68 -72  –  Could do with more information on the differences between species, are there different host ranges/ overlaps, different distribution or geographic locations of the Heterobasidion species. A table or paragraph on this would add depth, or citation to a review?

Line 75-76 – Define large scale

Line 96 – Formatting consistency error “MaxEnt”

Line 109 – Can the climate scenarios be define here or somewhere??

Mats and Meths

Line 115 – formatting “Species” should be “species”

Line128 – Figure 1. Would recommend changing the colour of H. abietinum points to be more accessible for colour-blindness (red – green to be avoided). Not much contrast between the green and blue either

154- 156 – What was the rationale behind choosing 11 variables? Can you add a sentence to explain the process further? Structure wise, this sentence is almost better placed in the results section,  I immediately want to know what variables were chosen but the figure is not until fig 4 of the results section. Can maybe just mention here “a final set of environmental variables was selected for each species based on XXXX” and go into more detail in the results section. It’s tricky as these parts are in between results and mat and meths so might need a bit of a think to help make sure these parts are best placed to help the reader understand the process.

157- 159 – Describe the figure in more detail to help reader understand what is being compared, improve legend so it can be understood in isolation.

158-159 – I count 22 variables and legend says 21, please double check. For me this figure is verging on results, I would move it to the results section and couple it with Figure 4 to help the flow of information.

Line 160 – Improve table title and add more detail

Line 180 – 181 – according to this description a score of 0.6 could be both poor or unacceptable, please define the thresholds with better accuracy, how do you determine whether e.g. a score of 0.8 = good or fair??

Line 182 – Formatting: “MaxEnt”

Line 182 – 183: Define feature combination and regularization multiplier.

Line 187 – Is various combinations of feature types = feature combination? Regularization multipliers = RMs? Use the short hand established if referring to the same factor otherwise it becomes confusion and suggests these are different entities. My background is not in modelling so making the modelling clear helps to understand the aims, results and outcomes

Line 192: Needs a reference to the software

Line 194: special extent globally?

Line 197-199: How were centroid migration paths mapped? Add more technical detail

Line 199 – 200: When will these scenarios be defined or described? I see the list from lines 137-141, but it is not apparent the features of each scenario and key things that make them different. Please add the information here as a table or figure?

Results

Line 204-211: are “feature types” = “feature combinations (FC)”? What do the different letters refer to? Is it possible to define the letters somehow?

Line 215 -216: improve the legend to help interpretation

Line 218 – 232: DO you think it could be better to add the actual environmental factor here rather than just using e.g. bio17. It then requires read across to the bio table to check what the factors actually were. I understand the need to use the shorthand in graphs and figures but in the main text it might be good to include the actual factor if it doesn’t add too much to the word count…? It has been done in the discussion but not here.

Line 227: chose “Maxent” or “MaxEnt” and keep consistent across document

Line 236: improve figure legend to add more detail

Line 238 and 239: improve figure legend

Line 240-258: Add a short sentence at the beginning to make it clear how and why these maps were generated. It is not clear if this is information derived from current distribution maps or generated using modelling. The descriptions here should also be improved to highlight what is the novel information that is being presented. This applies to most of the results section where reinstating the context of the work and why it was done will help the synthesis and understanding of the process and results

Line 244: “the Czech Republic” suggests change to “Czechia” and change throughout document

Line 257 and 258: improve legend,. What is meant by “potential distribution” what methods were used to generate these maps. Can the “other area” label be improved to be more accurate? “unsuitable area” maybe?

Line 260- 279: What are the climate scenarios? Is there a way of summarising the different ones?

Line 290-295: Improve legend to include how maps were generated and better describe what they are showing. Add climate scenarios above to help readability rather than list in legend? Or just remove the list from the legend altogether as graphs are labelled individually already as with Figure 8.

Line 296: Improve legend as above

Lines 302: “four climate scenarios” still haven’t been defined

Line 313: remove “’s”

Line 318: as above “’s” not necessary

Line 319: Which scenarios?

Line 326-328: Legend is better but still could be improved to include information on analysis methods

Line 329-330: Improve legend

Line 335: citation needed

Line 341: make it clear you are referring to your results and highlight which results/ evidence you are using form your study you are using to make this statement

Line 351-357: This is results, please move to results section

Line 358: Improve legend. how were the graphs generated? No description of blue dotted line

Line 370: Still not clear what these climate scenarios are. This needs to be clearly defined somewhere in the manuscript

Line 380: Which previous work? Please add citations and make it clear which evidence form the current study you are referring to

Line 389: Add reference and citation

Line 415 - 416: Citations / references needed

Line 425: 22 environmental factors?

Line 428- 434: Why was this very key factor omitted from this analysis?

Conclusion

Line 436- 442: This should be at the start of the discussion I think

I would argue that most if not all this conclusion should be in the discussion, it is well written and does a good job of summarising the key results of the analysis. The conclusion should focus more on why these results are interesting in the wider aspect and how they might have implications for forestry or dispersal of this pathogen as a whole.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript is greatly improve and I appreciate the extensive notes on my previous comments. I believe this manuscript is now of sufficient quality to be published in this journal and will be a useful reference for management of Heterobasidion in the future. 

General Comments

I didn't have time to fully proof read so please have another read through and proofing before submitting.

Minor point for accuracy on Czechia, link here to understand reasoning. Please change "The Czech" to "Czechia". Sorry for confusion around this point.

What’s in a name? Understanding the Czech Republic vs. Czechia debate – Kafkadesk

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Generally well written, please double check some of the newer sections to ensure the quality of English is of the standard of the previous manuscript 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf