Variations in Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi Communities During Wetland and Forest Succession in Northeast China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

In this paper, the authors studied the changes in arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal communities and their driving factors in eight vegetation succession stages in the Sanjiang Plain of Northeast China: original natural wetland (NW), wetland edge (EW), wetland invaded by shrubs (IW), wetland dominated by shrubs (DW), young birch forest (YB), mature birch forest (MB), poplar-birch mixed forest (PB), and coniferous forest (CF), using Illumina MiSeq sequencing. The study found that significant changes in soil physicochemical properties, especially the different effects of available phosphorus (AP), ammoniacal nitrogen (AN), and organic carbon (SOC), had different effects on AMF communities in wetland and forest ecosystems.

The manuscript is written at a very high level, but there are several questions and comments:

1. Should we pay attention to changes in bacterial communities during wetland succession?

 

2. What tool and packages were used to perform bioinformatics processing of the sequencing data?

3. Line 93 - the abbreviation AMF should be moved up a few lines, where this abbreviation is used for the first time.

4. Line 131 indicates that a sterile shovel was used for sampling, while line 134 indicates that a sterile soil auger was used for sampling. Is this a typo or were samples really collected with two different tools? If so, then an explanation should be given in the text.

5. The text also provided links to additional materials, but there were no additional materials themselves.

Sincerely, Reviewer.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Overall, the work is well-structured, and this contribution should be considered for publication after addressing the following comments.

 

1. Re-write and organize the abstract, The abstract should be clear and concise, providing a brief overview of the study's purpose, methods, and findings.

Canonical Correspondence Analysis (CCA) to relate soil physicochemical properties (include here which properties) with AMF community changes. How confident are you in the robustness of these correlations, communities at different successional stages… (include here different stages). Moreover the key word should more specific if you want to include some like,  Wetland ecosystems, Forest ecosystems, Soil physicochemical properties, Fungal community composition, Succession dynamics, Ecological restoration.

2. Why did you choose these specific eight vegetation types along the forest succession gradient please write in the text.igure 1 must be modified because the digits are small and unclear.

3. In section 2.3 Soil pH was determined by using a pH meter  write about the pH meter and which one is used how was to control the pH.

4. In the section 4 discussion. A suitable soil pH value promotes the growth and expansion of AMF hyphae… what do means by suitable pH I think it better to indicate the pH.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

 

Dear Authors

This manuscript shows the dynamics of AMF communities and their complex driving mechanisms during vegetation succession in the Sanjiang plain. Soil physicochemical analysis, metabarcoding analysis and robust statistical analysis were used to describe the variations in arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi communities during wetland and forest succession. 

 

Here are some comments to improve the details of the manuscript:

 

Figure 1. Add the name of the regions shown and the legends of the colors used.

 

Add the reference of the primers used for amplification and the sequence of the Illlumina Miseq adapters.

 

Add information on the number of sequencing reads obtained from each sample, the final size of the amplification, the Q value selected for working sequences, and the rarefaction curves after filtering.

 

Mention in detail the strategy for using the massive sequencing reads for taxonomic assignment in the MaarjAM database. Justify how the database is large enough to be able to identify all sequencing reads.

 

Please deposit the raw sequencing data in a public repository such as NCBI and share the Bioproject number.

 

Add a PERMANOVA analysis for beta diversity. 

 

Compare in discussion the patterns observed here with forest ecological successions in other regions.

 

Discuss further the relationship that may exist between the plant species in each zone and the AMF families found.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.doc