Evaluation of the Current State of Preservation of Vaccinio uliginosi-Pinetum Kleist 1929 in Eastern Poland

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I am satisfied with this article, which evaluates the growth of forest swamps.

First of all, the picture quality needs to be improved. It's too vague.

Are there any other dominant tree species in this forest, except pine

There is no artificial intervention in the forest. If there is no artificial intervention, it is normal to maintain the natural state.

Has climate change affected forests?

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

This study, while important and interesting, has some room for improvement. My main problem is that it is a total of a number of smaller studies, that are not connected with each other. Especially, the genetic results could be connected with the geographic location of the populations, the age of the investigated plants (regeneration), the density parameters recorded in other parts of the study and many more factors. This is not done statistically and also not mentioned in the discussion.

This is true for other parts of the study as well. What is the connection between age of seedlings and age of adult trees? What is the connection between stand forest structure and regeneration?

I suggest a major revision, before acceptance, where the authors will add a part in the discussion, suggesting more explanations of their results and connecting the different parts of the study together.

Some details:

There are no line numbers in this manuscript, which makes my job more complicated. Please provide line numbers in the revised version.

English should be improved, especially in structure, punctuation and grammar. A native speaker or a specialist could help! 

In the Abstract, genetic analysis is mentioned and genetic results are presented, but there is no information about this analysis. Which species, which population(s), adult trees or regeneration?

What is the origin of the stands? Are they natural or planted? This can make a great deal for explaining the results, especially the genetic ones. Also, what is the management history of these stands? How were they logged (which system)? 

Page 7, first paragraph: The similarity between the mean and effective number of alleles has no connection with equilibrium. It just shows that alleles were evenly distributed in the population, thus higher diversity. So this statement here is wrong. Balance of allele frequencies is independent from equilibrium (HW principle).

In Fig.1 there are no names of populations on the map, just numbers. In Fig. 2, the opposite is true. So, a comparison between geographical and genetic patterns is impossible for the reader using these figures.

In 4.1 (discussion), no comment is presented for the geographical genetic structure of the populations. Osowa populations are more similar to each other because probably gene flow is more effective between them due to their proximity and they are very different from the rest of the populations probably because they are located far away from them and gene flow will be not so effective. 

In Fig.3, the legend refers to 6 K but the graph shows two groups.

 

 

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

This study has a high workload and is a very practical background research study, while the manuscript is not perfect in terms of organization. The main modifications are as follows:

1. The language need further edited by the English native speaker.
2. The Abstract part, he sentences need to be condensed into one paragraph. You need to add a conclusive statement, what are the most important findings from all the experiments you have done.
3. In the background section, some of the presentations are not satisfactory, such as the relationship between global warming and pests and diseases, and whether the three questions you asked are clearly answered in the results section.
4. The study method only performed a simple ANOVA, which is far from sufficient, whether a factor analysis could be performed based on environmental factors with expected heterozygosity and Shannon index.
5. Keywords should be arranged in alphabetical order.
6. At the results section ,”the analysis of variance showed significant differences in terms of these features depending on the location of the test site”, This is misrepresentation and wrong research method, Your observation sampling points should be selected to be representative of the entire region, and your observation points should be regionally representative.
7. The conclusion section needs to be concise, leaving the main findings and recommendations, giving your most important findings and suggestions for practical production guidance.
8. The Figures section, removes the background horizontal line, because there are repeated samples, so the error line should be added to the place.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have made an effort to improve the manuscript and to react upon the comments and suggestions of the reviewers. However, there is still room for improvement in two major issues:

a) English is still a big problem. There are gaps, punctuation mistakes, sentences that lack syntax and make no sense, even silly things like having a number "o.207" instead of "0.207". The authors should have checked the text before submitting it. I again insist that the text should be reviewed by a specialist or a native speaker, before publication.

b) The study is still an aggregation of at least two smaller separate studies that do not connect somehow, in the discussion or the conclusion. Data are presented for the separate parts, but no connections are described or even generally discussed.

Also: A comment I have done about the relation between geographic distance and genetic differentiation was just copy/pasted in the discussion.

And last: The authors replied to my question about the origin of the stands, but did not add this information in the text...

My suggestion is that the manuscript should undergo another revision, probably a minor one. This will improve the readability of the manuscript, I hope.

 

 

 

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

All the errors that were pointed out have been modified, except for the pictures are slightly unattractive.

Author Response

According to the Reviewer's suggestions, the pictures have been improved. We also increased the font and we changed the figures 4b, 5b and 6b.

                                                                                                         Sincerelly