Seasonal Water Level Fluctuation and Concomitant Change of Nutrients Shift Microeukaryotic Communities in a Shallow Lake
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
No further comments, I accept the manuscript in the present form.
Author Response
Thanks for these precious suggestions.
Reviewer 2 Report
Overall, the manuscript is improved by the edits the authors have made. However, some of the edits have introduced grammar and syntax issues. In case it is useful, I will list the ones I came across below. Otherwise, I enjoyed reading the revised manuscript.
Line 23: I think that ‘and’ would work better than ‘while’ at the end of this line.
Line 24-26: As edited, this sentence is not clear.
Line 26: I suggest making ‘network’ at the end of this line plural i.e., networks
Line 29: Replace ‘have’ with ‘are’
Line 117: I think you may have meant expanding not expending.
Line 123-124: I am not sure what is meant here. Is this correct? “which cause some wetlands to be seasonally exposed and submerged all year.”
Line 376: Consider… ‘Moreover, DOC and phosphorus were also related to the hydrological regimes…’
Line 377: Consider replacing ‘contribution’ with ‘contributing’
Line 396: Consider removing the ‘were’ between modules and parsed.
Line 398: Consider replacing ‘even without’ with ‘no’
Line 438: Consider changing ‘will be also’ to ‘will also be’
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 2 Comments
Overall, the manuscript is improved by the edits the authors have made. However, some of the edits have introduced grammar and syntax issues. In case it is useful, I will list the ones I came across below. Otherwise, I enjoyed reading the revised manuscript.
Response: Thanks for these precious suggestions. In this updated version, we revised the grammar and syntax issues based the reviewer’s advice. We hope the article is acceptable for publication in its current version.
Q1: Line 23: I think that ‘and’ would work better than ‘while’ at the end of this line.
Response 1: The‘and’ have instead of ‘while’ at the end of this line (line: 27).
Q2: Line 24-26: As edited, this sentence is not clear.
Response 2: We have revised this sentence in the current version (line: 29-30).
Q3: Line 26: I suggest making ‘network’ at the end of this line plural i.e., networks
Response 3: The ‘networks’ have instead of ‘network’ (line: 31).
Q4: Line 29: Replace ‘have’ with ‘are’
Response 4: We have replaced ‘have’ with ‘are’ (line: 33).
Q5: Line 117: I think you may have meant expanding not expending.
Response 5: We have replaced ‘expending’ with ‘expanding’ (line: 122).
Q6: Line 123-124: I am not sure what is meant here. Is this correct? “which cause some wetlands to be seasonally exposed and submerged all year.”
Response 6: We have revised this sentence in the update manuscript (line: 128-129).
Q7: Line 376: Consider… ‘Moreover, DOC and phosphorus were also related to the hydrological regimes…’
Response 7: We have revised this sentence in the update manuscript (line: 398).
Q8: Line 377: Consider replacing ‘contribution’ with ‘contributing’
Response 8: We have replaced ‘contribution’ with ‘contributing’ at this line (line: 399).
Q9: Line 396: Consider removing the ‘were’ between modules and parsed.
Response 9: We removed the ‘were’ between modules and parsed (line: 418).
Q10: Line 398: Consider replacing ‘even without’ with ‘no’
Response 10: We have replaced ‘even without’ with ‘no’ in the update manuscript (line: 420).
Q11: Line 438: Consider changing ‘will be also’ to ‘will also be’
Response 11: We have changed ‘will be also’ to ‘will also be’ in the update manuscript (line: 449).
Reviewer 3 Report
The paper describes the variation in eukaryotic diversity across a single year through the wet and the dry season. Overall the piece is well written with some errors in English. E.g. Line 136 The filter.....
To improve the manuscript:
1) The abstract is very qualitative, there needs to be some quantitative data provided to make the abstract in its present state, more impactful.
2)The results section needs a basic bar chart to show the taxonomy of the various sites. The meta analysis provided such as the PCOA and chord plots provide a nice visualisation to the data obtained but being able to see the % community analysis would be beneficial to understanding the data. This would also allow for a comparison of the spacial dynamics within the Wet and dry samples. i.e is there a difference between wet sample 6 and wet sample 10 in terms of abundance of the major taxa
3) In addition to the provision of data in the form of bar charts, the relative abundances of each taxa should also be discussed. There is no discussion of the changes in taxa across the two seasons. there is no mention of a single Eukaryotic taxa in the discussion, which are lost (or reduced in the wet/dry season)? Which appear to be the most impacted by the geochemical changes associated with the changing seasons. Needs more quantitative data discussion.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 3 Comments
The paper describes the variation in eukaryotic diversity across a single year through the wet and the dry season. Overall the piece is well written with some errors in English. E.g. Line 136 The filter.....
Response: Thanks for these precious suggestions. In this updated version, we added the bar chart analyses of the relative abundances of each taxa in sampling sites during the dry-season and wet-season, and also analyzed the spatial dynamics of microeukaryotic community within the dry and wet samples (Figure 2). We added the quantitative data of communities in the ABSTRACT section (Line: 21-25). Moreover, we revised the grammar and syntax issues based the reviewer’s advice (E.g. We have changed ‘Filter’ to ‘The filter’ at the Line 141). We hope the article is acceptable for publication in its current version.
Q1: 1) The abstract is very qualitative, there needs to be some quantitative data provided to make the abstract in its present state, more impactful.
Response 1: Thanks for these precious suggestions. In the update manuscript, We added the quantitative data in ABSTRACT section (line: 21-25).
Q2: 2) The results section needs a basic bar chart to show the taxonomy of the various sites. The meta analysis provided such as the PCOA and chord plots provide a nice visualisation to the data obtained but being able to see the % community analysis would be beneficial to understanding the data. This would also allow for a comparison of the spacial dynamics within the Wet and dry samples. i.e is there a difference between wet sample 6 and wet sample 10 in terms of abundance of the major taxa
Response 2: Thanks for these precious suggestions. We added the bar chart analyses of the relative abundances of each taxa in sampling sites during the dry-season and wet-season, and analyzed the spatial dynamics of microeukaryotic community within the dry and wet samples (Figure 2).
Besides of the sample D04, there were no spatial variation of microeukaryotic community structure within the dry-season. In the wet-season, the main microeukaryotic community structure showed spatial variation between the northern part of the lake samples (W01-W04) and the other lake samples (W05-W10) (line: 260-264).
Q3: 3) In addition to the provision of data in the form of bar charts, the relative abundances of each taxa should also be discussed. There is no discussion of the changes in taxa across the two seasons. there is no mention of a single Eukaryotic taxa in the discussion, which are lost (or reduced in the wet/dry season)? Which appear to be the most impacted by the geochemical changes associated with the changing seasons. Needs more quantitative data discussion.
Response 3: Thanks for these precious suggestions. The changes of microeukaryotic community between the two seasons have been analyzed in the RESULT section (line: 246-264). Moreover, we discussed the relative abundances of each taxa, the changes of community structure and single Eukaryotic taxa across the two seasons in the DISCUSS section (line: 358-366).
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
Dear Authors
Overall comments
First of all, the research presented in this manuscript sounds scientifically interesting and it seems like a big effort in order to realize it. I personally congratulate all the efforts and work from the authors. I kindly suggest some specific opportunity areas in order to improve it.
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Line 149-150 |
I recommend to change titles in the graphic ( red and green), also the footnote, it’s a repetition of that you have explained yet. |
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Line 162, 178, 195-226 |
This reference should be in the journal format. Also please add the reference on each statistical analyses also in the correct format. |
Reviewer 2 Report
Overall, the manuscript “Seasonal water level fluctuation and concomitant change of nutrients shift microeukaryotic communities in a shallow lake” was a sound and interesting research article. The manuscript’s findings on how water level fluctuation impact microeukaryotic communities will likely be of interest to scientists and managers that research how biological communities respond to periodic disturbance. I especially enjoyed the network analysis treatment of the communities. However, occasionally, I was a bit lost with some of the network terminology. For instance, in line 306, I am not sure how correlation relationships reveal community assembly rules. It may be worthwhile to consider clarifying some of more jargon-y terms and defining and explaining some of the more technical aspects of the network analysis. I only have a few additional comments about the discussion and grammar/syntax. In all, I enjoyed reading this work and believe the scientific community will also find these results useful.
Major comments
In the discussion section, it appears that diversity was only discussed broadly in terms of other researcher’s findings and not in terms of the findings from this manuscript (Figure 4 is not mentioned in the discussion). Since alpha diversity is mentioned in the abstract and conclusion, I think it would be beneficial to discuss the diversity findings from this study more specifically in the discussion section.
Figure 5 and 6 were also not addressed in the discussion. I would consider giving these results some additional explanation in the discussion or moving the figures to the supplement.
Line 364: Consider describing the findings in reference 16 in more detail (the findings from the study on bacterial communities) and then say that you find the same thing in microeukaryotic communities. I believe this would help the reader better put your current findings into context with other work more effectively.
Line 445-447, I was confused about the message here. Is there evidence that supports the statement that inter-annual WLFs were more important to elucidate the long-term effects of WFLs, or is that a hypothesis the author’s propose for future study?
Minor comments
Line 21: Consider using the definite article ‘the’ (i.e., The results showed that the dry season and the wet season had distinct…). The use of the definite article comes up frequently throughout the paper. I have a couple more instances of it noted below.
Section 2.1: Several passages in the first two paragraphs of the materials and methods section had some grammar and syntax issues you could consider addressing:
For instance, line 114, I do not think raise is the proper tense. In line 126, I think you mean ‘all year’ instead of ‘around the year’. Like above, the definite article ‘the’ is often missing before ‘wet season’ and ‘dry season’. In line 128, consider using ‘sampling’ instead of sample. These will likely be picked up in copy editing, but I wanted to note the ones in these two paragraphs because I did not notice too many otherwise.
Line 253: Did you mean ‘seasons’ instead of ‘reasons’? Otherwise, I am not sure what this means.
Conclusions: Consider adding ‘the’ before ‘dry season’ and ‘wet season’
Line 463: Consider revising to: ‘Our results add knowledge to the understanding of seasonal dynamics of lake ecosystems in response to seasonal WLFs and provide…’
Reviewer 3 Report
While the authors present the paper in a nice way, I object largely to the chosen study design, especially the selection of sample sites which seems rather to be where the boat happened to pass by rather than being appropriate to answer the aims of the study. The selection of sampling sites needs to be reconsidered, at the least should sites W1-4 be removed from the analyses as they are from a completely different part of the lake. Furthermore, parts of the conclusions are based on correlations and cannot be used for the taken conclusions. Just because species co-occur they necessarily do not interact, which is what the authors have assumed in their analyses.
I would advise the removal of the network analyses from the manuscript as well as the tests regarding geographical distance as they are not appropriate to use for this set of data. Comments on this and other issues can be found in the pdf-document. Obviously it is difficult to alter the selection of sampling sites at this point but by revising how the article is framed and adjusting the conclusions drawn to appropriate conclusions it could potentially be published.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
