Evidence of Quorum Sensing in Cyanobacteria by Homoserine Lactones: The Origin of Blooms
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
I commend the authors for investigating the impact of potential chemical mediators of quorum sensing in cyanobacteria. This is an area of interest for water managers and ecologists seeking to understand more about the factors promoting and inhibiting harmful cyanobacterial blooms.
I have major concerns with the manuscript, relating to structure, the detail and organisation of the methods and results, and insufficient detail and interpretation in the discussion section.
I have outlined these as comments in the attached PDF of the manuscript file. Although I am recommending that the current version of the manuscript is rejected, I can see potential for the manuscript to be a useful addition to the literature following extensive revision and I hope that my comments are helpful for the authors for revision.
Major points for revision:
The structure of the methods and results section was difficult to follow and there was insufficient detail in the reporting of the methods and results.
One of the results (on acetaminophen) had no mention in the introduction, no methods associated with the experiment and the relevance of the experiment and results was not clearly articulated in the discussion. It is unclear what the relevance of this experiment was to the overall manuscript aims.
There are statements throughout the manuscript that require citations.
Table 1 was missing so could not be assessed.
There were many examples of methods in the results section, results in the discussion section. These have generally been outlined in the attached PDF, however, this is not an exhaustive list.
Throughout the manuscript there were issues with consistency and italicisation of species names. There were also issues with the ease of reading resulting from the grammar and syntax. These have been highlighted in the attached PDF, but this is not an exhaustive list and it is recommended the manuscript is professionally proofread, as these did result in some parts of the manuscript being uninterpretable and difficult to read.
The discussion did not clearly link the results to existing literature on the mechanisms and effects of quorum sensing, making it hard for the reader to place this study in the broader context of research on cyanobacterial quorum sensing.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Please check the attached file with your work. The highlighted in yellow places need rewriting in terms of e.g. italics, superscript etc.
Most important you forgot to place Table 1 in the manuscript.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Review of a manuscript submitted to the Water, entitled “Evidence of quorum sensing in cyanobacteria by homoserine lactones: the origin of blooms”, by Natalia Herrera and Fernando Echeverri.
GENERAL COMMENTS
The spread of Cyanobacterial Harmful Algal Blooms has become a significant concern for societies worldwide. Cyanobacteria can form dense and sometimes toxic blooms in freshwater and marine environments, which threaten ecosystem functioning and degrade water quality for recreation, drinking water, fisheries and human health. Cyanobacterial deplete the oxygen in the water, release toxins, and degrade the water quality. Eutrophication and climate change catalyse the global expansion of cyanobacterial blooms. Blooms of cyanobacteria are important features for the ecology and management of many eutrophic fresh and brackish water bodies. Cyanobacteria live in close associations with heterotrophic bacteria, and interactions between them may range from symbiosis to competition. These interactions strongly influence carbon and nutrient cycling and thereby the stability of aquatic food webs. In phytoplankton blooms, heterotrophic bacteria may provide macronutrients via recycling (or fixation) but may be also competitors for inorganic nutrients. May be responsible for a significant share of elemental cycling and fluxes, i.e. for the input of nutrients and organic matter in the ecosystem due to remineralization. Understanding the route through which blooms are elicited and the responsible agents could generate new viewpoints and alternatives for their control and prevention and this is the main goal of the reviewed work.
The abstract is informative enough. Keywords are informative and relevant. Defining the objectives of the article is adequate and appropriate to the subject. The methods are presented correctly and sufficiently informative to enable the repetition of tests, the work is research-specific. Nevertheless, I think the chapters Results and Discusion are badly organized and need reorganization. In my opinion, the article should not be published without changes in key chapters (Results and Discusion).
MINOR COMMENTS
- Results
Line 203-211 (including Figure 1) - corresponds more closely to Chapter „2. Materials and Methods” - I suggest moving the entries or rewriting it to become part of the Chapter „4. Discussion”
Line 261: please provide evidence of no effect on morphology
- Discussion
Line 428-433 - repeated information, no references to the literature on the subject
Line 459-480 - corresponds more closely to Chapter „3. Results”
Line 482 – 483 - please delete the entry: „Table 1. General effects of several lactones in Microcystis aeruginosa and Cylindrospermopsis raciborskii.”
Line 484-492 - no references to the literature on the subject
Line 493-509 - corresponds more closely to Chapter „3. Results”
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
Review of a manuscript submitted to the Water, entitled “Evidence of quorum sensing in cyanobacteria by homoserine lactones: the origin of blooms”, by Natalia Herrera and Fernando Echeverri.
The present version of the paper, it's different from the previous one. Raised shortcomings of the previous version of the article have been removed. I think that the article is valuable, by diagnosing the state of knowledge and indicating the direction of further research. I think that the article should be published.
Author Response
Dear Editor:
Thank you for your mail and the reviewers' comments concerning our manuscript entitled "Evidence of Quorum Sensing in cyanobacteria by homoserine lactones: the origin of blooms." The corrections were made in the paper and highlighted in green color.
