Elevated Soil Temperatures Impact Nematode Reproduction Biology
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear authors,
I believe that the attached manuscript is acceptable for publication i suggest to you a change in a few technical details in the presentation of results.
The attached manuscript considers the possible impact of climate change on some parameters of the biology and ecology of two types of harmful nematodes. I believe that the main problem of the manuscript is actually that the authors conclude in general about the suppression and impact of climate change, and in fact they only had specific measurements that did not relate to the broader concept of impact.
I suggest to you in certain parts of the manuscript where you should explain it better or exclude it better from the text.
Line 13 – please write correctly latin name and writing style of nematode species.
Line 23 – I suggest “nematode biology”,
Line 44 – new paragraph.
Line 52 – 64 – please reconsider to put this part before the aim and purpose of the research of this paper.
Figure 1. A & B; Figure 2. A & B; Figure 3. A & B; Set the same values ​​for the figures, for each description for the ordinate, because it gives the impression that the types are equal, but they are not because the different values ​​are equalized.
Subchapters 2.1 and 2.2, then 2.3 and 2.4, and finally 2.5 and 2.6 should be merged.
They are talking about the same parameter, so there is no point in separating them by type, but on the contrary, in the text of the description, put equality in the description for both types in order to see the differences, or rather, the similarities.
Line 144 – add reference,
Line 147-160 – repeating already explained and presented in results.
Lines 164-170 and Lines 180-186; shorten sentences, description is too long and cannot be followed.
Line 193 - add reference,
Lines 216-218 - I don't understand how you can conclude this, I suggest excluding it from the manuscript proposal.
Lines 232-234 - this is an unnecessary discussion for this article, you are compromising yourself.
Line 276- reference.
Line 318 - program/software reference.
Good luck with the publication of the attached manuscript.
Sincerely,
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
We appreciate your time and efforts in reviewing the manuscript and providing constructive feedback. Your suggestions were very useful for improving the clarity of the manuscript. We have addressed your suggestions in the revised version. Our responses are highlighted in yellow.
Reviewer 1:
I believe that the attached manuscript is acceptable for publication i suggest to you a change in a few technical details in the presentation of results.
Thank you for the kind words! We have addressed the specified technical details.
The attached manuscript considers the possible impact of climate change on some parameters of the biology and ecology of two types of harmful nematodes. I believe that the main problem of the manuscript is actually that the authors conclude in general about the suppression and impact of climate change, and in fact they only had specific measurements that did not relate to the broader concept of impact.
We agree that our study does not involve all components of climate change, which we have stated in the last paragraph of the Discussion. The sentence “Under the circumstances of the current study,………..” in the first paragraph of the Discussion also implies we are looking into one piece of the soil puzzle.
I suggest to you in certain parts of the manuscript where you should explain it better or exclude it better from the text.
We have revised the manuscript to address suggestions wherever specified.
Line 13 – please write correctly latin name and writing style of nematode species.
Thank you for finding the typos that occurred during the editing process by the journal! We have corrected them.
Line 23 – I suggest “nematode biology”,
We are sorry, but we could not understand what specific phrase you would like to see changed. We do not find any issues in Line 23.
Line 44 – new paragraph.
The line provides continuity to the paragraph. Also, a paragraph in scientific writing does not start with a conjunctive adverb.
Line 52 – 64 – please reconsider to put this part before the aim and purpose of the research of this paper.
We appreciate your suggestion. However, we believe these sentences best fit in their current place to bring the flow of information.
Figure 1. A & B; Figure 2. A & B; Figure 3. A & B; Set the same values ​​for the figures, for each description for the ordinate, because it gives the impression that the types are equal, but they are not because the different values ​​are equalized.
We have changed the units of the Y-axis in all figures.
Subchapters 2.1 and 2.2, then 2.3 and 2.4, and finally 2.5 and 2.6 should be merged. They are talking about the same parameter, so there is no point in separating them by type, but on the contrary, in the text of the description, put equality in the description for both types in order to see the differences, or rather, the similarities.
We have merged the subheadings.
Line 144 – add reference,
We have added a reference.
Line 147-160 – repeating already explained and presented in results.
We have revised the sentences in the paragraph to provide a better sense of discussion of the results.
Lines 164-170 and Lines 180-186; shorten sentences, description is too long and cannot be followed.
The sentences have been revised to shorten the length and improve the clarity.
Line 193 - add reference,
Reference has been provided.
Lines 216-218 - I don't understand how you can conclude this, I suggest excluding it from the manuscript proposal.
We have removed the sentence and revised the paragraph to better emphasize higher soil temperatures are detrimental to crops.
Lines 232-234 - this is an unnecessary discussion for this article, you are compromising yourself.
We have removed that sentence.
Line 276- reference.
The website has been cited in the text.
Line 318 - program/software reference.
A reference for the software has been added.
Good luck with the publication of the attached manuscript.
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsManuscript entitled "Elevated soil temperatures impact nematode reproduction biology" describes experiment conduced on two nematode species: Meloidogyne floridensis and Rotylenchus reniformis on tomato, assessing the impact of soil temperature on the nematode egg number present in soil and weight of the root system. The topic raised by Authors is important in view of a climate change and the lack of effective nematode control methods.
The standard of language used in the manuscript is appropriate for scientific articles. The main complaint I have of the Authors is the very long discussion, which at certain points seems to be a repetition of results without reference to the literature, e.g. practically whole paragraphs l143--l160, l209--l222 are devoid of literature references. It seems to me that the discussion is disproportionately long compared to the number and complexity of the experiments presented in the manuscript.
Regarding the presentation of the results, I think that the data should be presented using bar graphs - it would improve the perception of the data. The Authors did not study the entire temperature spectrum, but only 4 variants.
In the case of the sentence in l129-l131, it seems to contradict what is presented in Figure 3B. I recommend using italics for the Latin names of nematodes also in the abstract and introduction. I recommend the use of a lowercase p for statistical probabilities.
Thus, the manuscript needs the minor changes (mentioned above) before publication in Stresses.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
We appreciate your time and efforts in reviewing the manuscript and providing constructive feedback. Your suggestions were very useful for improving the clarity of the manuscript. We have addressed your suggestions in the revised version. Our responses are highlighted in yellow.
Manuscript entitled "Elevated soil temperatures impact nematode reproduction biology" describes experiment conduced on two nematode species: Meloidogyne floridensis and Rotylenchus reniformis on tomato, assessing the impact of soil temperature on the nematode egg number present in soil and weight of the root system. The topic raised by Authors is important in view of a climate change and the lack of effective nematode control methods.
Thank you for the kind words!
The standard of language used in the manuscript is appropriate for scientific articles. The main complaint I have of the Authors is the very long discussion, which at certain points seems to be a repetition of results without reference to the literature, e.g. practically whole paragraphs l143--l160, l209--l222 are devoid of literature references. It seems to me that the discussion is disproportionately long compared to the number and complexity of the experiments presented in the manuscript.
We have revised the discussion based on the specific issues raised by the first reviewer. Some references have been added; however, the extremely low number of published studies on this topic limits the scope of the literature review.
Regarding the presentation of the results, I think that the data should be presented using bar graphs - it would improve the perception of the data. The Authors did not study the entire temperature spectrum, but only 4 variants.
While some researchers prefer bar graphs, we decided to present line graphs to provide a better visualization of the results.
In the case of the sentence in l129-l131, it seems to contradict what is presented in Figure 3B. I recommend using italics for the Latin names of nematodes also in the abstract and introduction. I recommend the use of a lowercase p for statistical probabilities.
The statement does not contradict the result presented in Figure 3B. Nematode-inoculated plants had lower biomasses relative to uninoculated plants. We have corrected the italics issues for scientific names and p-values.
Thus, the manuscript needs the minor changes (mentioned above) before publication in Stresses.
