The Conservation of Biodiverse and Threatened Dry Rainforest Plant Communities Is Vital in a Changing Climate
, Hilary Pearl 1, Bill McDonald 2, Yoko Shimizu 1, Sanjeev Kumar Srivastava 1 and Alison Shapcott 1,*
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear authors,
Congratulations on your work. Overall, the manuscript is well-written, the methods used are appropriate, and the results are adequately explained in the Discussion section. I have only a few minor points for improvement.
In the Materials and Methods section:
- Figure 1: I recommend that the inset map clearly display the study area within Australia.
- Line 212: Please clarify that "PD" stands for Phylogenetic Diversity.
- Line 215: The sources of the abiotic data should be specified.
- Regional Ecosystems (RE): The text does not explain what Regional Ecosystems (RE) are or how they are defined. A brief explanation would be useful, particularly for readers unfamiliar with Queensland's ecosystem classification system.
- Line 181: The term "IBRA" is not explained. Providing a brief explanation would help readers better understand the biogeographical significance of the bioregions.
- Net Relatedness Index (NRI): When NRI is first mentioned, a short explanation of what it measures would be beneficial.
- A brief explanation of the analysis methods, including NMDS and Bray-Curtis rank order matrices, should also be included.
In the Results section:
- I believe it should be indicated somewhere in the text that the summary of descriptions of RE ID is provided in Table S1.
- The same applies to Table S2 as well.
- In Figure 2, rather than numbering the 13 IBRA subregions, their names could be provided, which would allow for a reduction in the length of the figure caption.
Author Response
Please see attachment -Thank you
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsIn the current context of increasing climate change, it is necessary to understand how we can minimize the effects on different ecosystems.
Considering that in order to preserve it is necessary to know, this work makes a great contribution in this sense.
Good work.
Author Response
Please see attachment - Thank you.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThis study evaluated the plant diversity, phylogeny, phylogenetic diversity, and current level of conservation of seasonal rainforest regional ecosystems of the Central Queensland Coast region, Australia. The quality of this manuscript is relatively high, and the language is relatively standardized. However, there are several issues that need to be addressed or revised.
1. Lines 12-14: These contents are too much and need to be reduced or deleted.
2. Lines 15, 17, 20: It is not recommended to use first person terms such as "our" and "we", and it is recommended to use terms such as "this study".
3. Lines 44, 86, 105, 111, 167, 169, 189, 194, 277, 541, 551, 561, 614, 675: Many citations in the manuscript provide information about the author and time, but do not provide corresponding references.
4. Materials and Methods: These contents need to be further summarized and organized into several sections for explanation. It is not appropriate to describe them as a whole.
5. Figure 1 & 2 (lines: 150 & 304): The clarity and resolution of the figure are very low, and the text in the figure is blurry. Also, is the scale of the image in the upper right corner the same as the scale of the image below?
6. Lines 164, 166; 172; 179; 182; 183; 186; 191; 201; 209; 243; 257: The website within the Materials and Methods section needs to include the access time.
7. Lines 188-195: Are the software and methods used to build phylogenetic trees the same as those in the reference (https://doi.org/10.25907/00863)? Do the three sequences of all species in this study already exist in the referenced literature (https://doi.org/10.25907/00863)? This reference does not seem to have a citation.
8. Line 222: It needs to be explained what software is used for this correlation analysis.
9. Line 233: Is this method also completed within RStudio? R software needs to be labeled with a version number.
10. Line 258: It needs to be explained in which software this operation is carried out.
11. Line 270: This result does not seem to be derived from Table 1. If there are figures or tables in the manuscript that illustrate this result, the corresponding figures or tables should be labeled here.
12. Table 1 & 2: The location of RE types is unclear, and at least one table needs to specify the specific latitude, longitude, and altitude, or indicate them in the figure.
13. Line 339: The numbering of this figure seems to be incorrect. I think it should be Figure 3, not Figure 1.
14. Line 357: If there are figures or tables in the manuscript that illustrate this result, the corresponding figures or tables should be labeled here.
15. Line 378: The numbering of this figure seems to be incorrect. I think it should be Figure 4, not Figure 2. The clarity and resolution of the figure are very low, and the text in the figure is blurry.
16. Line 522: This title seems inappropriate because there is no section 3.4.2 in the results section.
17. Line 903: The information of this reference seems incomplete.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageThe language quality of the manuscript is relatively high, with no excessive language issues. The introduction section contains a lot of content and can be simplified.
Author Response
Please see attachment - Thank you.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
