The Structure of the Biosphere from the Point of View of the Concept of the Biogeome

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (New Reviewer)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I have read your manuscript with great interest. I find it well written and supported by references and images. However, the topic is still complicated and not easy to read. I have posted several comments in the attached PDF, hoping they help to facilitate reading/understanding for the readers. The many green markings (why??) are annoying.

The introduction needs to be improved, and the goals of your paper better defined. I also find the last italicized (why?) paragraph of the introduction confusing, as it reads more like a method.

The chronology of defined terms and their meaning, along with the authorities who defined them, is very important. A numbered reference format, as required by this journal, is not helpful. I recommend that the authors have a table organized chronologically in which they add the authors and some attributes (e.g., naturalist, geologist), the proposed terminology, and the year of the terms' publication. The glossary at the end of your paper is very useful, but if combined with a table, it is not needed anymore. This will provide an excellent reading guide.

Many authors are mentioned, and some attributes like “Danish geologist” were added, which helps to better understand them. This should be done consistently when an important author is mentioned for the first time. Alexander von Humboldt’s famous remark that everything is interconnected should be mentioned earlier in your paper. Please see my comments. Also, his name was A. von Humboldt (not A. Humboldt); “von” is part of the last name.

Figure 1 looks like a children’s drawing. Please use computer programs (e.g., Adobe Illustrator) to get your image to the standards of this journal.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, thank you for your comments in the Review, as well as in the PDF text!

Reviewer:

I have read your manuscript with great interest. I find it well written and supported by references and images. However, the topic is still complicated and not easy to read. I have posted several comments in the attached PDF, hoping they help to facilitate reading/understanding for the readers.

Authors comments:

We have considered these comments; the comments in the text of the article are commented at the end of this letter.

Reviewer:

The many green markings (why??) are annoying.

Authors comments:

The green marks reflect the difficult fate of the article, since it has already been reviewed and new insertions relative to the most initial version, after the first reviewers, are highlighted in green. If we were the Editors, we really would not send such a version with green insertions to new reviewers.

Reviewer:

The introduction needs to be improved, and the goals of your paper better defined. I also find the last italicized (why?) paragraph of the introduction confusing, as it reads more like a method.

Authors comments:

The Introduction has been amended to make the objectives of this work clearer, in our opinion.

Reviewer:

The chronology of defined terms and their meaning, along with the authorities who defined them, is very important. A numbered reference format, as required by this journal, is not helpful. I recommend that the authors have a table organized chronologically in which they add the authors and some attributes (e.g., naturalist, geologist), the proposed terminology, and the year of the terms' publication. The glossary at the end of your paper is very useful, but if combined with a table, it is not needed anymore. This will provide an excellent reading guide.

Authors comments:

Thanks for the great idea, we implemented it in the form of a small table at the end of the article.

Reviewer:

Many authors are mentioned, and some attributes like “Danish geologist” were added, which helps to better understand them. This should be done consistently when an important author is mentioned for the first time. Alexander von Humboldt’s famous remark that everything is interconnected should be mentioned earlier in your paper. Please see my comments. Also, his name was A. von Humboldt (not A. Humboldt); “von” is part of the last name.

Authors comments:

The surname A. von Humboldt has been corrected. Epithets have been added to the names of scientists in the text

Reviewer:

Figure 1 looks like a children’s drawing. Please use computer programs (e.g., Adobe Illustrator) to get your image to the standards of this journal.

Authors comments:

We thought that Figure 1, a diagram of biospheromerons, and in essence, a diagram of the structure of the biosphere, made by hand as a sketch, would enliven the article, however, if the Reviewer saw in this some non-academicism or even carelessness, we edited the figure for form.

Notes in Article PDF

• Why in italics?
• This is a mistake, we fixed it

*

- Should you not use literature from BOTH the west and the east for your discussion in a balanced way?

- The authors' familiarity with the problem of the structure and evolution of the biosphere showed that Western scientists rarely use literature from Eastern Europe, so we deliberately used predominantly this literature in our discussions in order to create and maintain some useful information bridges. We agree with the respected reviewer: Western and Eastern European literature should be used in a balanced manner, but we wanted to explain to the reader why we give preference to classical Eastern European works, since they may be little known to the Western reader.

*

Line 299

- A.von Humboldt also noticed similarity in distribution patterns along elevational gradients in plants!

- Yes, of course, A.von Humboldt noted this phenomenon as one of the important ones in the distribution of vegetation, this remark is in the text, in the more general formulation of line 446-447.

*

Line 419

-A. von Humboldt is the correct name! Good to mention him but he should have been mentioned earlier. See my comments.

- Thank you, the last name has been corrected.

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This article may and should be published following revision. In the era of high-tech science, the value of such conceptual reviews is considerable, as fewer and fewer scholars possess the necessary expertise to produce them.

Among the manuscript's shortcomings, I would first highlight the insufficient development of the connection between the concept of the biome and Vernadsky's philosophical views. The treatment of Vernadsky's ideas—particularly their religious and philosophical connotations—is also inadequately addressed. The authors should have little difficulty locating relevant literature on this topic, including recent studies.

Furthermore, Sukachev's perspective on biogeocenoses as integrated wholes (akin to organisms) is underrepresented despite its direct relevance to the review's subject matter. The authors also fail to cite recent works on both Sukachev and his intellectual counterpart, Ramensky. This omission can be readily corrected.

A lamentable gap is the absence of a review and corresponding references to Odum's works. This is especially puzzling given the authors' explicit mention of the "Evans-Odum and Sukachev-Vernadsky contradiction" (line 278). While Evans receives somewhat more attention, the citation of his sole (albeit foundational) work from the 1950s is insufficient.

While preparing this review, I was informed that references to contemporary research account for less than 10% of the total citations. I fully concur with this observation and have outlined the above potential avenues for addressing this issue.

The inclusion of references (33, 34, 94) in the Conclusion section is stylistically inappropriate. I recommend that the authors relocate the corresponding paragraphs to the relevant sections of the review.

Although I regret the additional bibliographic work required in an already formatted manuscript, I would like to emphasize that my comments fall within the scope of a "Minor Revision."

Author Response

To Reviewer 2

The authors are sincerely grateful to the esteemed Reviewer for reviewing the manuscript.

With regard to the comments made, we can report the following:

Reviewer:

This article may and should be published following revision. In the era of high-tech science, the value of such conceptual reviews is considerable, as fewer and fewer scholars possess the necessary expertise to produce them.

Authors:

The authors are sincerely grateful to the esteemed Reviewer for analyzing the manuscript and evaluating the work as "worthy of attention." The comments are of great value to us, both in terms of improving this work and in terms of our further research in this area. At the same time, we are convinced that a number of comments and wishes of the esteemed Reviewer deserve, rather, not an addition to this text, but an independent study and separate publications. Unfortunately, in this work, which is already quite large, we are unlikely to be able to add more than a paragraph or two in response to the comments of the esteemed Reviewer.

Reviewer:

Among the manuscript's shortcomings, I would first highlight the insufficient development of the connection between the concept of the biome and Vernadsky's philosophical views. The treatment of Vernadsky's ideas—particularly their religious and philosophical connotations—is also inadequately addressed.

Authors:

The authors are extremely grateful to the Reviewer for drawing attention to our interest in the scientific heritage of V.I. Vernadsky, which, unfortunately, is not reflected in modern Western literature. Regarding the significance of Vernadsky's works in biospherology, in this article we point out that Vernadsky was the first to draw attention to the significant, fundamental differences between the global blocks of the biosphere. Following V.I. Vernadsky, we have isolated these blocks, calling them biospheromerons. An addition has been made to the text, indicating additional references. Another important aspect of Vernadsky's teaching is his ideas about life as a cosmic phenomenon. In accordance with this, the text contains an insertion that contains a link to modern publications.

 

Reviewer:

Furthermore, Sukachev's perspective on biogeocenoses as integrated wholes (akin to organisms) is underrepresented despite its direct relevance to the review's subject matter. The authors also fail to cite recent works on both Sukachev and his intellectual counterpart, Ramensky.

Authors:

We agree that the works of the famous Soviet ecologist V.N.Sukachev made an extremely important contribution to the development of fundamental concepts of ecology, but the topic of our publication is narrower. We believe that the concept of biogeocenosis by V.N.Sukachev is close to the ideas of V.I.Vernadsky about bio-inert systems as units of the structure of the biosphere. This approach implies a hierarchical system of the structure of the biosphere, as opposed to the approach of E.Odum and F.Evans, according to which there is only an increase in systems without a significant change in their properties.

 We are grateful to the reviewer for drawing our attention to a more extensive description of the views of the outstanding Russian and Soviet ecologist and botanist L.Ramensky. Information about this and a link to the publication, his scientific biography have been added to the text

Reviewer:

A lamentable gap is the absence of a review and corresponding references to Odum's works. This is especially puzzling given the authors' explicit mention of the "Evans-Odum and Sukachev-Vernadsky contradiction" (line 278).

Authors:

We agree with the respected Reviewer that the significance of the outstanding ecologist E. Odum in establishing the concept of biome was great, although he himself, rather, accepted the provisions of the Clements-Shelford concept. However, the Reviewer's remark forced us to look closely at the problem in this aspect. The text contains an important, in our opinion, addition, which points specifically to the role of E. Odum's approaches to the problem of continuity-discreteness when considering the structure of the biosphere. These are rather philosophical conclusions, and not only ecological ones.

Reviewer:

While preparing this review, I was informed that references to contemporary research account for less than 10% of the total citations. I fully concur with this observation and have outlined the above potential avenues for addressing this issue.

Authors:

We know that there are certain traditions of reviewing certain problems, but the advisability of a purely formal, arithmetical approach to taking into account the necessary publications and references that could be considered sufficiently complete to cover the problem is highly questionable. Moreover, the diversity of topics and areas of research with different histories should be taken into account. The analysis of the literature shows that the quintessence of the modern approach to the biome concept is summarized in the works of L Mucina (Mucina, L. Biome: evolution of a crucial ecological and biogeographical concept. New Phytol. 2019) – in references of article

. However, we considered it right to show the existence of other approaches, their development, for which it was necessary to return to the “old” publications, fundamental works, such as the works of V.I. Vernadsky.

Nevertheless, thanks to the comments of the esteemed reviewer, we have supplemented the list of cited literature with modern publications.

Reviewer:

The inclusion of references (33, 34, 94) in the Conclusion section is stylistically inappropriate. I recommend that the authors relocate the corresponding paragraphs to the relevant sections of the review.

Authors:

References [33, 34] have been removed from the Conclusion.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report (New Reviewer)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors,

Thank you for responding to my previous comments/suggestions in detail. I can see that your manuscript has improved. The new Figure 1 is now a much better fit following the journal standard. The added table is very helpful!

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I still believe that the reference part of the paper can be improved, but I am Okay to go forward with what we have now. 

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

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Review

on manuscript «The biogeome concept and its place in fundamental ecology,  hydrobiology and biosphere science»,

by  Alexander Protasov and Sophia Barinova.

The manuscript is philosophical and ecological approach to global question concerning the structure of biosphere.

Actually, the authors use holistic approach to unify different parts of subsystems of the biosphere in the term “biogeome”. According to authors, biogeome is system of ecosystems similar in their structural and functional organization. In this regard, biogeome, on first view, may be called as “large” ecosystem, but according authors’s formulation biogeome is speciphic part of biosphere. In this case authors must explicate the new characteristics, properties of biogeomes comparatively their parts, local ecosystems.  It will be fine if authors add more about common properties of biogeomes.

The authors do very progressive work, where attempt unit on one system all both types of ecosystems – ecosystems of land and hydrosphere.

The authors distinguish 12 biogeomes that cover almost the entire biosphere to three type ecosystem. These types includes: "biotic", "oligobiotic" and "nanobiotic" or "subbiotic". It is very important, because this types unit as well as land and hydroecosyctems. It is very simple ecological criteria, but this makes the classification itself very clear and understandable.

Generally, biogeome concept may be used to compare the similar ecosystems in biosphere science. The idea of big blocs of biosphere many years, but was no big attempts include in this concept hydroecosystems. This review shows us quite clearly the picture of the natural combination of diverse ecosystems in the biosphere.

Comments to manuscript:

1.        Introduction needs to be reduced. It is similar big Abstract. The main purpose of Introduction is to show readers key problems, that was stimulate investigation.

2. What is the main difference between ecosystem and biogeome, if biogeome is no “large” ecosystem ?  It is needing add some characteristics (may be in table) of biogeome.

3.    If biosphere has fractal "costruction", is biogeome emergent system or not? This needs to be emphasized in article.

Conclusion.

The manuscript “The biogeome concept and its place in fundamental ecology, hydrobiology and biosphere science” may be published after minor revision. 

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript is well-written; however, it is advised to address the grammatical errors and rewrite the abstract to improve clarity and enhance the reader's understanding of the manuscript.

Best wishes.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The English could be improved to more clearly express the research.           

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This manuscript presents a rather strange idea. It may be acceptable in a historical ecology journal or in a journal presenting brain-storing idea.

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Authors have proposed the concept of new disciplines as ‘biogeomics’ - biogeomes as systems of ecosystems similar in their structural and functional organization while most of the characteristics (Table 1) is assemblage of known things with new words coined.

Line 91-103. Metamorphic concept of a coined term is always debatable, particularly when we want to play with 'illuminated' conditions (boundaries, variable, interactions, sub-divisions, etc.) and put them in a framework of definitions. Most of the non-biological process of human ‘understanding’ can be ‘explained’ through some of the rules of physics, chemistry, and equations of mathematics, however, we know each element, micro-element, and deep of an organism but cannot create a similar life.

Line 181-182: ‘no species can exist outside of certain ecosystems’. AND Lines 833-843: Should have taken this manuscript to a new debate in the present context of earth as a system, where authors have introduced new anthropogenic biogeome and new  biotopic elements (formation of techno-, agro- and urban ecosystems). All these are not natural so fitting the context is only explainable. Does urban ecosystem not include techno-ecosystem or many agro-ecosystems are part of urban ecosystem, sometimes called peri-urban). The debatable is now that for most dominating organism, Homo sapiens, still nothing is certain that where this can make habitat (now targeting space)? How an individual of this species will behave in a set of conditions (social, physical, environmental, political governance-which is most unnatural thing to explain, etc.). Thus, our most of the explanations keep Homo sapiens out of the context in definitions and modelling. Have we ever heard climate-, niche-modelling of Homo sapiens? Does ever, we heard that ecosystem has been altered or a degradation in Biospheric (or any un-natural defined entity) regimes? Rather, we know or explain the characteristics of physical/biological (simplest format) entities or numbers (species, concentration, etc.)

It is believable that artificial systems do not, yet, have high stability as appeared from the discoveries of past ‘civilizations’ but many interactions (e.g., bird migration) at continental scale (different biological, physical properties and climatic conditions), and global scales (anomalies in air and gulf streams) suggest that ‘earth’ as a single system is more explainable to understand the interactions and impacts, however, hierarchical classifications will always be a challenge while putting in a philosophical envelope.

I would have appreciated the manuscript it has included a property (beyond Table 1) to open the discussion on different perspective of evolution and interactions, rather than announcing a new anthropogenic biogeome in conclusion.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Smaller sentences will be more effective.