Managing Genetic Diversity and Representation in Banksia marginata (Proteaceae) Seed Production Areas Used for Conservation and Restoration

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Broadhurst et al. prestent an interesting and also practically important paper on the population genetics and restoration ecology of a Banksia species in Australia. The research has been properly and results are presented and discussed very throroughly.

I detect only one flaw, that is in the description of the microsatellite data. No details are given on the performance of the markers in relation to occurrence of null alleles and allele gaps etc. This analysis can easily be done using Microchecker or similar and should be added. This seems warranted as as SNP data were much more powerful to detect population clusters, and should be done anyway since the markers used were developed originally for other Banksia species.

 

Author Response

We agree that these data should be included and have added Tables S1, S2 and S3 to provide this information as well as expanded some of the text in the Materials and Methods (L154-165 in revised document) and Results (L223-226).

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript by Linda Broadhurst et al., entitled “Managing genetic diversity and representation in a Banksia marginata (Proteaceae) seed production area for conservation and restoration” is focused on understanding how much genetic diversity existed in each remnant and its associated SPA trees, as well as the differences in genetic diversity among the remnants and the two SPAs. Authors also assesed population genetic structure to determine whether the SPAs were representative of any structure observed and determined the probable origin of unidentifiable trees. They also assessed the relatedness of all trees and those in the SPAs to determine the likelihood of mating among close relatives. To achieve it, authors have resorted the use of microsatellite (SSR) markers and SNP data.

On the whole, the manuscript reads well, the arguments are well presented, literature is extensive. In my view, the authors have managed to reach all the points raised in their research. For these reasons, I think that the paper deserves to be published in Diversity.

However, there are some issues that should be addressed by the Authors before the paper can be accepted for publication:

-In the present research, authors used twelve microsatellite (SSR) primers pairs specifically developed for other Banksia species, that previously tested for repeatability, polymorphism and linkage disequilibrium. Please, explain the results obtained in the 12 samples of Bankia marginata, at least as a supplementary information.

-Resolution of images. Because the authors have tried to add multiple images together,  several images  together. I've made some suggestions to improve this point.

In addition, please, see the attached document with some minor concerns.

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

L18 – agree, amended.

L22-24 – disagree – we see no issue with starting this sentence with “We evaluated…”.

L27 – we have rewritten the Abstract slightly to include our conclusions.

L28 – we have amended ‘seed production area’s to ‘native seed production’.

L98 – amended as suggested.

L137 – This section has been amended to include more information regarding the primer pairs tested (now included as Supplementary Material Table S1)and how these were selected for this study and the analyses for Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (HWE) and Linkage Disequilibrium (LD) that were undertaken. We have also provided some additional information regarding the HWE and LD analyses in the Results section 3.1.

L153 – We have amended this oversight in the legend for Table 1 to read UHe.

L175 – caption rewritten as suggested.

L191+ - we believe there may some misunderstanding here. The caption for Table 1 indicates that N is the number of samples from each population – this cannot be a fraction so we cannot adjust to reflect the decimal places in the other diversity indices. We have amended the caption to read ‘ N, number of trees sampled” for clarity.

L206-207 – we apologise for our error in number of the Figures and have adjusted all of the Figure labels within the text and the Figure legends.

L223 – amended as suggested.

L231+ The sizing of Table 1 is 9 point in the Word document however this does not seem to have been converted correctly in the PDF that was reviewed. We have therefore made no changes to the font of this table.

L237 – we agree that this is a bit confusing as the Gobur point on Fig 2B sits behind the brown points making it difficult to see point in this figure. We have brought this red point forward for clarity and placed the figures one above the other as suggested.

L 256 Figure 3 – we have moved figures a and b to supplementary files as suggested and adjusted the figure legend accordingly and amended the text to reflect these changes.

L260 Figure 4 – we have adjusted these graphs to sit above each other as suggested noting that this is now Figure 2.

Figure 5 – this comment is in Spanish and we are unclear what is being suggested.

Figure 5 - We have revised Figure 5 into portrait format and added some additional explanatory information to the legend.

L374 – the font is correct in the Word document and appears to have changed during conversion to a PDF. We have therefore made no changes.

References – DOIs have been added where available and abbreviations for journal names amended where required.