Genetic Diversity and Structure of Quercus petraea (Matt.) Liebl. Populations in Central and Northern Romania Revealed by SRAP Markers

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript entitled “Genetic Structure and Variability of Quercus petraea (Matt.) Liebl. in Central and Northern Romania, Revealed by SRAP Markers.” analyze the genetic diversity and population structure of 75 Quercus petraea accessions from 5 Romanian populations using SRAP molecular markers. However the manuscript provide relevant data on Quercus petraea, and adequate number of accessions have been collected and studied but the manuscript suffer from an even and uniform writing style where introduction needs an extensive structural and grammatical language revision and polishing while the material and method is well-written. With the comments:

1- At first glance the title doesn’t seem to be fit and suitable. It can be revised as “” information about the used marker, therefore may it be better to write as: SLAF-seq based genetic diversity and structure of Geodorum eulophioides, an endangered terrestrial orchid species with extremely small populations in China

2- Please be accurate in citing references of Introduction in L73-74 nine references have been cited without mentioning the studied species or taxa.

3- Incorporating a figure of the tree landscape alone or in forest would be highly beneficial and informative for the reader.

4- Please calculate the polymorphism indices for the used primers to give an advice on the selecting the best primer.

5- Additionally a cluster or PCA plot of all studied accessions can also be constructed based on the similarity or dissimilarity matrices could be informative to show the genetic distance of studied genetic material.

6- The discussion section would benefit from a more extensive exploration of genetic mechanisms, including but not limited to gene flow and the reproductive systems (auto- and allo-breeding). Expanding the discussion to encompass these aspects would provide a deeper insight into the genetic dynamics of the studied populations and further enrich the interpretation of the research findings.

 

Altogether the manuscript can go further evaluation in Diversity after major revision and providing addressing above mentioned questions.

The manuscript entitled “Genetic Structure and Variability of Quercus petraea (Matt.) Liebl. in Central and Northern Romania, Revealed by SRAP Markers.” analyze the genetic diversity and population structure of 75 Quercus petraea accessions from 5 Romanian populations using SRAP molecular markers. However the manuscript provide relevant data on Quercus petraea, and adequate number of accessions have been collected and studied but the manuscript suffer from an even and uniform writing style where introduction needs an extensive structural and grammatical language revision and polishing while the material and method is well-written. With the comments:

1- At first glance the title doesn’t seem to be fit and suitable. Please use a better title.

2- Please be accurate in citing references of Introduction in L73-74 nine references have been cited without mentioning the studied species or taxa.

3- Incorporating a figure of the tree landscape alone or in forest would be highly beneficial and informative for the reader.

4- Please calculate the polymorphism indices for the used primers to give advice on selecting the best primer.

5- Additionally a cluster or PCA plot of all studied accessions can also be constructed based on the similarity or dissimilarity matrices could be informative to show the genetic distance of studied genetic material.

6- The discussion section would benefit from a more extensive exploration of genetic mechanisms, including but not limited to gene flow and the reproductive systems (auto- and allo-breeding). Expanding the discussion to encompass these aspects would provide a deeper insight into the genetic dynamics of the studied populations and further enrich the interpretation of the research findings.

 

Altogether the manuscript can go further evaluation in Diversity after major revision and providing addressing above mentioned questions.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Reviewer 2 Report

In the manuscript titled “Genetic Structure and Variability of Quercus petraea (Matt.) Liebl. in Central and Northern Romania, Revealed by SRAP Markers”, the authors used SRAP markers to analyze the genetic structure and variability of Quercus petraea in Central and Northern Romania. Although this study has limited content and depth, the paper adopts a universal method and the experimental design is standard, and it does provide reference data for understanding the genetic polymorphism of Q. Petraea in Romania. The following issues should be addressed before the manuscript can be considered for acceptance.

 1. It is best not to include commas in the title of the paper. I suggest changing the title to ' Genetic Structure and Variability of Quercus petraea (Matt.) Liebl. in Central and Northern Romania as Revealed by SRAP Markers'. The full stop at the end of the title should be removed.

2. The author should introduce the significance of this study in one to two sentences at the beginning of the abstract.

3. The first line in Table 2 is missing.

4. The discussion can be written in more depth, and relevant research can be used to make a more systematic comparison: 1) the similarities and differences in genetic diversity research among different species, 2) the similarities and differences in genetic diversity research obtained using different molecular markers, 3) the genetic diversity research of target species in different regions.

5. Conclusions section should be more concise, and at the end of the conclusion, a brief introduction should be given to the future work prospects.

6. Some details in Figures 2 and 3 are unclear. Please replace them with images with higher resolution ratio.

 

Not good but acceptable

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

This manuscript address the genetic structure in Quercus petraea across five populations in Romania.   The results section initially suggests that Cluj is distinct from the other four populations based on UPGMA dendrogram (Fig. 2). The authors then use PCA which suggests that Cluj and Salaj form a cluster distinct from the other three groups (Fig. 3), which actually matches quite well with the dendrogram in Fig. 2.  However, the authors conclude (in section 5) without mentioning either result, but saying instead that there is low genetic differentiation among the populations. 

The authors should include their dataset as a supplement to their paper.  This is expected now for publication in indexed scientific journals and will enhance the value of this publication.

Abstract

Lines 18, 25: Species binomial needs italics in the first sentence and last sentence.

Line 27 “oak” not “oaks”

 

Introduction

Line 32 “genera” not “genres”

Line 50: Sentence needs fixed. “For approximately 30-40 years ago” is not correct. Instead say “For the last 30-40 years, in Europe” or “Starting 30-40 years ago, in Europe…”

Line 50: Also “Europe, as well as in Romania,” is not correct.  Need to say “Europe and Romania in particular,”  Otherwise, the sentence says to the reader that Romania is not in Europe.  Revise the sentence to make clearer what you want to say. How does disease spread relate to the objectives of this study? 

Line 53 “climate-change”  missing an “e”

Line 55 “Withall that the phenomenon…”  This sentence is not clear.  “withall” is not a correct word in this context. “assimilated” is not an appropriate word either.  Wording in this paragraph needs clarification.

 

Results

Line 192: This sentence does not make sense.  Should “were Nei’s” be “where Nei’s”?  Something is not correct here.

 

Discussion

Line 212: “genetic diversity in”…

Line 226: “A similar situation has been noted for”??

Line 227 “Thailand to” not sure what the “to” means here.  Not clear where Lebanon oak was studied.  Sentence needs improved structure.

Line 229: “average record” is unclear. Can say “average score” or “The average Shannon’s index (I) value…”

Line 235: “,higher than” is unclear. Use “, which was higher than” instead.

Line 262: “dieback”

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The quality of the paper has been greatly improved after revision, and I have no other comments

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have responded to my comments

As far as I can tell the quality of English is improved