Plant Functional Traits of Plants Species Colonizing Forest Gaps

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript is well written, and it deserves to be published. But some corrections are needed.

The title is good and informative

I recommend to add more quantitative parameters to the abstract. More number of them will make the abstract to be more readable and attractive for reading the full text.

Please, don't use key words, which are present in the title. I recommend to change such key words to other ones.

The Introduction is very informative and well written. I think that it is good as it is. 
But I strongly recommend to state the aim and research tasks. Now the authors write what did you done, but not the aim and tasks (maybe, hypotheses, too?). The other parts of the Introduction are good.

The section Material and Methods is almost well written. Just some corrections are needed.
For instance, in Table 1, please, add N and E instead of X and Y for coordinates. Also, for altitude, please, use "m a.s.l." instead of "m" (which is used for the distance).
In general, this section is well written. All methods and approaches are described in details, and I have no serious requests.

Like other sections, Results is relatively well written. I have just some requests. For instance, in Fig. 1, please, try to use box-plots to show bars of the standard deviation. It will allow to readers to see more informatively, where there are significant differences. Now, this is not always obviously seen.
The same concerns other graph plots. In addition, please, try to use another colour scheme because in black/white colour demonstration, some colours seem to be non-different. 
Finally, almost all figures in the section are similar in terms of the form and structure of graphs. I would recommend to group some or all of these figures to a few number (1-2-3) of complex figures.

I have no considerable comments to the section Discussion. The authors well explained their results in light of the current references. I think the authors did it well.

Conclusions section contains research implications on the basis of the presented results and their consequent discussion. I think that this section, as well as the whole paper is well suitable.

In the text, there are grammar and punctuation mistakes. For instance, "flys" instead "flies" (line 17), "hamephytes" instead of "chamaephytes" (line 16), etc. - through the text. The authors should double check the whole manuscript by avoiding such cases.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

According to Your suggestion, we added some quantification to the abstract, changed the key words as much as possible and added some hypothesis to the introduction. We also corrected the Table 1 and grouped graphs into three groups. We also gave text for proofreading to the translator.

 

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript submitted for review concerns plant functional traits of plants species colonizing forest gaps. It is an interesting topic with scientific potential. The introduction is written correctly, although it should be checked in terms of language, as it contains minor errors. The subject and scope of research is presented correctly. The issue is presented in an appropriate way.

The manuscript needs linguistic proofreading. Tasks are repeated (e.g. the first two sentences in the Abstract) and do not bring new information. I recommend that the Authors either edit the text themselves or commission this work to a person fluent in English.

The Materials and Methods chapter needs to be supplemented with a situational map. The authors give geographical coordinates, which is commendable. However, it requires the reader to independently search for the research area on the maps. It is cumbersome and time-consuming. For this reason, it is necessary to add maps. In addition, in this case, orophotomaps (thanks to which it would be easier to orientate yourself in the field) would work well. In addition, photos presenting the research area would be useful. It will certainly increase the value of the manuscript.

The Results lack the presentation of the partial results obtained. The authors present only the results of statistical analyses, without presenting the baseline results. This gap must be filled. The presented table is difficult to read. You should think, for example, about dividing it into parts, adding colors or using charts. Standard errors are missing from Fig. 1.

The discussion and conclusions are correct

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

According to Your suggestion, we gave the paper for the proofreading to the translator. We added the map of research localities. We corrected the table in the way that we coloured each second plant functional trait row. We think that dividing it into more parts will make it no easier to read.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors made corrections to the manuscript, but they are still insufficient. Fig.1 is not a map - it must be corrected in accordance with cartographic requirements. In addition, in its current form it is completely illegible. My additional comments (listed below) were not taken into account by the Authors, neither in the responses to the reviews nor in the manuscript.

 In addition, photos presenting the research area would be useful. It will certainly increase the value of the manuscript.

The Results lack the presentation of the partial results obtained. The authors present only the results of statistical analyses, without presenting the baseline results. This gap must be filled.

 

Minor editing of English language required

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We corrected the map of research localities, added photos of research loacilites and added partial results.

All the best, Blanka