Invasive Plant Species Demonstrate Enhanced Resource Acquisition Traits Relative to Native Non-Dominant Species but not Compared with Native Dominant Species

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I find the categorization of plant functional groups and the application of phylogenetic ecological methods to be sound and of interest to a broad audience. The results that show no significant or consistent differences among IDS, INS, and NDS is of great interest, in addition to no difference among all groups for certain functional traits, like seed weight. Indeed, the authors should emphasize the similarity between IDS and NDS as strongly as they emphasize the similarity of IDS and INS.

My only real concern that is the 144 vascular plant species come from regularly disturbed environments ("wastelands" - 2nd paragraph of Materials and Methods). Thus, the lack of differences between IDS, INS, and NDS could be that they are all adapted to disturbance prone environments, which might include an ability to prosper on soil nutrients that are freely available (e.g., independent of soil microbes including mycorrhizae because regular disturbance impacts soil health). Regardless, the finding of many native plant species (94), compared to the relatively fewer introduced plant species (50), living in such disturbance prone environments is notable and should be emphasized. Many people think that plants native to a particular region of the world are not as adapted to regular disturbance compared to introduced plant species. I think this paper underscores a general finding that this is not true.

 

Minor issues:

The link to Kew's database of seed weights page does not work.

Page 3, line 316 (that before the Conclusion section): change "found" to "find" (or change to "did not find differences in seed weight among all groups")

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The English reads well.

Author Response

Thanks for your suggestions. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

See attached file

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx