Habitat Conditions and Tree Species Shape Liana Distribution in a Subtropical Forest

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The present manuscript is based on a short-time (one month of 2017) and local (within an area of 400 m × 500 m) study. So considerable limitations doesn't allow the authors making conclusions stated in the manuscript.

One more limitations concerns the relationships of lianas and other plants. The authors have ignored herbaceous plants. Despite they don't play considerable role in reaching the canopy layer by lianas, the species diversity and abundance are important at the early stages of liana ontogenesis (starting from seedling stage). 

In addition, research tasks and hypotheses were weak and were not reached. For instance, the authors “hypothesized that lianas in this subtropical forest exhibited a preference for drier and hotter habitats”, while they didn't study the parameters of soil moisture, illumination or temperature in each site. The studied elevation, slope, convexity, and aspect are not related to answer this question. The third research task (how do tree species influence the diversity and distribution of liana?) is too general. In relation to trees, the authors measured only DBH, diversity (what is it? Number of species or some biodiversity indices? it is not understandable), and abundance. But the authors didn't measure percent cover of trees (as well as herbaceous plants, which were ignored completely). In addition, if data about abundance of lianas are presented in Table 1, there are no any data about diversity, abundance, and species composition of trees. Therefore, we cannot estimate the validity of the obtained results and final conclusions.

In addition, I didn't say about the formatting of the manuscript. This paper is not formatted according to the guidelines for authors of the journal Forests. References are not cited in brackets with the number of reference. In the References section, all sources are arranged in alphabetical order. This is not suitable for this high-quality journal. I guess that the authors didn't use the Manuscript Template proposed by the Journal.

Due to the flaws in the methodology, I didn't focus on results, because it is needed to correct methodological part of the study to obtained assessable results and conclusions. In addition, such limitations as short timespan of the study and its local scale doesn't allow me to recommend this manuscript for considering it to be published in Forests.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

I have read the whole manuscript and the well-structured set by the authors helps a lot to provide a fear judgment. There are a few statements made by the authors I support strongly, namely:

Knowledge about liana´s ecology and its relevance in subtropical areas is limited.

Habitat changes and foreseen scenarios of liana´s ecology are important in the light of current climatic trends.

These two statements are the main reason why I regard this contribution as worth publishing with perhaps a few minor considerations.

 

Suggestions to be considered:

1.- In the introduction, there is limited background on climatic effects in subtropical areas. All transitional ecosystems are the ones most vulnerable to these climatic trends and this is mentioned in the paper as a core issue. Yet it has been poorly addressed.

2.- Some of the hypotheses are rather unsupported by the short introduction (We hypothesized that lianas in this subtropical forest exhibited a preference for drier and hotter habitats for their demographic advantage over tree species under such habitat condition.). This is not needed at all, and eventually may be discussed in such section.

3.- Concerning data analyses, the whole database seems to be a perfect design to have been submitted to multivariate analyses (CCA and NMMS). These types of analyses would have provided a sound statistical summary of the relationships among liana-tree species. The data analyses used are fine, but the outcome and presentation are not integrative.

 

I was surprised not to see Solanaceae as part of the families behaving as lianas in subtropical ecosystems. See e.g., Albuquerque, Lidiamar Barbosa, Alejandro Velázquez, and Rafel Mayorga-Saucedo. "Solanaceae composition, pollination and seed dispersal syndromes in Mexican Mountain Cloud Forest." Acta Botanica Brasilica 20 (2006): 599-613.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Unfortunately, the response of the authors do state that the presented problems cannot be solved in this paper. Therefore, these problems still present. The added corrections are minor, and it doesn't change the quality and level of the manuscript. 

If the Editor considers that I am not right, I advise to invite one more reviewer.