Scale Effects on the Relationship between Plant Diversity and Ecosystem Multifunctionality in Arid Desert Areas
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This paper explored the scale effects of plant diversity and ecosystem multifunctionality at different sampling scales and the relative contribution of different dimensions of diversity to variation in ecosystem multifunctionality. It is interesting and meaningful. However, there are some issues need to be improved before accepting it.
1. In the Abstract, “…ecological research, and although scale is an important…” is changed into “…ecological research. Although scale is an important…”. In addition, the final sentence is too long.
2. The authors should write short sentences to describe the study, avoiding the grammatical errors such as the first sentence in the Introduction.
3. Calculation of Plant Diversity should be explained in detail rather than searching the references by readers.
4. What’s LSD method and K-S test? Please clarify it.
5. “and Analysis” may be deleted in “Results and Analysis”.
6. Three titles in Discussion are the same with those in the Results. Authors should change the representation or perspective to state the Discussion.
7. There is no Conclusion in the manuscription. Please add it.
8. Please improve the resolution of figures, such as Fig.1 and Fig.2.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The present work is great and yield very good results. The following comments are hoped to improve the manuscript.
1. Page 2, Line 3: change “at home and abroad” into “in China and elsewhere”.
2. Since one-way ANOVA was performed, I assume that the number of replicates is 4. Please confirm.
3. Please find an alternative to reference 23 as it relates to European forests but not relevant to desert ecosystem.
4. Please find an alternative to reference 24 as it represents a different climate from your study area.
5. “Magalef richness index”. Spelling has to be corrected to “Margalef richness index in all the text”.
6. It would be nice to mention which parameters were used for species diversity, functional diversity and phylogenetic diversity.
7. Page 5, line 1, under 3.2. Ecosystem multifunctionality at different scales: make a space in “plot(Figure 3)”.
8. Page 8, write the scientific name Pinus radiata in italic.
9. Page 8, before the last line: make a space in “study[58]”.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
The manuscript is very interesting and is generally well structured. Just a few small corrections in some words (shown at the PDF file).
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Thanks. We have corrected the misspelled words. We have changed collaction into processing and changed chemical indexes into chemical properties, please see line 157 and line 131. We have also changed Magalef to Margalef in the full manuscript.
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
I have read the revised draft of the forests-1911860 manuscript. I believe it is now much improved and warrant publication in your respected journal.
