Interspecies Association and Community Stability of Plants in the Core Distribution Area of Thuja sutchuenensis

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)

 

In the Abstract, the tense of the results sentences should be expressed in past tense. The authors should revise. As well, this happens in Methods section.

 

On Line 80, is it “nature” or “natural”?

On Line 111, “recorded”?

On Line 112, the authors mentioned “abundance”, how did you quantify that? Moreover, the shrub and herb sample suplots were set up in each arbor sample plot, right? I do not believe the current rephrase is clear enough.

 

There exist a number of singulars and plurals English usage errors.

 

Table 1 gives one not proper and elegent way to show the data. Please carefully check “Forests” or other forestry journals for the right way to list the data, where is the unit written, how to show mean and sd, etc.

 

Why Table 2 shows the example of contingency table? Why is it an example? Also, in Table 3, what does it mean “VR”? As a scientific article, the tables and figures should be readable by itself.

 

Many citations are shown in the references list.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)

Dear authors,

I find your manuscript significantly improved but still needing dome corrections as follows:

1) Line 29 -You have cited here reference [2]. Where is [1]?

2) Line 32 - You have cited here references [4,6]. Where are [3] and [5]? May be it should be [4-6] but [3] is still missing.

3) Line 39 - You have cited here references [8,10]. Where are [7] and [9]?

4) Check the Reference list. These number are missing there too. So, you have to reorder all you references starting by [1] both in the text and in the list.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)

1. In Table 4, what does Oik mean? The meaning of the abbreviation is needed.

2. The authors mentioned that they have changed "abundance" to "richness", but in the current version, it is abundance somewhere on Line 126. It is misunderstanding.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

Your work aims to understand the interspecific relationship between endangered species and associated species in the community which is of great significance to their conservation. Your findings are of high scientific interest and practical application.

I would like to propose some corrections to the text as follows:

1) Please, change the sign "†" that you have used to mark the contribution of first two authors. This cross is very similar to the major symbol of the Christianity religion. When it is placed after a person's name that means that this person is dead. As I understand, the case here is different.

I think also that you can use the Author contribution paragraph at the end of manuscript for stating your contributions.

2) Line 4, 16, 76, 181, 205, 257, 260, 304, 349, 351, 354, 356, 367 and other references - Please, put the Latin name of species in italic

3) Line 16-17 - The word "wider" in this text is quite unappropriate "In the arbor layer, the niche width of Thuja sutchuenensis is the widest, while in the shrub layer, the niche width of Thuja sutchuenensis is wider ....".

May be to replace with "relatively high" or other.

Line 26 - The genus name should be in italic also

4) Line 80 - Table 1 should be placed after Line 106 (where it is mentioned for the first time)

5) Lines 100-103 - Please, give some information and cite some references here in order to explain how the measurements of DBH and tree height have been done (instrument description), how do you have determined the species names, coverage, abundance, etc.

6) Line 120 - Table 2 should be placed after Line 151

7) Figure 5 - I think that this sentence could be deleted "Do not display species with niche overlap index equal to zero"

8) Reference 25 - The volume of the journal is missing. Please, correct as "Cole, L.C. The measurement of interspecific association. Ecology 1949, 30(4), pp. 411–424."

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This is an interesting study of the interspecies association in the core distribution area of Thuja sutchuenensisn. However, I apologize to say the manuscript still requires huge improvement to meet the publication standard. Personally I believe that one scientific paper should convey correct and concise information to readers. I suggest the authors take your time to elaborate the text, the thorough description of methods, the standard way to present the results including tables and figures, for the preparation for the possible resubmission or to another journal.

 

To me, the whole manuscript is far insufficient and less convincing. It seems that the manuscript was under a rather rush and careless manner, and thus leading to evitable mistakes, especially grammatically. The authors conducted the research in the field sample plots, but no plot and stand information were provided in the manuscript. Just some suggestions or reminders to the authors, please allow me to list my comments as below.

 

First, most of the Methods and Results sessions should be written more clearly. The sample plots and stand information with mean DBH and tree height, etc, should be listed somewhere in the Methods. Moreover, nine sample plots seem a bit inadequate. Second, in the Methods, the tables should be near the text or after the text, but not beforehand. The figures need more deep interpretation. Third, the second paragraph of the Introduction discussed the advantage of the approach in the first sentence, however, the following text did not seem coherent.

 

Some details:

1.     Table 1, underneath the table, the explanations of the short names of the location should be given. The table title should be more explicit, like adding geographical. And, how far away of the sample plots #6-9? The longtitude and latitude of the four plots are exactly the same.

2.     Line 85, the authors state the altitude range of the studied species, but Line 96 another altitudes were written. They seem contraditory.

3.     Table 2, why there is no result of herbs? And why no AC values here? Are there any equations calculating the niche width? The authors cited the references, but the approach or models should be written in the manuscript as well. Line 125, “one sample”, is it complete?

4.      Line 35, “cypress” should be mentioned earlier. The full name of Thuja sutchuenensisn could be used in the first place, and could be written T. sutchuenensisn as follows. Please check.

 

 

Author Response

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