Mixed Plantations Improve Soil Bacterial Similarity by Reducing Heterogeneous Environmental Selection

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I commend the authors for a well-written manuscript. Figures and tables were properly prepared. Results and discussion were well-thought of.

This manuscript has the potential to get accepted in this journal, however, there are things that I feel need improvement in this manuscript that can highly improve the quality of the manuscript.

 

1.      There are some spacing issues in some sentences, correct them

2.      What is the novelty of the paper, what is new in this study that were not yet explored/examined/explained by others?

3.      Moreover, I would also like to see a line or two about the background and also about conclusion in the abstract section.

4.      What is the importance of this study?

5.      Too many aims with no clear focus on what is investigated and why? Simpler question can make it easier to understand for readers.

6.      How do the authors think this study differs from already published studies? What makes this study a critical article?

7.      Highlight the most important results especially the unique ones/novelty and make an in-depth discussion about these important results.

9.      It is better to summarize your results making some generalization of your study instead of repeating again what correlates with what.

11.  The figures and table captions can be improved and supplemented with more details.

12.  Figure-Take note of the items that must be written in superscript in X-axis and y-axis.

13.  What are the implications of the results?

14.  What is the take home message that will imprint to the minds of the readers after reading the paper? 

 

15.  The above comments should be carefully checked and identified inconsistences should be corrected throughout the manuscript.

  When using comparative adjectives, you should always provide a reference used for the comparison.  Avoid changing verbal tense within paragraphs or even sentences.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

I read the manuscript with interest. The conversion from monoculture forests to mixed forests is closely related to the change  in soil microbial. Nevertheless, the mechanisms by which monocultures or  mixed plantations influence soil bacterial are still poorly understood.
The layout of the manuscript is correct. Reading the Results section is hampered by the fact that some of the figures and tables are in the supplementary and some are in the text of the manuscript.  The reader can't focus on the text, having to look for the right figure or table every now and then. The reviewer knows that this is a difficult sentence, but perhaps the authors should give up citing some and figures from the supplementary. Often there is not enough literature in the discussion.

 

Below are the specific comments:

- I propose to change the abstract slightly. This is not the place where we state what authors hypothesis. Keywords should not duplicate words from the title of the article.
- In the introduction, please clarify what forest species the authors have in mind ( l.69).
- In the questions the authors pose, it is not clear which similarity is meant. Is it about species similarity ( which is later inferred from, for example, the use of genetic studies), or about similarity of requirements for abiotic factors ( which was also studied). We don't always find the answer to this in the results either. Especially when it comes to abiotic factors, such as pH, elemental content. In the methods it is described exactly how it was preper, but in the results it is quite difficult to find data on what came out.  

- The caption under figure 1 is too long
- Why is it not clearly described how much replicate forest quadrats.was in the Gonghe and Heshan plantations? The authors write Four to five replicate forest quadrats. It is not clear if there were the same number in each plantation (moculture and mixed)? Why were there as many as twice as many in the Pingxing location
- What does this sentence "The quadrats span similar spatial distances in all the sites"(l.173).
- You should describe the plantations more, such as when established, their age, in the case of mixed plantations, in addition to specifying the species, you should give their share, distribution.
- in the description of the PCR reaction, please indicate the number of cycles
-  The figures for w results l.269-276 should be in the manuscript not in the supplementary.
- In the Figures no explanation of what yellow and green/blue mean
- Often there is not enough literature in the discussion. The authors write "many studies" but only cited one item (l. 347, 349, 366)”

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I have no more comments.

Minor editing of English language required.