Response of Soil Microbial Communities to Warming and Clipping in Alpine Meadows in Northern Tibet

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript by Zhang et al, described the responses of soil microbial communities among different alpine meadows to warming and clipping. This was studied using the phospholipid fatty-acid (PLFA) method, describing that both warming and clipping significantly reduced the PLFA content in high altitude meadows, which was associated to a change in microbial communities, however, al low altitude meadows only clipping changed the microbial composition.  This manuscript is of potential interest for the Sustainability readers and will complement previous research of the effect of environmental conditions on microbial communities therefore being of importance for a broader audience. Overall this manuscript is of interest but could benefits from some edits.

Major comments:

The authors used PLFA content to study the response of soil microbial communities to different environmental conditions. Although this is a powerful tool, the interpretation of these results has been a matter of debate by different authors. Specifically, it has been described that changes in environmental conditions and cell activity may affect the composition of PLFA, therefore, changes in the in fatty acid composition may not necessarily denote changes in community structure as the authors mentioned in this manuscript. Although I agree that the PLFA methods could be a really useful technique to understand the relationship between microbial populations and the environment, the interpretation from PLFA results should be done carefully. To this end, I suggest the authors should be more conservative in their conclusions and discussed the potential caveats of their interpretations

Why molecular approaches were not used to complement this research? Such as Next generation sequence technology.

Minor comments:

All abbreviations should be defined, please check throughout the manuscript.

Lines 17-18: This phrase is odd. It seemed that the authors were referring to both altitudes but then only mentioned the low altitude and did not referred the middle altitude.

Lines 49-50: Why? Please include more information to support this statement.

Line 70: change “are” by “were”.

Line 73: should not be alpine Kobresia meadows instead of alpine steppe meadows?

Line 74: Please define OTC.

Line 79: Define Ts.

Line 86: It is not clear what is the difference between “warming and clipping, CL” and “warming and clipping, W + CL”. Why clipping no warming was not tested? I guess CL is just clipping and there is just a typo in the text.

Lines 94-95: This phrase is odd. Of soil nitrogen nitrogen?

Line 100-103: Not all living organisms have PLFA, archaea for example. Moreover, PLFA content do not necessarily is going to reflect community structure since PLFA content could change due to environmental conditions and/or cell activity. The authors should take this into account.

Line 101: Please change the word flora by microbiota.

Line 122: Define SM.

Lines 130-134: abbreviations should be defined here.

Line 251: Please provide reference for Joseph et al.

All tables should be fixed thus names are not cutted in half.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments

Broad Comments:

PLFA biomarkers often depict the broad structure of the microbial communities in the samples. It can also predict the distribution pattern of active soil microbial communities and factors that influence this structure.  I suggest using community “structure” in the place “composition” throughout the manuscript due to the limitation of PLFA methods in predicting the entire community diversity.

Specific Comments

There are several language and style editing required to make the manuscript flow readable. I have highlighted few. Please make changes appropriately.

Line 27: restructure this sentence. “Soil microorganisms are not only an important part of microorganisms”.

Line41-42 : restructure this sentence. Sounds like you are explaining two conditions in which warming had an effect.

Line 74: Expand “OTC”

Line 86: Is this a typo? What does “CL” stand for.? Does is stand for clipping and now arming? Consider expanding treatments warming alone(W) and clipping alone (CL).

Line 94: “nitrate” nitrogen

Line 100-107: What software package did you use to identify the PLFA markers? 

Results section: Consider including a table for mantel test results

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments to the Editors/Authors:

This is a well-conducted review study on  "Response of soil microbial community to warming and clipping in alpine meadows, the Northern Tibet. " Nevertheless, this work might be polished up, taking into account the following suggestions:

-During the initial checking of the manuscript, we saw that it is missing the last author's name. Please kindly add the missing author's name in your paper.

-Line 232: Table S2 ?

ABSTRACT: Well described. You can add some numerical results in the abstract.

INTRODUCTION: Well described.

METHODS: Well described.

RESULTS and DISCUSSION: Well described with a thorough critique.

CONCLUSION: Well described

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf