The Probability of an Unrecoverable Coral Community in Dongsha Atoll Marine National Park Due to Recurrent Disturbances

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Please have your manuscript proofed by a native English speaker.

Please reorganize tables and move elementary tables to appendixes - for example Table 1 and 2.

Refocus discussion and provide 1-3 direct and impactful management actions to follow based on the results.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Unfortunately the standard of English is poor making it difficult to read. I thus recommend that the ms be resubmitted to the journal for further refereeing once the ms has been corrected by an English speaking scientist.

I have gone though the title and abstract to show the extent of the poor English

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors listed survey data from 2005 to 2019 to show how coral ecosystems respond to natural disturbances. The title "Probability of Unrecoverable Coral Community" does not read well. 

The manuscript is not well-organized. For instance, some of the discussion in the last paragraph should be moved to the introduction.

There lacks a in-depth discussion on how different types of disturbances (SST, strong hydrodynamic disturbance namely Typhoon, and sediment) affected the ecosystems, and how the study could provide support for natural resources management. 

The authors discussed the morphology of corals, could this be due to the morphological plasticity of coral to adapt the changing environment?

I would recommend the authors to do a full proofread, there are a lots of grammar errors and typo. I only went over the first paragraph:

Line 33, will suffer instead of "will be suffered"

Line 36, if there is instead of "if there will be"

Line 37, do the authors mean "degraded" or "destroyed"?

Line 38, "have led to " instead of "have been leaded to"

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors addressed the comments well. There are still some minor grammar errors and typos in the manuscript, a thorough proofread is recommended.

Author Response

We deeply thank you for your comments and suggestion. The MS has been rechecked and all of the corrections have been clearly highlighted using the "Track Changes" function.