Recovery and Germination of Malus sieversii (Ledeb.) M. Roem. (Rosaceae) Seeds after Ingestion by Cattle, Horses, and Sheep
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
In general terms the topic of the article is interesting, the methodology is explicitly presented and the results reported are interesting.
The introduction chapter should end with a paragraph indicating the purposefulness of the conducted research. Authors should clearly define the purpose of the work and formulate research hypotheses.
Keywords should not duplicate information from the Title of the work. This should be amended.
Discussion part should be separate from the result because some time authors did not discussed some part and wait till the end of the results
All Fig and tables must be self-explanatory what the mean of bar in the fig and how many replicate you used
Make sure that all scientific names in the References list are italics.
Please add the DOI for ALL the References
The paper needs some editorial corrections.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
This MS presents results of a study assessing the consequences of ingestion by different livestock on seed survivorship and seed germination characteristics of wild apples. This is an interesting field of research, and of considerable importance to management, The MS is fairly well written (some minor considerations are presented below), and the subject is certainly of interest to the multi-disciplinary readership of "Sustainability". The MS suffers from focusing too much on subjects or minutiae that detract from the larger and more important management issues that it actually could address if the authors take more time and effort to do so in their revision. Specifically:
Introduction:
A lot of attention is given to what I'd call "basic textbook ecology". The purpose of this study should be on how its results can be applied; as much as I love the basic ecology of seed dispersal, that isn't what this study is assessing, since dispersal effectiveness can only be implied from the results, and is not directly assessed. A clearer statement addressing the management issues of livestock utilization on wild apple populations is very much needed. The world loves apples, and keeping the wild populations and their genetic diversity intact is of considerable importance, and needs solid, ecological hypothesis-driven research to help formulate effective management approaches. There is some material in the discussion section (see below) that could be used to this more effectively.
Materials/Methods:
1) Need to provide a solid justification for the number of seeds introduced into the livestock feed. An apple typically has 5-8 seeds per fruit, so 1500 seeds is something in the range of 185 to 300 fruits - and I have no idea if cows, horses, or sheep eat this many fruit across any timeframe (hours? days?). Giving an indication of this would help in the meaningful application of the results to real-life management.
2) Designation of controls ("CK") is presented in a table, and nowhere in the text (including the abstract). Annoying and highly frustrating. I also found the treatment designation abbreviations distracting. Why "CS" or "SS", and "HS"? What does that "S" stand for? Seed? S**t? Why not just state which animal ingested the seeds and leave it at that, or do a better job of presenting them (i.e. "We compared post-ingestion seed characteristics and germination performance of horse-ingested, cow-ingested, and sheep-ingested seeds (hereafter "HS", "CS" and "SS", respectively) to control seeds that had not transited through any livestock digestion system (hereafter "CK").
3) Some of the sub-sections read a bit like a cook-book, telling me what to do, not a succinct narrative of what was done. I especially bring lines 98-106 to your attention; the difference in tense compared to the other sections is poor writing.
4) It is not clear to me if the correct ANOVA approach has been applied. Much of what I see would lend itself to a repeated-measures model, but this is not what was done. Consider consulting with a qualified statistician to come up with a better and more rigorous statistical approach.
Discussion:
This section needs considerable revision, as too much space is given to confirming mechanisms found in other studies - this literature could be better used in the introduction to frame specific hypotheses regarding what the outcomes should be - and not enough to the management issues this study has more direct bearing on. Authors main point in this regard is "you shouldn't let livestock eat these apples if you want to have a sustainable yield of seeds.". There is much more in this study than that. For instance, cold stratification was differentially expressed between controls and cattle-ingested seeds, with the latter requiring a longer cold-stratification period, yet nothing about this is discussed, and it should, since this kind of information is important to managing the plant, not the animals. Given that control seeds were equally as good at germinating, suggesting harvesting apples and keeping seeds in reserve would be prudent, especially given the heavy livestock use evidenced in this study. Management issues like these need to be more fully explored and presented.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear Editor
This study is a valuable research that showing a new approach to rangeland as well conservation of endangered taxa. However some comments can be effective to improve the manuscript
Title
Please write full scientific name including Malus sieversii (Ledeb.) M.Roem. (Rosaceae)
Introduction
What hypothesis follow this study? Please describe the idea clearly in conservation approach
Study area and sampling
Study area need to improvement including geology, geomorphology, climatology, pedology as well other ecological factors.
I suggest that this section can be divided to physical geography(geo, clime and etc.) and biological and ecological geography(e.g. plant formation, vegetation as well floristic features)
Which method follow this study?
How much trees was sampled?
What is the distance the sampling?
Do you attention to ecological factors in sampling?
to feeding several variable should be considered : the age range of cattle, sheep and horses.
The body size, age, and other biological features should be done in feeding.
Discussion
please pay attention to conservation achievements
How complementary study do you suggests in order to conservation actions?
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors have done a thorough job of revising the MS, and by and large it is close to being ready for publication. I still think a repeated-measures ANOVA would be an appropriate way to analyze the data, especially the germination and water uptake data. But seeing as they now present their sample size across accumulative data such as retention time, I think their analysis is conservative enough to accept, but I feel the need more information to be provided to be certain. First, provide a bit more detail on how the ANOVAs were set up in the Materials and Methods. For example, something like this: "Differences in final percent recovery and mean seed transit time were tested between the three types of animal (df = 3-1 = 2) using one-way ANOVA, (error df = 3 x (3-1) = 6), with alpha-adjusted post-hoc means testing via least significant difference tests." A similar statement would need to be made for those analyses such as germination and water uptake comparing ingested vs. control seeds would need to be made - especially since I'm not sure exactly what numbers are going into the final analysis (time to germination? Total percent germinated? Germination rate?). One thing that must be done is present the actual F-test results (F-test value and degrees freedom for the effect and error), either in a table or in the body of the text. As an example with made up numbers using the ANOVA error structure presented above: "There was a significant difference in seed retention time between sheep-, horse-, and cattle-ingested seeds (F2,6 = 21.02; p = 0.002)". doing so would be better than just presenting a p-value cut-off, and would clearly show the data was correctly analyzed. Don't dismiss my suggestions and assume to lecture me on how to perform and present ANOVA and RM-ANOVA; I've been using and presenting results from both for nearly thirty years.
Finally, there is no evidence that the data for this study has been placed in a repository for open access and review, not to mention use by future researchers. At the very least, a supplementary file with the data could be provided for download. As a reviewer, I often like to get a peek at the data if it has been provided - it helps in better understanding how and why the study was done and how it was analyzed.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
