Diversity and Structure of Vegetation Rhizosphere Bacterial Community in Various Habitats of Liaohekou Coastal Wetlands
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The publication submitted for review, entitled Diversity and structure of vegetation rhizosphere bacterial community in various habitats of Liaohekou Coastal Wetlands complements the current knowledge on microorganisms associated with the wetland rhizosphere. Despite the fact that the article is very interesting and well illustrated, it requires some corrections. First of all, the abstract is too general, it should be slightly detailed. Give the most important research methods, indicate the coordinates of the research area. In my opinion, it does not encourage you to quote the article. Keywords should not repeat those contained in the title. The introduction is written to the point of the 63rd verse. Later, up to verse 73, it contains a methodological description. It is better to indicate a specific research aim and research assumptions / hypotheses. Chapter 2.2 should be rewritten and completed. How many samples were taken for the research in total? What was the difference between the research plots and where does the nomenclature of the trials come from? While this can be guessed from Figure 1, it requires a brief explanation. Were there only 7 attempts? What was the control? How were the samples taken - what, at what depth? What plants were these trials associated with? Figure 6 is illegible (small print). Chapter 3.3 is very modest. Interpretation of the description is made difficult by the previously unexplained description of the trials - what do CUL and PAD mean? The CUL and PAD trials differ from the others. Why? It would be advisable to include detailed results of the analysis of bacterial rhizosphere communities in the form of an appendix. Can some of the bacteria be specific to a given plant community or be related to a specific plant?
Hope the article will be improved and submitted for re-review.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Review- Sustainability 2005183
In the manuscript entitled “Diversity and structure of vegetation rhizosphere bacterial community in various habitats of Liaohekou Coastal Wetlands”, the authors used high-throughput sequencing to characterize soil bacterial community composition and metabolism in different stations which differ concerning their vegetation coverage and environmental parameters. I think that the manuscript presents some interesting findings, which could be useful in general understanding of the ecology of coastal wetlands; however, it is poorly structured. Indeed, important information, notably concerning how and why analyses were performed, is missing in the Materials and Methods section. I however found that the Conclusions section was well-written and structured. I have listed below all my other comments.
L43: Reference missing for this statement.
L46-47: “its essence is an estuary wetland suitable for multiple biological reproductions formed by the deposition of a large amount of nutrients carried by fresh water and mutual immersion and mixing with seawater.” I don’t understand the meaning of this sentence, please reformulate it.
L60-61 and L63-64. These two sentences say the same information. Please combine them into one sentence.
L64-65. “In this study, typical vegetation communities rhizosphere soils in Liaohekou Coastal Wetlands were taken as the object”. What do you mean by “taken as the object”? Please reformulate.
L66-68. I think a subject is missing before “extracted total DNA of samples, carried out PCR amplification, purification and 66 quantitative operations, and conducted a preliminary study on soil and plant rhizosphere 67 bacteria through high-throughput sequencing platform”
L86-87. This sentence should be put in the Study area subsection before.
L86-95. The explanation of the different abbreviations for the stations is missing, which is detrimental for the whole understanding of the manuscript.
L97. Figure 1. Were the pictures taken by one of the authors? If not, please make sure that these pictures can be used. In addition, the explanation of the abbreviations (PAD, Su, CUL, Ph) should be explained in the caption.
L99. Please add a reference for this 1:10 soil-to-water ratio.
L106-107. Before performing ANOVAs, assumptions of normality of residuals and homogeneity of variance (homoscedasticity) should be checked (for example with the Shapiro-Wilk and Levene tests). How did you check for these assumptions? Please indicate.
L122. “Normalized” should be replaced by “normalizing”.
L128 and L131. “R Package”. Which package from R? Please indicate.
L146-150. These are interesting results; however, I do not see the link between them. As for now, it seems like a series of results with no apparent link.
L156. “Observed’otus” should be replaced by observed OTUs.
L163. You did not present the Kruskal-Wallis test in the Material and Method section before using it. Please indicate why and when did you use it.
L167. What do you mean by “insignificant distribution”?
L189, L192, L195, L203, L213, L229, L274.I think that “flora” is not adequate when speaking of bacteria, please change the term.
L196. To phototrophic what? A word is missing.
L204. What type of correlation did you use (Pearson, Spearman)? Please indicate.
L215. Please indicate to what correspond abbreviations of the stations in the caption.
L217. Figure 4. Very interesting analysis. However, you must present how and why you performed this analysis in the Material and Methods section.
L227. Again, you must present the Mantel test and its goal in the Material and Methods section. On a general note, I think that a clear section presenting which statistical analyses and why you performed them is missing in your manuscript.
L258. I think a subject (we?) is missing in the sentence: “Use FAPROTAX to conduct functional prediction analysis on environmental samples”. In addition, you should present this analysis also in the Material and Method section.
L262-268. As an example, these sentences should be put in the Material and Method section instead.
L334. “constructed” should be “constructing” I think.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Thank you for your review and for having carefully taken into account my comments and those of the other reviewer. I think that the method section is much clearer now. I only have a few mino comments that I listed below:
L150 of the corrected manuscript: “was made with using Kruskal-Wallis…” “with” should be removed.
L169 of the corrected manuscript: Does OmicStudio tools run with R? If not, why keep the reference to R version 4.0.3 if nothing was done with R?
L367 of the corrected manuscript: “… of bacterial community vary significantly..” “vary” should be replaced by “varied”.
Author Response
Response to Reviewers
General: Thank you for your review and for having carefully taken into account my comments and those of the other reviewer. I think that the method section is much clearer now. I only have a few mino comments that I listed below.
Response: Again, we would like to express our heartfelt thanks to you and other anonymous reviewers for the valuable suggestions. In the Acknowledgment Section, we mentioned the important role of your suggestions in improving this paper.
Comment 1: L150 of the corrected manuscript: “was made with using Kruskal-Wallis...” “with” should be removed.
Response: According to your suggestion, corrections have been made in the revised version. Please see Line 143.
Comment 2: L169 of the corrected manuscript: Does OmicStudio tools run with R? If not, why keep the reference to R version 4.0.3 if nothing was done with R?
Response: Thanks for pointing that out. The developer of this tool commented that most of the functions of the tools were implemented through R. Therefore, to ensure the accuracy of the reference, we marked the version of R used by the developer after the reference of this online analysis tool.
Comment 3: L367 of the corrected manuscript: “...of bacterial community vary significantly..” “vary” should be replaced by “varied”.
Response: The word has been modified following your suggestion. Please see Line 354 in the revised version.
