Differential Responses of Food Web Properties to Opposite Assembly Rules and Species Richness

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Overall I found the paper interesting and well presented. I have two comments / concerns that should be addressed by the authors.

First, just to eliminate any confusion, I suggest that you explicitly define the metrics you are considering. For example, richness and evenness are often used to describe the number of species in a community and how they evenly they are distributed. In this paper, the authors are really measuring FUNCTIONAL richness and abundance. This should be made clear very early in the paper.

Perhaps more importantly, it is not clear to me why the authors did not consider the random model in their analyses after Figure 3. They state that teh observed changes were remarkably similar to the simulated random, niche filtering, and limiting similarity scenarios but in my reading they do not explain why they did not consider the random model in subsequent analyses (e.g. Figure 4 or 5). Since the random model essentially serves as a null hypothesis, it would seem that the authors need to reject that model prior to further consideration of the two alternatives.

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for these important comment. We've added a description of the metrics we're considering.（P4, L141）

Perhaps our description of the standardized effect size is not clear enough, SES describes the shift basis of limiting similarity and niche filtering based on random scenarios, the relevant part is on p5，L191.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Overall, I found the manuscript to be well written and organized with proper use of English. However, my propose to the authors is to add a table, as an appendix, with some hydrological and morphological features of the studied lakes (e.g. mean ± SD, min, max of surface area, mean- max depth, trophic status etc). This will help the reader to have an idea of the ecosystems examined.

My general propose is the manuscript to be accepted for publication in the journal Water with minor revision.

Below are some specific comments (mainly editorial) for the authors.

 

Ln 62: replace “a” with “an”

Line 82: reference 22 does not correspond to Zhang et al. Please replace with reference number 23

Lns 95 and 97: I’m a little confused, 165 or 88 lakes? Do you mean 165 fish assemblages from 88 lakes? Please verify and correct accordingly in the text

Ln 109: does reference number 23 referred properly here?

Ln 115: Ref 26 should be Ref 27. Please correct references numbering hereafter

Ln 139: Ref 33 should be Ref 35

Ln 188: Ref 41-42 or 42-43?

Ln 225: “were significantly lower” do you mean statistically significant lower? Please add the statistical test used and p value (….. test, p<0….) whenever you use the term significant

Ln 238: replace “offish” with “of fish”

Lin 265: replace ‘represents” with “represent”

Ln 266: delete “for”

Ln 267: replace “are” with “is”

Ln 269: replace “showed” with “show”

Ln 277, 278 and 280: replace “was” with “were”

Lns 310-311: Mac Arthur and Levins 1967 does not correspond to Ref number 45. Please correct. Author names should be deleted

Ln 322: replace “prevent” with “prevents”

Ln 368: add a comma (,) after “extinction” and after “degradation”

Ln 369: add a comma (,) after “occurs”

Ln 369: a verb is missing, “…..loss occurs, is (remains) a challenging….?”

Ln 388: replace “insight” with “insights”

Author Response

Point 1：Overall, I found the manuscript to be well written and organized with proper use of English. However, my propose to the authors is to add a table, as an appendix, with some hydrological and morphological features of the studied lakes (e.g. mean ± SD, min, max of surface area, mean- max depth, trophic status etc). This will help the reader to have an idea of the ecosystems examined.

Response ：We thank the reviewer for this important comment. The table on the hydrological and morphological features of the studied lakes has been added on P 13, L 417.

Point 2: I’m a little confused, 165 or 88 lakes? Do you mean 165 fish assemblages from 88 lakes? Please verify and correct accordingly in the text.   Response ：A total of 165 lakes were involved in the study.Through field surveys, we collected corresponding fish combinations from 88 lakes.and information about the remaining 77 lakes came from previous studies. We have corrected it. (P 3, L 96)   Point 3: Word spelling and other issues. Response ：We have corrected the questions raised by the reviewers and marked them in the annex.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Ι believe the manuscript has been improved according to the recommendations. Some minor additional corrections are provided below.

P2, L50 replace metacommunites  with metacommunities

P3 L98 replace  The hydrological and morphological features see Table A with Some of their hydrological and morphological features are shown in Table A

P3 L99-100 the paragraph should appear as ......2012 in 88 lakes, while for the rest lakes fish assemblages were refer to previous studies.  

P9 L290 and 291 add a space after were 

 

Author Response

Response to the reviewer's comments

P2, L50 replace metacommunites  with metacommunities

Reply: We corrected it according to the reviewer's suggestion.

 

P3 L98 replace  The hydrological and morphological features see Table A with Some of their hydrological and morphological features are shown in Table A

Reply: We replaced the expression according to your suggestion.

 

P3 L99-100 the paragraph should appear as ......2012 in 88 lakes, while for the rest lakes fish assemblages were refer to previous studies.  

Reply: We corrected it.

 

P9 L290 and 291 add a space after were

Reply: Sorry, we could not find the word "were".

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx