Cultivation and Molecular Studies to Reveal the Microbial Communities of Groundwaters Discharge Located in Hungary

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors addressed most previous issues; however, there is still a need for language editing.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper presents a characterization of the microorganisms living in aquatic environments (samples of groundwater) with a low availability of organic substances and nutrients. The quality of the paper has certainly improved over the previous version (WATER 1057223). However, some points remain to be addressed.

In the abstract, the relation between the presence of certain microorganisms and the development of complete biogeochemical cycles must be better highlighted.

The first three sentences (lines 11-14) must be better connected.

The novelty of the paper over the previous state of the art should be better highlighted.

Finally, in the conclusion the relationship between the quality of the water and the presence of a certain type of microorganisms should be better highlighted.  

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The work of Marwene et al. proposes a report of the microbial diversity and their metabolic capacities for microorganisms found in 12 samples.

The title is concise and appealing, however, it should be improved for a friendlier search as the article is of interest and has a decent potential of being cited. The novelty of the work is however low to mediocre.

The abstract is actually not appealing at all, I suggest the authors to rephrase, it sounds more like a brief technical note than like an abstract.

The introduction is well cited and clear, a few aspects require attention

Line 52: provide more details regarding the mutualistic relation

Materials and methods

Line 104: "immediately upon arrival" how long did it took for the samples to arrive from the site to the laboratory, even at 4°C this is a fact that can make an important difference

Line 106: Was the pH sensor calibrated prior to use? (pH 4 and 7 calibration solutions are usually used)  Hach HQ40 is a good and cheap on-field device but the pH sensor usually is off by more than 0.5 after merely two weeks of storage even if it's kept in storage solution, an water O2 saturation level check would have been a good addition to the collected field data.

Line 108: Please state the methods, using only the citation [20] is to vague in this case, a brief description of the method used is required.

Line 116: why 200 mL of water per sample? could you state a protocol? I can see that the cited Keki et al. [21] did the same, but still hasn't stated the reason why.

Line 456: "The presence of Micrarchaeiais reported in several oxygen poor aquatic environments" again, an in situ O2 water saturation evaluation should have been performed.

The style in which the entire paper is written is perhaps a bit too cautious, it's a pity that although having at disposal everything that what was needed to perform a bit more than just a report, corners were cut way too short.

Still, the paper will add value to the current literature.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

All the comments have been addressed and the paper is now suitable for publication 

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have addressed my concerns and I find the article suitable for publication