Interaction of Management and Spontaneous Succession Suppresses the Impact of Harmful Native Dominant Species in a 20-Year-Long Experiment

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors:

The manuscript Land-2100129 titled: "Spontaneous succession and management interact supressing 2 native invador midsuccessional species in a two decades long 3 experiment", is the continued work by the team of Hazi & al, and new results are originals for the territory, species, the vegetation type and the manengement in Hungary.

Házi, J.; Penksza, K.; Barczi, A.; Szentes, S.; Pápay, G. Effects of long-term mowing on biomass composition in Pannonian dry grasslands. Agron. J. 2022, 12, 1107.

Házi, J.; Bartha, S.; Szentes, S.; Wichmann, B.; Penksza, K. Seminatural grassland management by mowing of Calamagrostis epigejos in Hungary. Plant Biosyst. 2011, 145, 699–707.

Házi, J.; Bartha, S.; Szentes, S.; Wichmann, B.; Penksza, K.; Seminatural grassland management by long-term mowing of Calamagrostis epigejos in western Cserhát, Hungary (Management sekundärer Trockenrasen durch Langzeit-Mahd von Calamagrostis epigejos im westlichen Cserhát, Ungarn). In. Steppenlebensräume Europas–Gefährdung, Erhaltungsmassnahmen und Schutz; Thüringer Ministerium für Landwirtschaft, Forsten, Umwelt und Naturschutz (TMLFUN), Erfurt, ISBN 978-3-00-486 044248-3. Baumbach, H., Pfützenreuter, S. (eds.); 2013; pp. 331-340.

Probability additional references will be interest for contrast the results together references included in the manuscript, such as:

Wahlman, Henrik, and Per Milberg. “Management of Semi-Natural Grassland Vegetation: Evaluation of a Long-Term Experiment in Southern Sweden.” Annales Botanici Fennici, vol. 39, no. 2, 2002, pp. 159–66. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23726791.

Szary Małgorzata, Błońska Agnieszka, Woźniak Gabriela, Ziemer Barbara, Roszkowska Ewelina, Besler Alicja, Sierka Edyta. (2014). Changes in species composition of meadow vegetation patches dominated by Calamagrostis epigejos in response to mowing and biomass removal : [poster]. "Biodiversity Research and Conservation" (Suppl. 1, (2014), s. 83).

Aguilon, D.J., Vojtkó, A., Tölgyesi, C. et al. Karst environments and disturbance: evaluation of the effects of human activity on grassland and forest naturalness in dolines. Biologia 75, 1529–1535 (2020). https://doi.org/10.2478/s11756-020-00518-7

Additional considerations: conclusions: OK; methodology: OK; tables and figures: the figure 5 I will be reduce and transform to table with the main covert species by year and plot.

Need review the symbology characters in figure 5, it's not complete

Need review the references in "Other studies that used permanent plots.." line 296 include references.
Also in the line 300 ("Literature rarely reports about the intraction of management and successional ..") the same: include references.

 

Author Response

Detailed response to Referees:

Referee’s comment are with black letters, our responses in italics and in blue colors.

 

Referee 1.

Dear authors:

The manuscript Land-2100129 titled: "Spontaneous succession and management interact supressing  native invador midsuccessional species in a two decades long experiment", is the continued work by the team of Hazi & al, and new results are originals for the territory, species, the vegetation type and the manengement in Hungary.

Response: We are grateful to Referee 1 for the positive evaluation and for suggestions that helped us to improve our MS. We respond point to point to your comments below.

 

Házi, J.; Penksza, K.; Barczi, A.; Szentes, S.; Pápay, G. Effects of long-term mowing on biomass composition in Pannonian dry grasslands. Agron. J. 2022, 12, 1107.

Házi, J.; Bartha, S.; Szentes, S.; Wichmann, B.; Penksza, K. Seminatural grassland management by mowing of Calamagrostis epigejos in Hungary. Plant Biosyst. 2011, 145, 699–707.

Házi, J.; Bartha, S.; Szentes, S.; Wichmann, B.; Penksza, K.; Seminatural grassland management by long-term mowing of Calamagrostis epigejos in western Cserhát, Hungary (Management sekundärer Trockenrasen durch Langzeit-Mahd von Calamagrostis epigejos im westlichen Cserhát, Ungarn). In. Steppenlebensräume Europas–Gefährdung, Erhaltungsmassnahmen und Schutz; Thüringer Ministerium für Landwirtschaft, Forsten, Umwelt und Naturschutz (TMLFUN), Erfurt, ISBN 978-3-00-486 044248-3. Baumbach, H., Pfützenreuter, S. (eds.); 2013; pp. 331-340.

Response: The MS submitted to Land is based on our long-term study, which had been started in 2001 and we cited some of our previous works related to the topic.

 

Probability additional references will be interest for contrast the results together references included in the manuscript, such as:

Wahlman, Henrik, and Per Milberg. “Management of Semi-Natural Grassland Vegetation: Evaluation of a Long-Term Experiment in Southern Sweden.” Annales Botanici Fennici, vol. 39, no. 2, 2002, pp. 159–66. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23726791.

Szary Małgorzata, Błońska Agnieszka, Woźniak Gabriela, Ziemer Barbara, Roszkowska Ewelina, Besler Alicja, Sierka Edyta. (2014). Changes in species composition of meadow vegetation patches dominated by Calamagrostis epigejos in response to mowing and biomass removal : [poster]. "Biodiversity Research and Conservation" (Suppl. 1, (2014), s. 83).

Aguilon, D.J., Vojtkó, A., Tölgyesi, C. et al. Karst environments and disturbance: evaluation of the effects of human activity on grassland and forest naturalness in dolines. Biologia 75, 1529–1535 (2020). https://doi.org/10.2478/s11756-020-00518-7

Response: We are grateful to Referee 1 for the suggested references. We included them in the new version of our MS.

 

Additional considerations: conclusions: OK; methodology: OK; tables and figures: the figure 5 I will be reduce and transform to table with the main covert species by year and plot. Need review the symbology characters in figure 5, it's not complete

Response: Thank you for these suggestions. We agree that our figure 5 was not clearly presented. Therefore, it was completely revised (reduced and colors changed) and it was moved from the MS to the Supplementary material (as Fig. S6). We did not deleted it completely, because we needed to refer this information when we reported the behavior of subordinate species.

Need review the references in "Other studies that used permanent plots.." line 296 include references.
Also in the line 300 ("Literature rarely reports about the intraction of management and successional ..") the same: include references.

Response: We accepted this suggestion and several new references were included. Please, see in the revised text.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

land-2100129-peer-review

Article entitled Spontaneous succession and management interact supressing 2 native invador midsuccessional species in a two decades long 3 experiment has many shortcomings but has the potential to be published at Land after major revision. Long-term studies on the permanent plots are rare and especially valuable.

Major comments are listed below:

1. Lines 2-3: ‘supressing’, ‘native invador midsuccessional’ – there are no such terms in English.

2. There is no such term as ‘native invader’. The term invader (invasive species) is strictly defined and refers only to alien species. In the case of an indigenous species spreading intensively at the expense of others, the term expansive species is used. Please change the whole article.

3. The same is true of the term ‘grassland invasion’, please change on grassland expansion/succession.

4. The background in Introduction about Calamagrostis epigejos (lines 56-67) is deficient, there is lack of information about its issues in the reclamation of extremely harsh habitats left by industry and its interactions with soil microbiome (see Woch et al. 2018. Science of the Total Environment 642: 264–275).

5. Lines 68-84: These botch paragraphs should be rewritten using the correct terminology and giving examples of not invasive, but expansive species. Only after that, it would be worth writing another paragraph about the effects of invasive species: to point out the differences and similarities.

6. After the above, write another paragraph clearly introducing the reader to the issue of C. epigejos in the protection/restoration of xerothermic grasslands, explain the state of research and what the new research is supposed to bring.

7. The formulation of research objectives should also precede the backround paragraph about the results of the current experiments with mowing.

8. Material and Methods – a map with the outline of the research area on the map of Europe and the scheme of the experiment should be added.

9. On the one hand, the authors write about avoiding heterogeneity when establishing research plots (which is the right approach), and on the other, that they established two plots on the top of the hill, two plots in foothill, two plots near shrubberies, two plots in open grassland. That is, however, the influence of the location was tested. In this case, the number of repetitions (plots of a given category) was too small to test the significance of the results.

10. Table 1: significances, means and standard deviations should be added.

11. Table 2-4: incomprehensible and redundant.

12. Fig. 1-4: confidence intervals and other statistical parameters are missing.

13. Fig. 5: unclear and no explanation of the colors used. Is this table really necessary?

14. Results should be rewritten. It should clearly follow the most relevant results using commonly accepted in modern article, self-explanatory and perceptual for the reader illustrations and tables.

15. Discussion, line 267: ‘Long-term management needs to suppress midsuccessional dominant grasses’ – and what's next? As if the rest of the truncated text would be missing here.

16. Line 344-345: please explain.

17. Line 346-348: please develop.

18. Conclusions: they are too long and since most of them are still discussion, therefore they should be moved to that section. Instead write the most important results and interpretations of the authors themselves, without citations, preferably bulleted.

 

Author Response

Detailed response to Referees:

Referee’s comment are with black letters, our responses in italics and in blue colors.

 

Referee 2.

 

Article entitled Spontaneous succession and management interact supressing native invador midsuccessional species in a two decades long experiment has many shortcomings but has the potential to be published at Land after major revision. Long-term studies on the permanent plots are rare and especially valuable.

Response: We are grateful to Referee 2 forthe  positive general  evaluation and for  detailed and constructive suggestions. These comments helped us a lot to improve our MS. We respond point to point to these comments below.

 

Major comments are listed below:

1. Lines 2-3: ‘supressing’, ‘native invador midsuccessional’ – there are no such terms in English.

Response: Thank you for this important comment. We carefully checked the relevant recent literature in invasion biology. We accepted your criticism and changed our terminology. These terms have been removed. The title of our MS has been changed to: “Spontaneous succession and management interact suppressing the impact of harmful native dominant species in a two decades long experiment”.Our manuscript has been checked by a native English-speaking colleague, who made extensive English editing and revision.

 

2. There is no such term as ‘native invader’. The term invader (invasive species) is strictly defined and refers only to alien species. In the case of an indigenous species spreading intensively at the expense of others, the term expansive species is used. Please change the whole article.

Response: Thank you for this important comment. We carefully checked the relevant recent literature in invasion biology. We accepted your criticism and changed our terminology. We deleted the terms “invader” and “invasive species” and changed to “native dominants” in the whole article. For similar terminology, please, see for example:

Hejda, M.; Sádlo, J.; Kutlvašr, J.; Petřík, P.; Vítková, M.; Vojík, M.; Pyšek, P.; Pergl, J. Impact of invasive and native dominants on species richness and diversity of plant communities. Preslia, 2021, 93, 181–201, https://doi.org/10.23855/preslia.2021.181

 

However, we must note that there are authors using the term: “native invaders” in the relevant scientific literature. For example:

Valéry, L.; Fritz, H.; Lefeuvre, J.C.; Simberloff, D. Invasive species can also be native. Trends Ecol. Evol. 2009, 24(11), 585. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2009.07.003

Simberloff, D. Native invaders. In: Simberloff, D.; Rejmánek, M (Eds) Encyclopedia of biological invasions. 2011, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles.

Carey, M.P.; Sanderson, B.L.; Barnas, K.A.; Olden, J.D. Native invaders – challenges for science, management, policy, and society. Front Ecol Environ 2012, 10: 373-381. https://doi.org/10.1890/110060

 

We discussed these issues in our Discussion (point 4.3). The related new text is:

“C. epigejos is an example of native dominant species with harmful effects similar to the impact of invasive alien species. However, there are many other native dominant species which do not have harmful effects and do not expand aggressively. Although the terms used to distinguish alien and native species with aggressive behavior (invasive for aliens and expansive for natives) might be effective in large-scale studies [7], they are less appropriate in fine-scale studies of the plant community organization. Native dominants maintain high diversity in many undisturbed, natural plant communities [11]. Nonetheless, many dominant species are transients in disturbed successional habitats, replacing each other without suppressing the immigration of other species. Further experiments, observations and efforts are necessary for establishing the appropriate scientific terms which could distinguish native dominant species with different impacts. In this respect, Bartha et al. (2014) [49] found significant differences between the impacts of native and alien dominant species. Others, on the other hand [90, 20], found no functional differences between native dominant and invasive alien species. Warren (2021) [91] suggested that species-specific traits and behaviors should be considered instead of their origin when establishing and interpreting the abovementioned terms.”

 

3. The same is true of the term ‘grassland invasion’, please change on grassland expansion/succession.

Response: Thank you. It was fixed.

 

4. The background in Introduction about Calamagrostis epigejos(lines 56-67) is deficient, there is lack of information about its issues in the reclamation of extremely harsh habitats left by industry and its interactions with soil microbiome (see Woch et al. 2018. Science of the Total Environment 642: 264–275).

Response: Thank you for this valuable suggestion. Our research questions have been revised in the Introduction and the whole Introduction has been rewritten into new structure and logic. We added also the information you suggested.

 

5. Lines 68-84: These botch paragraphs should be rewritten using the correct terminology and giving examples of not invasive, but expansive species. Only after that, it would be worth writing another paragraph about the effects of invasive species: to point out the differences and similarities.

Response: Thank you for this valuable suggestion. We accepted your suggestions. The Introduction has been revised and it starts now with explaining basic concepts and terms:

“The phenomenon of biological invasion has been a longstanding hot topic in ecology [1] especially due to its negative biological, economic and social effects [2, 3]. The concept of invasive species can be interpreted in various ways e.g., [4-7]. They are usually defined based on the geographical origin of species. The term ‘invasive species’ is restricted to the alien (non-native) species [1, 6, 7]. However, in some cases, native species can behave similarly (spread rapidly, conquer new areas intensively and remain dominant in the new community), causing serious ecological and economic damages [4, 5, 8, 9].”

Then – as you suggested – we continue giving examples of not invasive, but expansive species in the context of the evolution of natural and seminatural grasslands.

 

6. After the above, write another paragraph clearly introducing the reader to the issue of C. epigejosin the protection/restoration of xerothermic grasslands, explain the state of research and what the new research is supposed to bring.

After explaining why certain native dominant species become expansive and harmful, and after giving examples of these species, we continue with a paragraph about our model species, C. epigejos giving specific information. 

 

7. The formulation of research objectives should also precede the backround paragraph about the results of the current experiments with mowing.

Then – as you suggested – we continue with a paragraph formulating our research objectives and the related specific research background. We hope that the overall structure and logic of our new Introduction (cf. our responses to your points 4 -7) is now acceptable for you and fit to the standard of journal LAND.

 

8. Material and Methods – a map with the outline of the research area on the map of Europe and the scheme of the experiment should be added.

Response: Thank you for this suggestion. We prepared the related maps and we refer this as Fig. S1 in the Supplementary material.

 

9. On the one hand, the authors write about avoiding heterogeneity when establishing research plots (which is the right approach), and on the other, that they established two plots on the top of the hill, two plots in foothill, two plots near shrubberies, two plots in open grassland. That is, however, the influence of the location was tested. In this case, the number of repetitions (plots of a given category) was too small to test the significance of the results.

Response: Thank you for indicating this confusion. We revised the related text clarifying these issues. The related new text is:

“We established eight pairs of 3 × 3 m large permanent plots, positioned randomly along the north slope of the Bükkös hill, and arranged a split-plot design of mown and control plots (Fig. S1.). Vegetation data was monitored in 2 × 2 m large permanent quadrats placed in the middle of each 3 × 3 m large plot, leaving a 2 m buffer zone between the paired (mown and control) quadrats. With the stratified random sampling design we intended to represent the vegetation variability within the study area (two plots on the top of the hill, two plots in foothill, two plots near shrubberies, two plots in open grassland). In this way we could get robust results about the effect of mowing treatment. However, we did not aimed to study directly the effect of these vegetation patch types on the results”

 

10. Table 1: significances, means and standard deviations should be added.

Response: Thank you for this note. Table 1. has been revised showing now explicitly significances, means and the dispersion of data.

 

11. Table 2-4: incomprehensible and redundant.

Response: Thank you for indicating this confusion. The titles of these tables were unappropriate. Table 2-4 show the results of our repeated-measure ANOVA separately for different characteristics (cover of C. epigejos, cover of F. rupicola and species richness). These results are important and comprehensive (not redundant). We clarified these issues by improving the titles of Tables and the related main text.

 

12. Fig. 1-4: confidence intervals and other statistical parameters are missing.

Response: It was fixed, statistical parameters were added to these figures. For additional statistical results (with post-hoc tests), please, refer the Supplementary material: Fig S2, S3, S4, S5 and S7.

 

13. Fig. 5: unclear and no explanation of the colors used. Is this table really necessary?

Response: Thank you for this suggestion. We agree that our figure 5 was not clearly presented. Therefore, it was completely revised (reduced and colors changed) and it was moved from the MS to the Supplementary material (as Fig. S6). We did not deleted it completely, because we needed to refer this information when we reported the behavior of subordinate species.

 

 

14. Results should be rewritten. It should clearly follow the most relevant results using commonly accepted in modern article, self-explanatory and perceptual for the reader illustrations and tables.

Response: Thank you for this valuable suggestion. Our research questions have been revised in the Introduction. The text of Results and Discussion sections have been restructured and rewritten to harmonize better to these revised research questions. As you suggested, Results section become shorter (by 20%) and more concise. We deleted some figures (previous Figure 3 and Figures 5a and 5b) and some less important text from the main text.

 

15. Discussion, line 267: ‘Long-term management needs to suppress midsuccessional dominant grasses’ – and what's next? As if the rest of the truncated text would be missing here.

Response: Thank you. It was a subtitle and this problem has been fixed in the new version.

 

16. Line 344-345: please explain.

Response: The related text is “Frequent mowing contributed to C. epigejos losing its dominant role. Numerous previous studies have reported decreasing dominance and increasing diversity as a result of mowing [70, 33]. “

We apologize, we could not understand, what problem you indicated here. The explanation was already in the sentence: Dominance and diversity increased due to mowing. Please, see also the cited references: [70, 33].

 

17. Line 346-348: please develop.

Response: The related text is “Suppression of the dominant species is often accompanied by a positive change in the sward structure, increasing microhabitat diversity, and by increasing species pool. Regular mowing also increases the forage value of a given grassland: it is important to highlight that this treatment is valuable not only in light of nature conservation, but also from an economic point of view [55, 71, 72].”

We apologize, we could not understand, what problem you indicated here. We believe, these sentences were clear and informative.

 

18. Conclusions: they are too long and since most of them are still discussion, therefore they should be moved to that section. Instead write the most important results and interpretations of the authors themselves, without citations, preferably bulleted.

Response: Thank you for this valuable suggestion. As you suggested, we moved the previous version of our text to Discussion (and it was shortened). A completely new Conclusion has been created highlighting the most important results and interpretations (bulleted).

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

These are my general comments, see details in the text:

- The manuscript has many typographical errors

- Editorial guidelines are required to be reviewed, there is no consistency in the details

- There are very small paragraphs that seem to be disconnected (not related) to each other

- In the discussion section there is information that corresponds to the results section

- It would be interesting to know the effect of the mowing on the nutrients and characteristics of the soil. Please discuss this.

- Reference errors. Consult editorial rules please

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Detailed response to Referees:

Referee’s comment are with black letters, our responses in italics and in blue colors.

 

Referee 3.

 

These are my general comments, see details in the text:

Response: We are grateful to the Referee 3 for the positive evaluation of our work and for constructive suggestions which helped us to improve our MS. Here we provide our response to the comments and suggestions. We thank the detailed notes of Referee 3 in the attached pdf. It was very useful for us during our revision.

 

- The manuscript has many typographical errors

Response: We carefully corrected these errors and we hope we could remove all typographical problems.

 

- Editorial guidelines are required to be reviewed, there is no consistency in the details

Response: We carefully read the Editorial guidelines and used these guidelines for revising our MS.

 

- There are very small paragraphs that seem to be disconnected (not related) to each other

Response: Thank you for this suggestion. We reworded the corresponding texts and we hope, the new version is more concise and has a better logic. Our research questions have been revised in the Introduction. The text of Results and Discussion sections have been restructured to harmonize better to these revised research questions.

 

- In the discussion section there is information that corresponds to the results section

Response: We moved lines from Discussion to Results section. However, there were specific details about some species where species behaviors have been compared to patterns found in other studies. To be able to cite similar studies and evaluate comparable patterns, we had to keep this information in Discussion section.

 

- It would be interesting to know the effect of the mowing on the nutrients and characteristics of the soil. Please discuss this.

Response: Thank you for this suggestion. We extended the related text and added literature.

The related new texts reported in Discussion in section 4.1.:

„Such slow response to mowing has also been reported from Poland [62] and could be attributed to the nutrient reserves accumulated in the rhizomes [63, 64]. Our results – consistent with the results of Kavanova and Gloser (2005) [65] – suggest that mowing twice a year for two or more years is likely enough to deplete underground storage organs and produce a negative nutrient framework for this dominant species.”

Additional information is reported in Discussion in section 4.2.:

„The replacement of narrow-leaved grass with a Fabaceae species could have taken place due to the decreasing soil nutrient content [75, 76]. In certain cases, C. epigejos can be replaced by Brachypodium pinnatum [77]. Many studies reported that less demanding species have an advantage in the later stages of succession [78, 79].”

 

Related references:

Klimeš, L.; Klimešova, J. The effects of mowing and fertilisation on carbohydrate reserves and regrowth of grasses:

Březina, S.; Koubek, T.; Münzbergová, Z.; Herben, T. Ecological benefits of integration of Calamagrostis epigejos ramets under field conditions. Stanislav. Flora 2006, 201, 461–467.

Kavanová, M.; Gloser, V. The use of internal nitrogen stores in the rhizomatous grass Calamagrostis epigejos during regrowth after defoliation. Ann. Bot. 2005, 85, 457–463.

Fiala, K.; Tůma, I.; Holub, P. Effect of nitrogen addition and drought on aboveground biomass of expanding tall grasses Calamagrostis epigejos and Arrhenatherum elatius. Biologia 2011, 66, 275–281.

Rebele, F. Competition and coexistence of rhizomatous perennial plants along a nutrient gradient. Plant Ecol. 2000, 147, 77–94.

 

- Reference errors. Consult editorial rules please

Response: We carefully read the Editorial guidelines and used these guidelines for revising our MS. References were formated now according to the rules used in LAND.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx