In Situ Conservation of Dry Meadows
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear authors,
The subject you covered is without doubt very important. As you stated yourself, natural grasslands are endangered across the Europe, and beyond, and their impact on biodiversity is indisputable. And I cheer for the type of the research, that you undertook.
However, I must say that I am disappointed with the way you performed analyses and presented the results. I sense that there is so much more that you could have done with such a valuable data you've collected (especially those over the years). Therefore, I encourage you to follow the advice I put in the comments (see attached file), and improve your manuscript, so it can be published and gain the publicity it deserves.
Best of luck, and I look forward to review the second, improved, version of the manuscript.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
There are some parts that should be paid attention to.
Overall quality of the English language is fair.
Author Response
Dear,
According to your suggestions we added some more analyses with the data from past years of inventory on the meadow. We also added additional text to the goal an importance of the research into Introduction part.
All the best, authors
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThis is an interesting baseline survey which will prove its worth in the future.
There are some statements that I have difficulty interpreting:-
line 16 - 163 is given in the abstract and 162 in the text (check). Is this perhaps Euphorbia fragifera?
line 27 - You need to clarify what the "60% of the surface area" refers to.
line 42 - the drying racks of Slovenia are a significant cultural feature of the country and you might insert a reference to their history since readers who have not visited the country may not appreciate the interesting cultural nature of this process.
Line 134 - you don't give specifics of how 2023's weather was unusual. If you can obtain graphs showing long-term averages for temperature and precipitation and overlay 2023 this will tell the whole story in a concise manner.
Line 146 and sequence, can you describe whether the site slopes towards the north? I presume that no grazing animals ever enter the site, but are rabbits hares or deer found locally? It would be interesting to know the answers to this.
Line 239 onwards - Species authorities to all species names are given in the Table and do not need repeating thereafter.
Line 296 - explain derivation of figure of 79 species?
Line 354 and sequence, the "upper" and "lower" part of the meadow is mentioned. Does this imply northern vs. southern or does the site slope towards the Sava, and this is means "higher part" of slope and "lower part"?
Line 363 and sequence, a further descriptor is used of "first third" and "second third" of the meadow. Does this imply the Western edge and eastern edge?
I have marked various typos and have sought to improve the English, however, I may not have been thorough in this regard but am happy to review the alterations.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
There are a large number of corrections to grammar that I have made. I am happy to review these once corrections have been made.
Author Response
Dear,
According to your suggestions we corrected the manuscript. We also accepted your English suggestions although the manuscript was translated in English by a translation company. We also moved two Figures into Supplementary material.
All the best, authors
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsIn situ conservation of plant species is one of the top options for preserving and enhancing diversity. From this point of view, I rate very highly the topic dealt with in the paper. However, I have a reservation about the treatment of the topic. In my opinion, the paper only deals with the inventory of species for the year 2023. What did the conservation consist of? Some history of the plot is outlined, but we do not know from the results presented whether this was of any significance. In my opinion, at least a comparison with the baseline condition is missing. Nor do we know anything about the proportions of each species. In doing so, the authors mention that they used the Braun-Blanquet method. However, it was only used to delineate areas and to determine the presence of species. The proportions of species by group (r, +, 1, ...) are not given. We cannot then determine how the new species penetrated the stand. When we talk about conservation, how much is in common with the original stand? There are still many questions. However, what has been written captures the essence and unless this is completed I will not recommend the paper be published. I have outlined further comments in the text of the paper.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear,
According to you comments to the manuscript we added a Braun-Blanquet table into the Supplementary material and we also added the table of species presence/absence data of inventories in years 2001, 2002, 2003, 2016, 2018.
We also added chapter Conclusions.
The latin names of the plant species, which were not written in italic, the reason was, that when the word text was transformed to the PDF format, the writing has changed. The same happened with the paragraph which was written in bold.
According to writing the latin names, when the species is first mentioned in the text it is written with whole name and the author, later on it is written just with first letter of genus and whole species name.
All the best, authors
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear Authors,
you really showed exquisite effort to make corrections to your manuscript- well done.
There are still some, technical, corrections that should be done, and they are marked in the comments in the attached file.
Again, congratulate on your tremendously hard work, and I will gladly recommend your manuscript for publishing.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
English is improved, there is some minor editing needed.
Author Response
Dear,
We have corrected those few things you have suggested.
All the best, Blanka
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe authors more or less respected my comments or explained their view of the results presented. However, I do not agree with the shortening of plant names when they are used repeatedly in the text. It is necessary to give them in full everywhere, because it is not always clear from the text whether it is still the same plant. Also, some additions should be made in the supplement. These are given in the attached texts.
Comments for author File: Comments.zip
Author Response
Dear Author,
We have corrected the manuscript and supplementary material according to your suggestions. But according to adding the authors name behind the latin species name each time, we had the consultation with botany taxonomist and they said that author name is written just the first time when the species is mentioned, the same was suggested and corrected by second reviewer. We also found some rules about the authors citing How to Use Binomial Nomenclature in Scientific Writing | Proofed (getproofed.com.au);
All the best!
