Syntaxonomy of Charophyte Algal Communities in the Northeastern Part of the Black Sea (Russia)
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
In the manuscript “Syntaxonomy of charophyte algal communities in the eastern part of the Black Sea and Sea of Azov (Russia)” the authors created a syntaxonomic scheme of the alliance Charion canescentis Krausch 1964 (order Charetalia intermediae Sauer 1937, class Charetea in termediae F. Fukarek 1961) of the North Caucasian coast of the Black Sea and Sea of Azov using Braun-Blanquet approach for environment indication purposes. This manuscript is well organized, and the drawn conclusions are coherent with the obtained results. The paper was well written!
Lines 66 – 69: I think that you should other important references as exmpales to support your sentence: “It is believed that the reduction of the area of the natural range of charophytes is associated with its fragmentation as a result of human activities, recreation, eutrophication, technogenic pollution, as well as in connection with a decrease in river flow”. I would like to suggest:
Smeraldo, S., et al., (2020). Modelling risks posed by wind turbines and power lines to soaring birds: The black stork (Ciconia nigra) in Italy as a case study. Biodiversity and Conservation, 29, 1959-1976.
Zhang, Z., et al., (2020). Spatiotemporal characteristics in ecosystem service value and its interaction with human activities in Xinjiang, China. Ecological Indicators, 110, 105826.
Pokazeev, K., et al., (2021). Main natural and anthropogenic sources of pollution of the Black Sea, its shelf zones and small water reservoirs. Pollution in the Black Sea: Observations about the Ocean's Pollution, 97-141.
Line 107 – 108: Please, add the scale and the north symbol in the map.
Lines 51 – 52: I think that you should other important references as exmpales to support your sentence: “…subject to periodic or cyclic fluctuations in water level, flood waters, sometimes temporarily drying up.”. I would like to suggest:
Bosso, L., et al., (2022). The rise and fall of an alien: Why the successful colonizer Littorina saxatilis failed to invade the Mediterranean Sea. Biological Invasions, 24(10), 3169-3187.
Robin, J., et al., (2023). Disturbance and resilience of aquatic plant communities in fish ponds after temporary dry periods. Aquatic Ecology, 1-13.
English very difficult to understand/incomprehensible
Author Response
Dear Editor and the Reviewer 1,
Thank you for your comments.
Please find below the point-by-point responses to the Reviewer 1 comments.
With best regards,
Prof Sophia Barinova,
Corresponding author
Responses to the Reviewer#1
1) Lines 66 – 69: I think that you should other important references as examples to support your sentence: “It is believed that the reduction of the area of the natural range of charophytes is associated with its fragmentation as a result of human activities, recreation, eutrophication, technogenic pollution, as well as in connection with a decrease in river flow”. I would like to suggest:
Smeraldo, S., et al., (2020). Modeling risks posed by wind turbines and power lines to soaring birds: The black stork (Ciconia nigra) in Italy as a case study. Biodiversity and Conservation, 29, 1959-1976.
Zhang, Z., et al., (2020). Spatiotemporal characteristics in ecosystem service value and its interaction with human activities in Xinjiang, China. Ecological Indicators, 110, 105826.
Pokazeev, K., et al., (2021). Main natural and anthropogenic sources of pollution of the Black Sea, its shelf zones and small water reservoirs. Pollution in the Black Sea: Observations about the Ocean's Pollution, 97-141.
Response: References have been added.
2)Line 107 – 108: Please, add the scale and the north symbol in the map.
Response: The scale and the north symbol have been added on the map.
3) Lines 51 – 52: I think that you should other important references as examples to support your sentence: “…subject to periodic or cyclic fluctuations in water level, flood waters, sometimes temporarily drying up.”. I would like to suggest:
Bosso, L., et al., (2022). The rise and fall of an alien: Why the successful colonizer Littorina saxatilis failed to invade the Mediterranean Sea. Biological Invasions, 24(10), 3169-3187.
Robin, J., et al., (2023). Disturbance and resilience of aquatic plant communities in fish ponds after temporary dry periods. Aquatic Ecology, 1-13.
Response: References have been added.
4) English very difficult to understand/incomprehensible.
English has been corrected.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper is interesting, although it would probably be more suitable for another journal such as Plants since it presents a taxonomic study of algae.
The study has some limitations that should be pointed out as it is reduced to studies in two specific points and proclaiming that it is in the Eastern Black Sea is a bit pretentious. Perhaps it would be better to indicate that these are two nearby areas of this part of the territory. Also, as it is a small area where the study has been carried out it is likely that there are other species in this sea that have not been observed. These details should be presented in the manuscript, pointing out the limitations of the study.
Otherwise, the content is correct and well presented and structured in the sections of a scientific paper, as well as the stylistic details of a plant taxonomy paper.
Check and correct the correct spelling of Braun-Blanquet's surname, as it is almost always misspelled in the document (e.g. Brown).
Some details have been noted that could be modified:
First of all, the style indications of botanical nomenclature for the names of classes, orders, families and associations should be followed throughout the document. There is an unnecessary use of bold font, since it is sufficient that they are written in italics.
Dashes are used in the text without appearing to be necessary, as in lines 33 and 38.
Spaces are used between the numbers of quotations, which is not necessary according to the style of the journal.
Somewhere it should be presented how the PCA has been performed, since the result obtained is curious, besides the fact that it does not indicate the variance explained by the first two components. Nor does it indicate the weight of the abiotic factors with respect to each axis. The interpretation of each component should be clearly presented.
The bibliography used is correct, but suffers from the fact that much of it is very local and not accessible to readers.
The tables included in Appendix A are very useful for researchers in this field of algal taxonomy.
Author Response
Dear Editor and the Reviewer 2,
Thank you for your comments.
Please find below the point-by-point responses to the Reviewer 2 comments.
With best regards,
Prof Sophia Barinova,
Corresponding author
1) The paper is interesting, although it would probably be more suitable for another journal such as Plants since it presents a taxonomic study of algae.
Response: The paper is not a taxonomic, but a syntaxonomic study. Syntaxonomy studies the biodiversity of plants and algal communities. One of the subject areas of Environments journal includes “Ecosystem services, biodiversity and natural capital”. Therefore, we hope that our manuscript is suitable for publication in this journal.
2) The study has some limitations that should be pointed out as it is reduced to studies in two specific points and proclaiming that it is in the Eastern Black Sea is a bit pretentious. Perhaps it would be better to indicate that these are two nearby areas of this part of the territory. Also, as it is a small area where the study has been carried out it is likely that there are other species in this sea that have not been observed. These details should be presented in the manuscript, pointing out the limitations of the study.
Response: We specified the study area in the title of the article and removed the mention of the Sea of Azov, since the studies were carried out on the border of the Black and Azov Seas. All necessary corrections have also been made to the article.
3) Check and correct the correct spelling of Braun-Blanquet's surname, as it is almost always misspelled in the document (e.g. Brown).
Response: Thank you for the thorough analysis of the text! The mistakes have been corrected.
4) First of all, the style indications of botanical nomenclature for the names of classes, orders, families and associations should be followed throughout the document. There is an unnecessary use of bold font, since it is sufficient that they are written in italics.
Response: The paper is not a taxonomic, but a syntaxonomic study. Syntaxon names follow the International Code of Phytosociological Nomenclature (Theurillat et al., 2020), but not International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (Turland et al., 2018). Names of syntaxa are in italics and bold to distinguish them from algae species names in italics.
5) Dashes are used in the text without appearing to be necessary, as in lines 33 and 38.
Response: Thank you for the thorough analysis of the text! The mistakes have been corrected.
6) Spaces are used between the numbers of quotations, which is not necessary according to the style of the journal.
Response: Thank you for the thorough analysis of the text! The mistakes have been corrected.
7) Somewhere it should be presented how the PCA has been performed, since the result obtained is curious, besides the fact that it does not indicate the variance explained by the first two components. Nor does it indicate the weight of the abiotic factors with respect to each axis. The interpretation of each component should be clearly presented.
Response: Performing PCA-analysis is presented in Materials and Methods. We suppose that PCA-analysis shows two principal groups of communities, which distinct separated of according to abiotic factors.
8) The bibliography use discorrect, but suffers from the fact that much of it is very local and not accessible to readers.
Response: We have slightly expanded the bibliography with sources that are available to all readers. At the same time, we did not remove local sources so that, if necessary, readers could find relevant literature.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors have modified the manuscript and corrected the deficiencies found in the first review.
Although the PCA results have not indicated the details that I had suggested in my review (variance and relationship between axes and physicochemical variables), this aspect is not important and can be published without this information.
