Environmental Factors Structuring Diatom Diversity of the Protected High Mountain Lakes in the Kaçkar Mountains National Park (Rize, Turkey)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

See Attached File

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Minor editing of some phrasing is needed.

Author Response

Dear Editor,

Thank you and the Reviewer 1 for comments. Please consider the responses to each comment below.

With best regards,

Prof Sophia Barinova,

Corresponding author.

 

Reviewer 1 responses

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Minor editing of some phrasing is needed.

General comments: This was essentially a floristic study of the mountainous region on Turkey. In general the paper is well written, although the English of a few phrases might be improved. I found the data analysis to be a bit of overkill given the data set and maybe some of it could be moved to appendices with more reliance on the ordinations and cluster analysis for the main text.

Response: Thanks for the recommendation. We considered this possibility, removed parts in the MM, Results and discussion related to species conservation, but decided to leave the remaining parts in the text, since the main main and voluminous parts of the material have already been transferred to the Appendices.

The study appears to be carried out well but I had some major concerns regarding some methods and conclusions. 1) It wasn’t clear to me how abundance score was determined (Table 2). It seems it was based on counting diatoms on the entire slide for samples (Table 2 says number of cells/slide), but the densities of cells on the slides were not standardized. The methods described for obtaining the diatom samples and preparing slides are qualitative, not quantitative. More details of this concern is below in the specific comments. Were samples from a habitat pooled for the different sample dates for data analysis? The authors need to be very clear in the methods how samples were pooled, how counts were done QUANTITATIVELY, and how they were used to determine total abundance and relative abundances of taxa.

Response: Table 2 corrected and replaced. The relevant text parts were corrected. At the first stage of the study, we did not set tasks related to experiments and quantitative calculations, since this reserve is difficult to access and this is the first visit, but only examined the species composition and applied a well-known semi-quantitative method to understand the prevalence of species in the communities of each of the lakes.

 

2) I strongly disagree with the authors conclusion that altitude of the lakes was related to the diatom flora. I did not see this trend as they described it for some of the data in Fig 4 and 5 (which also has no statistical analysis), and the JASP ordination and cluster analysis of lake samples in fact DO NOT correspond to the altitude of the lakes. That is high altitude lakes are more similar in their flora to low altitude lakes than they are other high altitude lakes. I agree that the results do show a relationship between lake altitude and species richness, but that is not the same as saying it affected the taxonomic composition of the lakes or corresponded to the ecological groups of diatoms. I believe the authors need to very clear on this point in the abstract, discussion and conclusion.

Response: This is exactly what we found - the results really show a relationship between lake height and species richness. We did not intend to suggest that this affected the taxonomic composition of the lakes or corresponded to the ecological groups of diatoms. There are no influences here, only correspondence, perhaps weak, but visible, which were possible to trace on the first visit. We have made appropriate corrections to the text.

 

Specific Comments:

Response:

L 47-51. It would more relevant to have information about contributions of diatoms to global freshwater productivity. Also include information about diatoms as predictors of climate change.

Response: We have made corrections in the Introduction, some of the references have been replaced. I would not like to make such global statements for material that was received only during the first visit to the lakes. However, the comparative analysis of the composition of communities included the two lakes we had previously studied, and the figure was supplemented with an appropriate description.

L 109. Describe how a glass pipe was used to sample epipleic diatoms. As a coring device?

Response: done

L 110 ..and the resulting solution placed into plastic bottles.

Response: done

L 115 by by- delete one

Response: done

L 121 what were the other hydochemical parameters? N P Si etc?

Response: This analysis was difficult to do because it was the first expedition to the difficult accessed lakes at the altitude of about 3,000 a.s.l. and only one researcher takes all samples. So, other elements in the water of each lake will be defined during the next expeditions. Addition in the description of other chemical variables were done in the text. But can be seen that they was partly indefinably in different lakes and so cannot be included to analysis.

L 131-3. How were diatom taxa enumerated? How many were counted? Did you count valves or frustules? Did you pool samples from a habitat for the different sample dates? I don’t follow how you obtained relative abundances of diatoms based on “cell numbers per slide” in table 2. Did you count all the diatoms on a slide? Didn’t the amount of diatoms on a slide vary and thus for a more densely populated slide it would be more likely get a higher number of cells for a taxon? In other words, the concentration of diatoms in the solution dried on a slide will affect your species frequency scores list in Table 2. Wouldn’t you just want to use the percentage of each taxon in samples as an indicator of its relative abundance (commonness/rarity)?

Response: Table 2 corrected and replaced. The relevant text parts were corrected. At the first stage of the study, we did not set tasks related to experiments and quantitative calculations, since this reserve is difficult to access and this is the first visit, but only examined the species composition and applied a well-known semi-quantitative method to understand the prevalence of species in the communities of each of the lakes. Rarity was assessed using a different scale specified in the MM and given in the Appendix Table.

L 159-160 I don’t understand how you got probable change and what you did with that data.

Response: Regarding the constructed diagrams for Weighted Parameters, the path and details are described in detail in the corresponding section of the MM. The method is widely used and shows not specific values, but trends in changes in one parameter with existing changes in the other two.

L 182 and Table 4. Give the detection limits for NO3 and PO4. Saying a value was below detection limit is meaningless unless the reader knows the detection limit of the chemical analysis.

Response: These results we received from the Turkish Laboratory which have standards. The name of the analytical canter is mentioned in the MM part: “The DSI General Directorate Laboratories DSI 22nd Regional Directorate Quality Control and Laboratory Branch Office conducted analyses of other hydrochemical parameters”

L 199 Table A1, not Table 4?

Response: correctef as Table Appendix A 1 and A 2

L 228. The numbers in Table A3 are the number of taxa in each group? Put that in the caption.

Response: done

Figure 3. I don’t see how your abundance score is valid based on the methods presented for that (see comment on Table 2).

Response: as stay, it is number of taxa in each lake community = No of Species; Sum of abundance scores is sum of scores of each taxa represented in the lake community.

L 242. I don’t see any increasing trend of benthic diatoms with altitude in Fig 4a. Those groups go up and down along the altitudinal order of the lakes. Did you do a statistical test for this?

Response: yes, we did it, test show insignificant dependence, text corrected

L 268 and Fig 5b. You are defining define auto-heterotrophy base on whether they take up organic N? But they don’t get energy from N that as far as I know. Shouldn’t it be utilization of organic C that determines heterotrophy?

Response: Groups of indicators were formed according to Van Dam, 1994, cited, the preferences of each group are indicated in the explanations to the figure 5b and Appendix A Table A2.

L 278 Fig 5c. I don’t see class 4 indicators increasing with altitude. Did you do a statistical test?

Response:stay as: decreased

L 303 “Statistical Analysis” is not a good heading for this section. I suggest community analysis, or ordination/cluster analysis.

Response: corrected as: Species richness Analysis

L 304. Why does the JASP analysis (Fig. 6) only use 14 lakes instead of the full 15 like the other analyses?

Response: data for pond also found and figure enriched by the comparative analysis of surround high altitude lakes communities, Table 5 replaced with Appendix A Table A3 because it was mentioned in the draft version and then moved to the appendix.

Fig 8a. How did you choose which ecological groups to include in this RDA ordination? What was the criteria to determine “dominate” groups?

Response: that was represented by most of indicators in the ecological group of environmental variable.

L 348. “It was a special…” Rephrase. What is “It” referring to?

Response: corrected

L 440. Again, define what you mean by autotrophes and how you made the determination for the taxa.

Response: The special Handbooks are cited in MM part which were used for the species definition. The ecological properties including type of nutrition were taken for each taxa from famous reference of Van Dam [49]

L 476. I don’t think the results support the conclusion that altitude was an important factor determining diatom community composition. Please state the evidence for this conclusion. The trends in Figs 4 and 5 do not support it visually and there are no statistical results for it. Furthermore, the JASP and cluster analysis of lakes does not show a relationship to altitude of the lakes. There is evidence that lake altitude corresponded to species richness, but that is not the same as saying the flora was related to lake altitude.

Response: As stated in the text about Figure 6 based on the results of this analysis, lake floras are grouped more according to species richness, while the connection with altitude is weaker. We supplemented the current analysis with a comparison with the floras of the lakes of the Artabel Park located in the mountainous region of Turkey, but somewhat to the west, and also included in the analysis two previously studied lakes of the Kaçkar part. Figure 6b shows that the lake communities are grouped according to territorial characteristics, corresponding to two groups of protected areas, while the floras of two previously studied lakes located on the low spurs of the mountains in the Kaçkar Park are included in the western group of lakes of the Artabel Park, emphasizing the high individuality of those studied in this study 14 lakes and ponds.

L 513. But very few taxa and were rare and endangered and you point out in the results that those taxa are common in the surrounding region

Response: The number of taxa is comparable to previously studied lakes in this high mountain region, citations 46, 47

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors report a study on diatom communities in Turkey. In my opinion, the study is well designed and has some interesting results. However, I think that the manuscript should be improved before publishing. My suggestions are below:

lines 54-55: an effective way certainly, but I think that it is an overestimation to say that it will certainly be the most effective way

lines 105-124: please describe sampling in more detail, for example, how many samples per lake you had, from what depth, how many stones you scraped, what do you mean by squeezing out from the macrophyte?

lines 123-124: how many frustules per sample did you identify?

lines 120-121: what are the 'other hydrochemical parameters'?

line 121: what kind of treatment?

lines 149-150: please clarify what you mean by Sladecek and Watanabe, and also add references here

lines 182-183: so the values were under detection limit in other lakes? Please clarify.

line 240-241: Benthic diatoms dominated in your samples but you did not study what dominated in the entire lake ecosystems. Please change wording.

lines 281-287: The sum of these values is only ~46% - are the rest of the species indifferent or why are they not mentioned here?

line 345: Please add the RDA results also as a table, for example to appendix.

lines 350-357: Isn't the number of diatom species the dependent variable?

Figures 9-12: These are nice and good-looking figures but difficult to understand. Please write this part of results more clearly and more straight-forward, so the reader does not have to guess what these figures show.

lines 412-414: Explain the abbrevations in the figure caption.

Results and discussion: I think there is a mismatch between results and discussion. You have a lot of nice results, but most of them are not discussed or are only briefly mentioned in discussion, whereas different species are only briefly mentioned in results but form a major part of discussion. I think it would be important to clarify (and maybe re-write and add hypotheses) your research questions that are mentioned in the end of introduction, and to write your results and discussion based on these questions.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The language of the manuscript is okayish, but in many parts it could be improved. Some language suggestions are listed below, but it would be good to use some language editing services or a native English speaker to improve the language of the entire manuscript.

lines 23-25: unclear sentence, please re-write

line 26: please don't use abbreviations in the abstract (IUCN)

lines 57-58: unclear sentence, please re-write

lines 85-86: the address is incorrect

line 110: what was placed in bottles? Stones or samples?

line 115: remove one 'by'

lines 180-182: unclear sentence, please re-write

lines 218-219: '14 habitats' - does that mean that it was missing from one lake? Please clarify.

lines 221-222: different among lakes or substrates or samples? Please clarify

lines 222-223: what was higher? the species richness maybe?

line 234: change 'slightly' to 'slight'

lines 243-245: unclear sentence, please re-write

line 281 > : Please don't change to present tense here.

lines 323-326: unclear sentence, please re-write

lines 374-377: unclear sentences, please re-write

lines 426-431: several grammatical errors, please re-write

lines 489-491: unclear sentence, please re-write

Author Response

Dear Editor,

Thank you and the Reviewer 2 for comments. Please consider the responses to each comment below.

With best regards,

Prof Sophia Barinova,

Corresponding author.

 

Reviewer 2 responses

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors report a study on diatom communities in Turkey. In my opinion, the study is well designed and has some interesting results. However, I think that the manuscript should be improved before publishing. My suggestions are below:

lines 54-55: an effective way certainly, but I think that it is an overestimation to say that it will certainly be the most effective way

RESPONSE: corrected

lines 105-124: please describe sampling in more detail, for example, how many samples per lake you had, from what depth, how many stones you scraped, what do you mean by squeezing out from the macrophyte?

RESPONSE: corrected

lines 123-124: how many frustules per sample did you identify?

RESPONSE: corrected

lines 120-121: what are the 'other hydrochemical parameters'?

RESPONSE: corrected

line 121: what kind of treatment?

RESPONSE: corrected

lines 149-150: please clarify what you mean by Sladecek and Watanabe, and also add references here

RESPONSE: organic pollution assessment methods, references added here and below

lines 182-183: so the values were under detection limit in other lakes? Please clarify.

RESPONSE: corrected

line 240-241: Benthic diatoms dominated in your samples but you did not study what dominated in the entire lake ecosystems. Please change wording.

RESPONSE: corrected

lines 281-287: The sum of these values is only ~46% - are the rest of the species indifferent or why are they not mentioned here?

RESPONSE: corrected as: “indifferent” group of species dominate in all studied lakes

line 345: Please add the RDA results also as a table, for example to appendix.

RESPONSE: added as Appendix A Table A4

lines 350-357: Isn't the number of diatom species the dependent variable?

RESPONSE: corrected

Figures 9-12: These are nice and good-looking figures but difficult to understand. Please write this part of results more clearly and more straight-forward, so the reader does not have to guess what these figures show.

RESPONSE: In each of the graphs in Figures 9-12, the dependent parameter on the z-axis is the number of diatom species in the lake community, and the independent variables are located on the x- and y-axes, as indicated in the MM section, corrections added

lines 412-414: Explain the abbrevations in the figure caption.

RESPONSE: done

Results and discussion: I think there is a mismatch between results and discussion. You have a lot of nice results, but most of them are not discussed or are only briefly mentioned in discussion, whereas different species are only briefly mentioned in results but form a major part of discussion. I think it would be important to clarify (and maybe re-write and add hypotheses) your research questions that are mentioned in the end of introduction, and to write your results and discussion based on these questions.

RESPONSE: Text was partly corrected, partly some sentences or even the paragraphs and Tables were deleted, the references reorganized, Some comparative parts were expanded.

 

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The language of the manuscript is okayish, but in many parts it could be improved. Some language suggestions are listed below, but it would be good to use some language editing services or a native English speaker to improve the language of the entire manuscript.

RESPONSE: native English speaker was used and give us a certificate. English editing was done after corrections

lines 23-25: unclear sentence, please re-write

RESPONSE: done

line 26: please don't use abbreviations in the abstract (IUCN)

RESPONSE: deleted all this part

lines 57-58: unclear sentence, please re-write

RESPONSE: corrected

lines 85-86: the address is incorrect

RESPONSE: corrected

line 110: what was placed in bottles? Stones or samples?

RESPONSE: corrected

line 115: remove one 'by'

RESPONSE: deleted

lines 180-182: unclear sentence, please re-write

RESPONSE: corrected

lines 218-219: '14 habitats' - does that mean that it was missing from one lake? Please clarify.

RESPONSE: corrected

lines 221-222: different among lakes or substrates or samples? Please clarify

RESPONSE: This paragraph consistently points out the difference between the floras of the lakes, between the species composition of the substrates, and provides a geographical description of the entire identified species composition of the studied lakes.

lines 222-223: what was higher? the species richness maybe?

RESPONSE: corrected

line 234: change 'slightly' to 'slight'

RESPONSE: corrected

lines 243-245: unclear sentence, please re-write

RESPONSE: corrected

line 281 > : Please don't change to present tense here.

RESPONSE: the reference for this sentence confirmation added

lines 323-326: unclear sentence, please re-write

RESPONSE: corrected

lines 374-377: unclear sentences, please re-write

RESPONSE: corrected

lines 426-431: several grammatical errors, please re-write

RESPONSE: corrected

lines 489-491: unclear sentence, please re-write

RESPONSE: corrected

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

Dear Editor,

Paper concerns interesting and important topic of high altitude lakes. In my opinion presents interesting data but it is very difficult to read. Authors tried to include many analyzes and conclusions but they did not focus on any specific topic. Statistical analysis are not descried properly and the text is not coherent. In my opinion Authors should significantly shorten manuscript. All appendix data (except list of species) are useless – general results are included in result chapter and tables and figures in appendix are not needed. Also diatom pictures (Appendix A. Figures A1-A4) are poor quality and are useless.

Discussion  practically does not exist – the lack of any deeper comparison with other studies of glacial/high mountain lakes (e.g. Alps or other high mountain regions).

Authors should focus (in results and discussion) on environmental variables shaping diatom assemblages and number of species in each lakes. Analysis of these two parameters in proper way will be  sufficient to write good quality paper. The topic about threat categories should be deleted.

Other questions and comments in pdf file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Same sentences are hard to understund. Please shorten sentences - my same  comments in pdf file.

Author Response

Dear Editor,

Thank you and the Reviewer 3 for comments. Please consider the responses to each comment below.

With best regards,

Prof Sophia Barinova,

Corresponding author.

 

Reviewer 3 responses

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

Dear Editor,

Paper concerns interesting and important topic of high altitude lakes. In my opinion presents interesting data but it is very difficult to read. Authors tried to include many analyzes and conclusions but they did not focus on any specific topic. Statistical analysis are not descried properly and the text is not coherent. In my opinion Authors should significantly shorten manuscript. All appendix data (except list of species) are useless – general results are included in result chapter and tables and figures in appendix are not needed. Also diatom pictures (Appendix A. Figures A1-A4) are poor quality and are useless.

Discussion  practically does not exist – the lack of any deeper comparison with other studies of glacial/high mountain lakes (e.g. Alps or other high mountain regions).

Authors should focus (in results and discussion) on environmental variables shaping diatom assemblages and number of species in each lakes. Analysis of these two parameters in proper way will be  sufficient to write good quality paper. The topic about threat categories should be deleted.

Response: We have made many changes and additions to the text. However, they decided to keep the basic appendix tables, adding one more required by reviewers, since the journal encourages the publication of raw data so that the authors' conclusions can be verified. Since this study was carried out in a protected area of the school for the first time, the figures in the application also remain, however, the decision on the quality of the images remains with the decision of the technical editor. The reviewer may have received a preview file with low-resolution shapes to save file space.

Response: done. Comparison enriched.

Response: deleted

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Same sentences are hard to understund. Please shorten sentences - my same  comments in pdf file.

Response: partly done.

From pdf:

L-44, 47: Ref 9 like before. The paper concern general diversity form a completely different region. Please replace this reference to different, more fitting to the topic of paper

Response: changed

L-135: under what magnification?

Response: added x400 and Table corrected

 

L-135: Abundance 6-scores scale

Response: Table corrected and changed

 

L-157: For all these analyses were used taxa frequency like in Table 2?

Something is wrong here, or not property described in methods. For this times of statistics Authors should use relative abundance of species in assemblege (in  percentage ). I understand that Authors cite same own publications but I dont now why they trey to invent and use only onw methods. This approach is very problematic because makes  impossible to compare results with other paper.

 

Response: the semi-quantitative scales are wide distributed in different countries as mentioned in cited reference in the first version of this paper, but we deleted all mentions this scale from MM section as well as in the Table A1 in Appendix now presented only presents-absents of each species

L-177: for pH always to one decimal place

Response: It is average data from as minimum three repetition of measurements, added.

L-181: that mean were below determination level?

Response: These results we received from the Turkish Laboratory which have standards. The name of the analytical canter is mentioned in the MM part: “The DSI General Directorate Laboratories DSI 22nd Regional Directorate Quality Control and Laboratory Branch Office conducted analyses of other hydrochemical parameters”

 

L-223-225: move to discussion and support by references

Response: This is results. The references added.

 

L-319: Do the number of species depended on the size of the lake or its elevation ?

Response: Clusterisation show slight dependence to altitude, given, but not to the like area.

 

L-319: number of species ? number of taxa ?

Response: because this flora contain monospecific taxa it is in principle the same.

 

L-332: what was the gradient length?  all variables included in the analysis were statistically significant? if not, should be removed form analysis. what was the percentage of variation explained by each variable ?

Response: correlation matrix is added as Appendix Table A4.

 

L-350: number of taxa ?

Response: can be taxa. But only one species contain mine variation and other, so it can be the same taxa and species richness

 

L-353: number, species or taxa?

Response: can be taxa. But only one species contain mine variation and other, so it can be the same taxa and species richness

 

L-356: that mean is negative correlation beetwen number of species and lake altitude/condictivity ? are you sure ?

Response: I am sure, this said both graphs.

 

L-357: that mean: lower level of oxygen - higher numer of species ? Are you sure ?

Response: sure, but at the same plot can be seen that species number also increased in low-altitude lakes.

 

L-365: plese indicate clearly. When number of species increase. General, the number of species increse/decrease according to lake altitude ?

Response: corrected.

 

L-368: the current description is very misleading

Response: corrected, added

 

L-380: like before. no species = zero species  - figures and tables should be self explanatory

Response: In MM section stay: Three-dimensional (3D) surface plots of the number of species versus individual parameters were constructed in Statistica 12.0 using the distance-weighted least squares method. For comparison, for each 3D graph, one main parameter (species number) and two others are selected, within which the program calculates probable changes in the main parameter. Thus, the resulting graph shows the trends in each of the related parameters. From here, extreme values may appear that are not real, but only reflect trends for a given distribution. The graph can be interpreted as a trend of changes (increases or decreases) in the values of the main parameter (z-axis) when the other two parameters (x and y-axis) change.

 

L-386: do this relationship was statistically important ? (p<0.05)

Response: There are the tendences only, as described above and MM section.

 

L-412: explain the used  cateogory abbreviations in figure caption

Response: deleted.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors,

Thank you for your work for revision of this manuscript. I think you satisfactorily answered a large part of my comments. However, some of my comments were not answered or corrected in the maintext of the manuscript:

Some of my questions regarding sampling were not answered. For example, how many stones did you sample and from what depth did you take your samples? And which parameters did the lab actually analyze?

I still think that there is a mismatch between your results and discussion. You have so many nice figures and results, but they are completely ignored in the discussion. Instead, a large part of discussion is dedicated to discussing the characteristics of individual species. Please at least make sure that you discuss the results of every statistical analysis that you conducted.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The English language still requires some editing. I list some of the things here:

line 29: the abbreviation IUCN is still there

lines 57-58: change 'way' to 'ways'

table 1: what does km2 * 10-2 mean?

line 481: remove 'have been'

line 484: change 'lakes have' to 'lakes that have'

lines 490-491: change the sentence to 'These species were found in almost all investigated lakes'

lines 265-266: 'luuks like rather stabile in the lakes community' - please re-write

lines 494-495: what do you mean by 'low saturated wit low organic content'?

lines 545-547: What does this sentence mean?

 

Author Response

Dear Editor and the Reviewer 2

Thank you for comments. Please find below the responses to each comment.

With best regards,

Prof Sophia Barinova,

Corresponding author

 

Responses to Reviewer 2, report 2:

Dear authors,

Thank you for your work for revision of this manuscript. I think you satisfactorily answered a large part of my comments. However, some of my comments were not answered or corrected in the maintext of the manuscript:

Some of my questions regarding sampling were not answered. For example, how many stones did you sample and from what depth did you take your samples?

Response: Added

And which parameters did the lab actually analyze?

Response: Added

I still think that there is a mismatch between your results and discussion. You have so many nice figures and results, but they are completely ignored in the discussion. Instead, a large part of discussion is dedicated to discussing the characteristics of individual species. Please at least make sure that you discuss the results of every statistical analysis that you conducted.

Response: added

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The English language still requires some editing. I list some of the things here:

line 29: the abbreviation IUCN is still there

Response: deleted

lines 57-58: change 'way' to 'ways'

Response: done

table 1: what does km2 * 10-2 mean?

Response: corrected

line 481: remove 'have been'

Response: removed

line 484: change 'lakes have' to 'lakes that have'

Response: corrected

lines 490-491: change the sentence to 'These species were found in almost all investigated lakes'

Response: done

lines 265-266: 'luuks like rather stabile in the lakes community' - please re-write

Response: corrected

lines 494-495: what do you mean by 'low saturated wit low organic content'?

Response: corrected

lines 545-547: What does this sentence mean?

Response: corrected

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors

 

thank you for considering my comments.

 

I have only one but in my opinion important remark - in first review I was asked about correlation of oxygen with number of species.  Authors,  they confirmed that there was no mistake in manuscript, but in my opinion should pay attention on correlation matrix.

In the table 4, appendix 1 occurred strong correlation between DO, cond and Cl ions. Maybe this is why you found correlation between DO and species number - probably this is the reason and correlation really not occur !

In table 4 (page 9) DO values are not changings strongly – in my opinion these changes are not statistically significant, but you should check it on raw data before including DO (and all variables) to analyses.

In my opinion Authors, if don’t want to change all analyses, they should at least add  appropriate comment to results and discussion because “blind rely” on statistical analyses leads to incorrect conclusions and misleads the reader.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

no comments

Author Response

Dear Editor and the Reviewer 3

Thank you for your comments. Please find below the responses to each comment.

With best regards,

Prof Sophia Barinova,

Corresponding author

 

Responses to Reviewer 3, report 2:

Dear Authors

thank you for considering my comments.

I have only one but in my opinion important remark - in first review I was asked about correlation of oxygen with number of species.  Authors,  they confirmed that there was no mistake in manuscript, but in my opinion should pay attention on correlation matrix.

In the table 4, appendix 1 occurred strong correlation between DO, cond and Cl ions. Maybe this is why you found correlation between DO and species number - probably this is the reason and correlation really not occur !

In table 4 (page 9) DO values are not changings strongly – in my opinion these changes are not statistically significant, but you should check it on raw data before including DO (and all variables) to analyses.

In my opinion Authors, if don’t want to change all analyses, they should at least add  appropriate comment to results and discussion because “blind rely” on statistical analyses leads to incorrect conclusions and misleads the reader.

Response: corrected

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

no comments