Enumerating Indigenous Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi (AMF) Associated with Three Permanent Preservation Plots of Tropical Forests in Bangalore, Karnataka, India

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript bacteria-2159592 investigated the arbuscular mycorrizal fungi communities of three permanent preservation plots of tropical forests in Bangalore (India).

The manuscript contains interesting results. However, the manuscript has some problems that need to be solved before considering it for publication. Below are my specific comments.

Specific comments

·        Introduction: The introduction does not place the study in a broad context or highlight why the study was necessary. I suggest expanding the introduction. Permanent conservation plots need to be introduced, what they are and what they can be used for. Working hypotheses need to be presented. The authors should also review the bibliography; there are no papers published after 2019.

·        Materials and Methods: The description of the methods is clear.

o   L110-113 – Describe with more details the spores. Was this analysis carried out on spores obtained as described in L108?

o   In section 2.4 and 2.5 you should add the number of biological replicates analyzed.

·        Results: The results section is clear and supported by informative tables and figures. However,. Figure 3 and 4 and Table 1 and Table 2 results were not analyzed statistically. You should carry out a normality test followed by a analysis of variance and post hoc comparison of the means. I would also remove the background from the figures.

·        Discussion: The discussion well structured. However, the authors should avoid the repetition of the results and enrich the works considered, there are no papers published after 2019.

·        Conclusions: Beyond a summary of the study the authors underlined briefly the importance of the findings obtained. However, future research directions are missing.

Other comments

The English language must be revised throughout the manuscript for some typos.

The italics of the genera must also be revised.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

I am glad to review the manuscript titled “Enumerating indigenous Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) associated with three permanent preservation plots of tropical forests in Bangalore, Karnataka, India”. This manuscript aimed to present AM fungal spore communities in three permanent preservation plots of forests in India. Importantly, the fungal spores  were negatively correlated with available P. 

 

While this study is the first to address this question on dry deciduous vs. mixed moist forests, the limited information of the study (i.e. other soil properties except for available P) and the AMF community structure (i.e. genus or species level) gives this reviewer pause in weighing the ecological value of these results. Some additional statistic analyses appear needed to better understand the core results and the main conclusion about effects on AMF community composition is oversimplified. The discussion is highly speculative.

 

Additionally. I do not think [Bacteria] is the best choice for these papers. Considering the the scope and aim of this study, the authors should consider another, maybe more local journal for their research, such as [Journal of Fungi], [Microoganisms], [Forests]

 

 

Below I provide a number of specific comments, which I hope the authors find helpful

 

Abstract - what is the background and purpose for this study？

 

Intro - why choose your study in  BNP and DRF？What is the purpose of studying the AMF community in this region? What is your hypothesis?

 

M&M

 

Fig 1 how is the scale of the site map?

 

Results

 

L132-136 & Fig2 - did you determine the genus/species level difference of spore number in each sample?

 

Fig 3 - one-way ANOVA following post-hoc significant test is recommend to see the difference among the treatments （Plots and dry/wet season）

 

Fig 4 - this make no sense to see the difference between dry/wet season. Alternatively, a boxplot for data of fig3 will clearly show the distribution of spore number of each sample

 

Table 2- again, one-way ANOVA following post-hoc significant test is more appropriate

 

Discussion

 

L210-222 highly speculative, because I did not see any analysis/comparison among those genera of AMF 

 

L254-255 Please report correlation information（Spearman’s r and p value）rather than speculate here.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thanks for the revision, the manuscript has been improved and is ready for publication. 

Author Response

Thank you for your valuable suggestions that had helped in the improvement of the paper.