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The reviewers confirm that you have done an excellent job in responding to their comments. Thank you for your efforts. The manuscript is now ready for publication.
[# PeerJ Staff Note - this decision was reviewed and approved by Dezene Huber, a PeerJ Section Editor covering this Section #]
The authors did an excellent job responding to all reviewer comments. In my view, the manuscript is much improved in clarity, reproducibility, and implications. Nice work!
One small edit:
Line 143: “P types” Should this be “haplotype P”?
The design explanations were much more clearly explained.
No comment
Great work responding to and incorporating all reviewer comments. This will make a solid contribution to the literature.
No comment
No comment
No comment
The submitted manuscript is focused to the study of response of two wetland species to changing habitat conditions and human measures, leading to suppression of reed stands. Thus cultivation experiments represent the main part of this work. Authors described in detail experimental part of the work, and answered fully questions and comments of reviewers. All proposed corrections or changes in the text were accepted, some statements written more precisely.
The manuscript after corrections and changes following reviewers´comments represents well written study useful as from the point of view of wetland plants ecology, as a methodological contribution suitable for management of wetland ecosystems in protected areas. I recommend it to publication.
The Reviewers think the paper has significant applied value, but a number of different clarifications are suggested by each, that will help communicate the experiment better. Please carefully reply to all of their suggestions.
**PeerJ Staff Note:** Please ensure that all review, editorial, and staff comments are addressed in a response letter and that any edits or clarifications mentioned in the letter are also inserted into the revised manuscript where appropriate.
In general, this is an interesting study of the impacts of flooding depth and duration on two wetland plants, with the addition of a cutting treatment for one of them. It is generally well written, but leaves some information out. I ask for more detail in many areas to improve the reproducibility of the study and help with interpretation of results. I think the introduction and discussion would both benefit from more literature review building context and relating results to the literature.
Specific comments
Line 85: Location information (country) for Eulsuk Island
Line 96-104: I would like to hear about your aims here. What questions were you addressing?
Line 101: cannot be applied over large areas due to equipment constraints? Explain why.
Line 102:Seems a bit odd to mention the specifics of the management plan here. Maybe it would be more appropriate to say a management plan will be created based on the results of the experiment, but without saying what the results tell you.
Methods:
Line 109: More identifying info here please. Like country and coordinates.
Line 120-122: Is this haplotype M? Make sure to state it is the invasive variety. And tell how it was verified (genetic, morphological)
There were many deficiencies in the reporting of the experiment. From careful examination of the supplemental files and figures in addition to the text, these do not appear to be flaws in the design, just the reporting. I recommend many areas where details could be added.
Specific comments:
Line 158: Is the depth with respect to the soil surface? Please add that detail
Line 161-165: I’m a little lost in the details of the experimental design. Could you provide a diagram or more detail in the description. It sounds like you had separate experiments for each species, P.australis and B. planiculmis. The P. australis experiment had three factors (Depth[4 levels], Duration[4 levels], Cut[2 levels]) x 8 replicates = 256 pots. The B. planiculmis experiment had three factors (Depth[4 levels], Duration[4 levels]) x 10 replicates = 160 pots. Is that right? Figure one makes it look like maybe only 3 levels for depth and duration? Please add additional details to make it clear to the reader. Figure 1 helps, but you could add more to the caption to further explain
Line 160: How did the flooding duration treatment work? Were plants harvested after their duration was over? Where they unflooded for the remainder of the 120 days?
Line 160: Did any of the flooding treatments result in plants being fully submerged? In other words, did their stems remain out of the water?
Line 165: Did you keep p. australis and b. planiculmis in separate tanks or randomized throughout 2? How many pots in each tank?
Line 166: Was water ever changed throughout the experiment? Did you have issues with algal growth?
Line 168: dry weight above ground or below or both?
Line 172: How did you assess whether they survived? Please list criteria used. It can be difficult to tell if a plant is really dead when they look like they are, strangely enough
I recommend adding more detail in the results and discussion section to improve the clarity and rigor of the results.
Specific Comments:
Results:
Line 190-202: Any stats you can provide around the mortality data? And again explain how mortality was determined
Figure 2: Are the points relative to the control or just the mean of each treatment group? I recommend adding error bars to each point and a 95% confidence interval around the dotted line representing the control. Or just making another category of 0 cm and adding points.
Line 205-206: Affected how?
Line 208-209: So these are stems that regrew after cutting? How did you handle pots that had no regrowth?
Line210: Is this total (above + below) biomass? I would like to see above and belowground separately, especially because the aboveground biomass was manipulated by your treatments so will definitely have a significant main effect. Unless you aboveground biomass is only the new stems that emerged after treatments.
Discussion:
Throughout: I think the word growth should be changed to “performance” throughout because growth is not well defined, but you can define all of your measurements as performance metrics.
Line 243: This is confusing. Do you mean the independent flooding in volving inundation, but NO aboveground cutting? The data seem to show that the combination of inundation and cutting did reduce growth and increased mortality.
Line 248: Typo – Song et al. repeated.
Line 256: This is likely a result of Phragmites’ ability to breathe through its stems if a portion is above the surface. If the inundation had completely covered the stems, it might have died. Expand this section to refer to the literature on the physiology of Phragmites in high water. Specifically Armstrong & Armstrong 1991 “A convective through-flow of gases in Phragmites australis (Cav.) Trin. ex Steud.”
Line 309: Say more here. I would like to see more about the potential mechanisms that drove you cut and flooded plants to reduce growth and increase mortality. Use examples from the literature. The Widin paper is a good place to start.
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- this research was of value by providing some insight into the impact that manipulating water
depths as a control option for problematic Phragmites populations may have on an important
native emergent plant
- I found it curious that a very similar research paper by Widen et al., which was cited in the
conclusions, was not referred to in the introduction and along with an explanation as to how
this research was different
- I believe this paper could be improved by clearly stating what the research objectives were
right at the beginning ie. what were the hypothesis being tested; this would explain why B.
planiculmis was used in the experiment at the beginning instead inferring the reason in lines
269-271.
- If there are not size constraints for this paper, including a map of the research site would be of
value as would the inclusion of the photo provided as a supplemental Figure…it shows the site
conditions and the experimental design really well.
- given the fact that the researchers are in South Korea and that English is not likely their first
language they did an exceptional job writing the paper. The beginning has a few grammar edits
required but, the last part was really well written.
- overall, I found the research to be well thought out and the manuscript to be easy to follow
and relatively well written. Congratulations!
I consider English lanuage to be clear, professional (but I am not native speaker). This original research includes not only methodical approach to management of restored wetlands, but brings also useful new data on biological traits of the studied species. Nevertheless, it would be suitable to take some facts into account and make some corrections (see below).
p. 7–8: Bolboschoenus planiculmis was chosen for the experiment as other dominant wetland species occurring at similar habitats as Phragmites australis. This is o. k., but generally B. planiculmis could not represent other wetland plants growing at the same sites as Phragmites australis, because of its ability to survive high water level in the state of dormant tubers. In most of other wetland plants (including Phragmites australis) no similar ability of dormancy is known, and this difference should be taken into account when evaluating results. See Discussion, p. 12, l. 264–271.
p. 10, Fig. 2: The mortality rates of Bolboschoenus planiculmis and Phragmites australis were based on the proportion of plants with dead aboveground shoots. How did you found whether the tubers of Bolboschoenus planiculmis died as well, and are not dormant?
No comments.
p. 12: For your information: Gas pathways throughout rhizome system of Phragmites due to rhizome and stem anatomy is very important for oxygen supply of plant shoots. On the other hand, this may be a disadvantage when stem is damaged under water level – perforated stem enables water flowing into rhizome sytem and its die back. This is usually used in fishpond management in Central Europe when cutting under water level leads to restriction of Phragmites australis stands.
Some small corrections are proposed in the text.
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