Analysis of Ciliate Community Diversity in Decaying Pinus nigra Logs

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Please check the following comments

Introduction Section

Lines 41, 50, 55: the words protozoa, unicellular protozoa, and protozoans should be changed to protists.

Lines 55-57: the authors should provide more recent references instead of the number 11 (Rivera et al., 1992), this reference includes only one ciliate genus, obtained for air samples, and does not include the importance of cysts in a broad sense. There are some publications explaining the role of the cysts of ciliates in the soil as well in bromeliads and other plants (with similar ciliate communities occurring in the soil), giving examples of hard environmental conditions to which ciliates survive.

Results Section

Table 4: Please check the taxonomic changes for a) Colpoda aspera which now belongs to another genus, b) the family where species of genus Apofrontonia are included.

Discussion Section

Line 437, please check the word yest.

Line 440, please change the words protozoan domain.

Line 505, please check the word pry.

Author Response

Q1: Lines 41, 50, 55: the words protozoa, unicellular protozoa, and protozoans should be changed to protists.

Replay: done, we changed as reviewer suggested

Q2: Lines 55-57: the authors should provide more recent references instead of the number 11 (Rivera et al., 1992), this reference includes only one ciliate genus, obtained for air samples, and does not include the importance of cysts in a broad sense. There are some publications explaining the role of the cysts of ciliates in the soil as well in bromeliads and other plants (with similar ciliate communities occurring in the soil), giving examples of hard environmental conditions to which ciliates survive.

Replay: done, we removed the reference of Rivera et al. and added a new, more suitable reference

Q3: Table 4: Please check the taxonomic changes for a) Colpoda aspera which now belongs to another genus, b) the family where species of genus Apofrontonia are included.

Replay: we apologize very much but we cannot find the new taxonomic attribution of Colpodea aspera mentioned by the review. We would be very grateful to him if he could provide us with the new genus attribution and we will change it. Regarding the second point, we did not clearly understand the review’s request since, on the basis of sequence similarity threshold as described by Webster et al. 2010, clone C69 is classified as belonging to Apofrondoniidae family while clone C72 to Apofrotonia genus, therefore we believe that what is reported in the column “Taxonomical classification” is correct.

Q4: Line 437, please check the word yest.

Replay: done, we corrected in yeast

Q5: Line 440, please change the words protozoan domain.

Replay: done, we changed in ciliate phylum

Q6: Line 505, please check the word pry.

Replay: done, we removed the word pry

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript deals with the study of ciliates diversity on the decaying pinewood. The manuscript is well written and collated, materials and methods represent clarity and findings are supported with appropriate supporting literature.

The manuscript can be an informative piece of information for the journal. It can be accepted after a minor revision and addressal of few queries given below:

1. Introduction needs to be improved with more information on ciliate diversity in the decaying environment (including species can be discussed), role in nutrient cycling, Introduction lacks coherence and redundancy of the basic information on ciliates should be reduced.
2. The latitude and longitude (43°27’ N; 9°11’ E) provided by the author apparently belong to somewhere in Ligurian Sea, not from any pine forest in mountain area of Pratomagno (please find the attached screenshot). Provide actual data
3. Why was the information on the climate of study area was limited to just temperatures? Why did the authors not consider recording the precipitation and humidity that are essential to ciliate diversity?
4. Significant plagiarism detected in the Section 2.2. and 2.3, it requires revision.
5. Please provide better resolution image for figure 1 and 2.

Author Response

Q1: Introduction needs to be improved with more information on ciliate diversity in the decaying environment (including species can be discussed), role in nutrient cycling, Introduction lacks coherence and redundancy of the basic information on ciliates should be reduced.

Replay: we better specify the role of ciliates in nutrient cycle and reduced the redundancy, as reviewer suggested. However, we have tried not to expand the introduction so much but to keep it of a size that does not overcome the other sections of the manuscript.

Q2: The latitude and longitude (43°27’ N; 9°11’ E) provided by the author apparently belong to somewhere in Ligurian Sea, not from any pine forest in mountain area of Pratomagno (please find the attached screenshot). Provide actual data

Replay: we apologize for the mistake, and we thank the reviewer for noticing it. We have entered the right coordinates.

Q3: Why was the information on the climate of study area was limited to just temperatures? Why did the authors not consider recording the precipitation and humidity that are essential to ciliate diversity?

Replay: done. We added information on annual precipitations.

Q4: Significant plagiarism detected in the Section 2.2. and 2.3, it requires revision.

Replay: we have revised Sections 2.2 and 2.3 and modified where possible. We tried our best, but it wasn't easy to find alternative ways to describe the methods as they were very technical parts.

Q5: Please provide better resolution image for figure 1 and 2.

Replay: we added the images in .tiff format hoping that the resolution meets the reviewer's request