Genetic Diversity and Population Structure of Corylus yunnanensis (Franch.) A. Camus Using Microsatellite Markers in Sichuan Province
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
See attached PDF.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
I have provided some notes on English language in the "Comments and Suggestions" PDF. Overall, there is a need to improve it to make the paper more readable.
Author Response
Dear Mr./Ms.,
We are truly grateful for your comments and thoughtful suggestions. Based on these comments and suggestions, we have made careful modifications to the original manuscript. All changes are marked with the Track Changes function in Microsoft Word. We hope the new manuscript will meet the magazine’s standards. Below you will find our point-by-point responses to the comments and suggestions.
Point 1: 41: Reference 5 doesn't seem to be supporting the statement.
98: The K-values which were tested are not given here.
168: "extremely" seems to me to be a too strong word.
186: I would emphasize that the given values are generalizations. E.g. "...was similar with what is typical for species that are..."
11: "...is a deciduous..."
32: "Betulaceae", typo
34: "...naturally ocurring in China..."
38: "...overall proportion of fatty..."
44: "...are distributed here..."
185: "...yunnanensis, its population..."
251-252: "...increasingly severe climatic..."
Response 1: We have made careful revisions in response to all your suggestions.
Point 2: Figure 3: The individuals within populations could be ordered by proportion of the dominant cluster in the given population to better visualize the results.
Response 2: We rearranged the orders of individuals within populations and the populations, and redraw the figure.
Point 3: 216-218: I did't find the prefecture information for the studied populations. List of populations in parentheses for each proposed group would be quite required here.
Response 3: In table 1, we added the prefecture information to make our manuscript more readable.
Point 4:216-223: I'm not sure this classification is so clear and a less strong statement with additional explanations is necessary. I only assume the populations here: The Aba prefecture populations (C, H) ale indeed clearly differentiated, but not so much the other, in my opinion. I assume the Ya'an populations are the populations K and M. I see a differentiation, but it doesn't look so strong to me.
Response 4: In our manuscript, both UPGMA and STRUCTURE analysis showed that the 10 C. yunnanensis populations could be divided into three clusters, and the Mantel test also revealed a significant correlation [r=0.715 (p=0.002)] between Nei’s genetic distance among populations and geographic distance. Indeed, it doesn't look so strong for the differentiation between Ya'an populations and the populations of Liangshan and Ganzi prefecture, so we gave the description for the slight differentiation in section 3.3, and we also mentioned that the genetic structure of C. yunnanensis is affected by elevation gradient to some extent in section 4.2. Meanwhile, we deleted some strong words such as “extremely” and “clearly” in our manuscript.
Point 5:224-244: As far as I can tell this paragraph is unrelated to the findings of this study and thus I think it should be removed. It is also plagued by language mistakes that change of hide the meaning of some of it parts (lines 242 and 238-239 are most problematic); I find it highly speculative (although I am not an expert in this area); and the reference 1, which is very important for this paragraph, is only available in Chinese – a supplementation with a reference in English would be useful (I found a perhaps appropriate information in paper by Zhen et al. from 2018 titled "Resolving the Speciation Patterns and Evolutionary History of the Intercontinental Disjunct Genus Corylus (Betulaceae) Using Genome-Wide SNPs"
Response 5: The plants of genus Corylus and genus Alnus, both of which belong to the family Betulaceae, are widely distributed in the Hengduan Mountain, but there is a significant difference in Sichuan basin, where no wild hazelnut resources have been found, while A. cremastogyne is widely distributed. In this section, we attempted to speculate the possible reasons for distribution difference of genus Corylus and Alnus, and we cited the paper by Zhen which estimated the originated time for the recent common ancestor of Corylus in southwestern China, meanwhile we also revised this text of this section.
Point 6: 12: I'm not sure what is "woody grain".
Response 6: We referred to some papers, and “woody crop” may be more suitable, which was used in the paper by Wang in 2018 titled "Progress in Cultivation and Utilization of Corylus L. Resources in China (I)-Corylus Germplasm Resources (in Chinese)".
Point 7: 258: "To directly breeding pollinated tree variety..." – I can't tell what was meant by this.
Response 7: We referred to some papers, and “the pollinating varieties” may be more suitable, which was used in the paper by Liang et al in 2021 titled "Selection of Improved Hazelnut Varieties and Arrangement of Pollinating Trees (in Chinese)". So the text was changed to “To directly breed the pollinating varieties”.
Once again, thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.
Sincerely yours,
Ze-Liang Wang
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear author
Your paper titled "Genetic Diversity and Population Structure of Corylus yunnanensis Using Microsatellite Markers in Sichuan Province" studies 10 with 9 proved SSR 10 populations of Corylus yunnanensis, a species belonging to a genus of plants with interests in economy. The document is well structured and the English style is adquate. I also appreciate the maps and tables and figures included in the manuscript.
Please consider my revisions as new ideas to improve the quality of the manuscript.
Title and abstract: please add the accepted author epithet of C. yunnanensis. You may chech in "theplantlist" webpage and follow the link to the new server.
The first time you cite a scientific name in the rest of the manuscript: please add the author epithet after the scientific name.
Line 11: Is a deciduous instead of is one deciduous.
Line 31: hazel plants) instead of hazel) plants.
Line 48: root system instead of rootsystems.
Line 181. Please remove "of course" from the sencence. Is it possible to discuss with those publications the location, number of individuals and number and name of microsatellites? You only used nine.
Line 192: Principal Coordinate Analysis instead of principal coordinate analysis.
Line 213: "Gene flow was relatively frequent, preventing..." but then 216 to 223 is related to population structure. This is perfectly compatible, but from my point of view, reading from outside seems a bit contradictory. Is it possible to make it a bit more compatible. For example: starting from line 216: Nevertheless, the 10 C. yunnanensis...
Lines 224 to 244. With your species (C.y.), sample data and number of microsatellites you are not able to sufficiently support such discussion, from my point of view.
Map in figure 1: The coordinates are undistinguishable as the font is far too small, please correct the style of the grid map to make the coordinates intelligible. You may also increase a bit the font of the C. yunnanensis localities.
Map in figure 4: please add the coordinates of this map. You may repeat the same grif from corrected figure 1.
No english comments on this manuscript apart from the ones in the review.
Author Response
Dear Mr./Ms.,
We are truly grateful for your comments and thoughtful suggestions. Based on these comments and suggestions, we have made careful modifications to the original manuscript. All changes are marked with the Track Changes function in Microsoft Word. We hope the new manuscript will meet the magazine’s standards. Below you will find our point-by-point responses to the comments and suggestions.
Point 1: The first time you cite a scientific name in the rest of the manuscript: please add the author epithet after the scientific name.
Line 11: Is a deciduous instead of is one deciduous.
Line 31: hazel plants) instead of hazel) plants.
Line 48: root system instead of rootsystems.
Line 181. Please remove "of course" from the sencence. Is it possible to discuss with those publications the location, number of individuals and number and name of microsatellites? You only used nine.
Line 192: Principal Coordinate Analysis instead of principal coordinate analysis.
Line 213: "Gene flow was relatively frequent, preventing..." but then 216 to 223 is related to population structure. This is perfectly compatible, but from my point of view, reading from outside seems a bit contradictory. Is it possible to make it a bit more compatible. For example: starting from line 216: Nevertheless, the 10 C. yunnanensis...
Map in figure 1: The coordinates are undistinguishable as the font is far too small, please correct the style of the grid map to make the coordinates intelligible. You may also increase a bit the font of the C. yunnanensis localities.
Response 1: We have made careful revisions in response to all your suggestions.
Point 2: Map in figure 4: please add the coordinates of this map. You may repeat the same grif from corrected figure 1.
Response 2: In figure 1, we corrected the style of the grid map and increased a bit the font of the localities to make the coordinates distinguishable. But in figure 4, we attempted to present the mean cluster membership proportions of the 10 C. yunnanensis populations, and the added coordinates may distract attention from this, so we think that it’s not necessary to add the coordinates.
Point 3: Lines 224 to 244. With your species (C. yunnanensis), sample data and number of microsatellites you are not able to sufficiently support such discussion, from my point of view.
Response 3: The plants of genus Corylus and genus Alnus, both of which belong to the family Betulaceae, are widely distributed in the Hengduan Mountain, but there is a significant difference in Sichuan basin, where no wild hazelnut resources have been found, while A. cremastogyne is widely distributed. In this section, we attempted to speculate the possible reasons for distribution difference of genus Corylus and Alnus, and we also revised this text.
Once again, thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.
Sincerely yours,
Ze-Liang Wang
