Arthropod Recolonization of Soil Surface Habitat in Post-Fire Mulch Treatments
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
1. General Comments
The paper presented is easy to read. It refers a high problem in forest ecosystems – forest fires – and points out how the recuperation goes one. It is good to have papers concerning this subject. As a scientific reader, I found the paper interesting and understandable.
2. Section by section
2.1. - Introduction
This section is comprehensible, interesting and has recent bibliography to support the discussion made.
The authors present a good review about the subject presented and about the interaction established between soil, vegetation and arthropod colonization. The problem posed is interesting.
2.2. - Material and Methods
Material and Methods are easy to understand and allow to replicate the assay. Statistical methods seem to be appropriated.
2.3. - Results
Results are well presented; graphic component is interesting and gives information easy to understand.
2.4. Discussion:
Discussion is well conducted and points out the recuperation of ecosystems after forest fires as well as the most important threats that conditioned this activity. Discussion is well supported in bibliographic references.
3. Suggestions
Despite the appreciation made, some improvements can be made in order to ameliorate the reading of the paper proposed.
1) Lines 155 – 157. I think these lines are not necessary and I suggest removing it and re-writing the paragraph. As a scientific reader I don’t need to know the causes of difficulty in data obtention.
2) In Results I suggest separating clear both sites. I propose to start describing Museum Fire (the authors can use the mark 3.1., for example) and in this section describe “Beetles of the Museum Fire”. After, I suggest creating a new section (following the same approach, the number will be 3.2.) named Centennial Forest and give all the information obtained in this site. The text, presented as it is, becomes a little bit confusing.
3) Table 2 should be improved. The first site to be presented should be Museum Fire (respecting the order that appears in the paper). The structure adopted in Table 2 should be the same so I recommend: a) delete the line after Trachypachidae in the site concerning the Museum Fire or b) add a line after Tenebrionidae in the site concerning the Centennial Forest.
Author Response
Thank you for your kind comments. We appreciate your suggestions and have incorporated your feedback into the new version of the manuscript as follows:
1) Lines 155 – 157. I think these lines are not necessary and I suggest removing it and re-writing the paragraph. As a scientific reader I don’t need to know the causes of difficulty in data obtention.
**We were unsure if this loss of data would create an issue with some readers. We have removed the lines and rewritten based on this feedback, thank you.
2) In Results I suggest separating clear both sites. I propose to start describing Museum Fire (the authors can use the mark 3.1., for example) and in this section describe “Beetles of the Museum Fire”. After, I suggest creating a new section (following the same approach, the number will be 3.2.) named Centennial Forest and give all the information obtained in this site. The text, presented as it is, becomes a little bit confusing.
**We have reorganized the results for clarity based on these suggestions, thank you.
3) Table 2 should be improved. The first site to be presented should be Museum Fire (respecting the order that appears in the paper). The structure adopted in Table 2 should be the same so I recommend: a) delete the line after Trachypachidae in the site concerning the Museum Fire or b) add a line after Tenebrionidae in the site concerning the Centennial Forest.
**We reorganized the table and corrected the fonts and spacing, as well as the formatting error with the extra line.
Reviewer 2 Report
The review article ‘Arthropod recolonization of soil surface habitat in post-fire mulch treatments’ presents interesting analysis study of diversity of arthropod communities and the effect of mulch treatment on insect community diversity in post-fire landscapes. The subject seems to be important, especially in view of the increased frequency of wildfires as a consequence of progressing climate change and lack of knowledge on the regeneration of ecosystems after fires in the context of the analysis of the arthropods occurrence.
Despite the ambitious goal, the authors did not avoid some errors that should be corrected before publication of the manuscript. The main objections concern the methodological part and some ambiguities. Moreover, in the results chapter there are descriptions of the results, without confirmation in the form of tables and figures, which does not allow the reader to familiarize with them and interpret them better. Other criticisms are mostly editorial in nature. It seems appropriate to give values in generally accepted units of measurement in the world, not only those that function in certain countries, such as USA. In addition, tables and figures and their titles require some editing to facilitate the interpretation of the results. The paper reads generally well, without any serious linguistic errors. Considering the above, I suggest accepting the manuscript after major revision. Below I allow myself to post a detailed comment on the reviewed manuscript.
Line 27-28: not all keywords reflect the essence of the conducted research and the article. Typically, a maximum of 5 keywords are provided. I propose to remove: thinning; prescribed fire; slash piles
Line 66: What research is it about? Add relevant literature.
Line 100: use ‘ha’ as the unit of measurement.
Line 101: give the Latin name of the tree species
Line 102: indicate tree species
Lines 107-108: Use ‘ha’ as the unit of measurement
Line 112: remove ‘our’
Line 120: instead of inches, use the common unit of measurement, i.e. the meter
Line 158: Were any preservatives used in the traps? How often were inspections performed and over what period? Predatory insects could kill some of the caught individuals, which in the case of rare catches may be of key importance for the research results.
Line 162, 163: Up to what level were plants marked, i.e. species? Was the coverage percentage also specified or just counted? 0,5 m x 0,5 m
Line 180: I suggest taking the liter as the unit of measurement
Line 182: Why for each transect throughout the Museum Fire yo used six traps (line 141) and for Centennial Forest Mulch Plots different number (i.e. four, line 182)? It is unclear. Please explain it.
Line 210: …were the most abundant
Line 224: replace the phrase, 'We also used', which was used in the sentence above
Line 233: In the case of statistical analyses, the significance level for which the 'p' value was given should be provided
Line 241-249: These results should be presented and confirmed in the form of a table or figure.
Line 250, 263: Chapter subtitles should stand out from the rest of the text. I suggest making the text bold or italic
Lines 264-280: No confirmation in the form of a table or figure presenting the obtained results
Line 281-282: (Figure 2 and 3); (Table 2)
Line 290: Add spaces before "While.."
Line 293: insted of (Figure 4a. through g.) use (Figure 4a-g). Moreover, the study results presented in Figure 4 should be discussed in more detail in the text.
Figure 1: I suggest placing the letters indicating the location of the transects on a white background. In the current version it is hardly readable. Remove from th title ‘our’
Figure 2 and 3 should have similar size. Add a scale along the axis. The titles of both figures should not reveal the absence or existence of differences - this information should appear in the text (which was done, lines: 251-253). Figure 3 lacks an explanation of the legend (what period 1, 2, 3 mean), which was done in the case of treatment. In the case of Figure 2, it is proposed to use the term: Treatment variant in the legend instead of Type. Headings above individual figures are unnecessary.
Table 1: Add by feet, the unit of measure meter above sea level. In case of Centennial Forest Center you mentioned above (line 171) about 11, not 7 plots. Besides why is plot 7 included in the table? Moreover, this location is not visible in Fig. 1. Remove the inside lines. Leave only the outside as the outline of the table.
Figure 4: What was Figure 4h supposed to represent? It is not in the description of the figure. Headings above individual figures are unnecessary – should be removed as it doubled the information provided in the title. Along the Y axis, specify the unit of measure. The letters a-g should be located in the upper right corner of the figure. Placing an asterisk in the figure and an explanation in the title does not explain the existence of differences between the variants. What's more, the differences between the analyzed variants should be presented using letters (above the bars) and in the title it should be stated that the average values marked with the same letter mean no statistically significant differences.
In the X-axis title, I suggest to use Treatment variant.
Table 2: The legend should be moved below the table. Standardize the font size in the table. Too many lines, making the table difficult to read.
In table 3: I propose to modify the table by placing functional groups and test results under analysis for family. Four decimal places for p-values are sufficient. If you say „There was no significant difference for any family or functional group in the Centennial Forest site”, the results should be included in the table.
Author Response
Thank you for your helpful feedback. We initially removed some tables due to length and repeating information too many times for the reader. We have added the tables in question back into the manuscript and corrected formatting issues throughout the rest of the tables and figures. We did forget to convert some of the units of measurement for this audience, thank you for bringing this to our attention. We hope the editors can clarify the remaining formatting and spacing issues with figures, tables, and legends. We made corrections as follows:
Line 27-28: not all keywords reflect the essence of the conducted research and the article. Typically, a maximum of 5 keywords are provided. I propose to remove: thinning; prescribed fire; slash piles
** We used some keywords suggested for this special issue (with a maximum of 8 allowed), but we have adjusted several keywords to reflect this feedback, thank you. We left slash piles as a keyword even though we had limited findings in the Centennial Forest section of the experiment, as slash pile remediation is of interest to many forest managers.
Line 66: What research is it about? Add relevant literature.
**clarified post-fire
Line 100: use ‘ha’ as the unit of measurement.
**added ha as primary unit
Line 101: give the Latin name of the tree species
**corrected
Line 102: indicate tree species
**corrected with additional references
Lines 107-108: Use ‘ha’ as the unit of measurement
**added ha as primary unit
Line 112: remove ‘our’
**corrected
Line 120: instead of inches, use the common unit of measurement, i.e. the meter
**3 inches is a BAER-specific standard measurement used in this remediation effort, but we added the conversion to cm for clarity
Line 158: Were any preservatives used in the traps? How often were inspections performed and over what period? Predatory insects could kill some of the caught individuals, which in the case of rare catches may be of key importance for the research results.
**Yes, we added some information to the methods here and in Line 141 to state that we used the protocol by Cobb et al with a 50/50 glycol mix in the tubes. We do not inspect the traps during the one-week timeframe, as it disturbs the natural behavior of the insects. In our experience and that of Cobb et all, it is unlikely that predatory insects would survive the glycol bath long enough to eat other species, and a one-week period is sufficient to capture an accurate representation of our local fauna without oversampling.
Line 162, 163: Up to what level were plants marked, i.e. species? Was the coverage percentage also specified or just counted? 0,5 m x 0,5 m
**We added some information to describe counting individual stems to species where possible otherwise categorical (grass, forb, shrub, tree) on the few plants present. Scarcity of vegetation is also addressed in the discussion.
Line 180: I suggest taking the liter as the unit of measurement
**The 5-gallon buckets are a standard size for field equipment, but we have added a conversion to liters for clarification.
Line 182: Why for each transect throughout the Museum Fire yo used six traps (line 141) and for Centennial Forest Mulch Plots different number (i.e. four, line 182)? It is unclear. Please explain it.
**We rewrote this paragraph to explain the Museum Fire is based on USFS hydrology transects and we were limited on access and number of traps we could install in the area, while Centennial Forest plots are quite small and four traps per plot allows for sufficient sampling of edge and center.
Line 210: …were the most abundant
**Corrected, thank you.
Line 224: replace the phrase, 'We also used', which was used in the sentence above
**Corrected, thank you.
Line 233: In the case of statistical analyses, the significance level for which the 'p' value was given should be provided
**added significance level
Line 241-249: These results should be presented and confirmed in the form of a table or figure.
**Added overall capture results in table form
Line 250, 263: Chapter subtitles should stand out from the rest of the text. I suggest making the text bold or italic
**Formatting error corrected, thank you.
Lines 264-280: No confirmation in the form of a table or figure presenting the obtained results
**I believe this is referencing the indicator species data. We added a missing reference to Table 2 in the text, where we presented these data in table form.
Line 281-282: (Figure 2 and 3); (Table 2)
**corrected
Line 290: Add spaces before "While.."
**corrected when previous sentence rewritten
Line 293: insted of (Figure 4a. through g.) use (Figure 4a-g).
**Corrected
Moreover, the study results presented in Figure 4 should be discussed in more detail in the text.
**Added more information to text to describe figures and relationships between family/functional groups and treatment variables
Figure 1: I suggest placing the letters indicating the location of the transects on a white background. In the current version it is hardly readable.
**Altered the figure to wash out the background colors slightly vs adding a white background. White text box obscured the colors of the soil burn severity.
Remove from th title ‘our’
**corrected
Figure 2 and 3 should have similar size.
**Template conversion/formatting error has been corrected.
Add a scale along the axis.
**NMS does not have a scale on the axis, it is a visual representation of how similar/different the communities are, as demonstrated by the polygons for each separate dataset.
The titles of both figures should not reveal the absence or existence of differences - this information should appear in the text (which was done, lines: 251-253).
**corrected
In the case of Figure 2, it is proposed to use the term: Treatment variant in the legend instead of Type.
**corrected, thank you for the improved terminology suggestion
Figure 3 lacks an explanation of the legend (what period 1, 2, 3 mean), which was done in the case of treatment.
**Added to the legend
Table 1: Add by feet, the unit of measure meter above sea level.
**Added metric units
In case of Centennial Forest Center you mentioned above (line 171) about 11, not 7 plots. Besides why is plot 7 included in the table? Moreover, this location is not visible in Fig. 1. Remove the inside lines. Leave only the outside as the outline of the table.
** Corrected to include “all plots” of the same elevation instead of just the center plot. Plot 7 was simply the center plot, which made a nice single reference point for the site.
Figure 4: What was Figure 4h supposed to represent? It is not in the description of the figure.
**Formatting error in transfer to journal template. Corrected.
Headings above individual figures are unnecessary – should be removed as it doubled the information provided in the title.
**We reformatted the graphs to remove the title, but upon further review, we determined that the title on each panel added some simple information at a quick glance before the reader engages the full caption.
Along the Y axis, specify the unit of measure.
**These are count data, we changed the unit to reflect average number of individuals
The letters a-g should be located in the upper right corner of the figure.
**The location of the letters was part of the template offered by the journal, so we are unsure of the requirement. We hope the editors can clarifying the formatting issues and will be happy to make the change.
Placing an asterisk in the figure and an explanation in the title does not explain the existence of differences between the variants. What's more, the differences between the analyzed variants should be presented using letters (above the bars) and in the title it should be stated that the average values marked with the same letter mean no statistically significant differences.
**We added the letter scheme to the graphs and improved the caption.
In the X-axis title, I suggest to use Treatment variant.
**Corrected, thank you.
Table 2: The legend should be moved below the table.
**We noted that the journal template offered for tables showed the legend above for tables, legend below for figures. We hope the editors can clarify the formatting issues with figures/tables and legends throughout and we will happily comply with the requirements.
Standardize the font size in the table. Too many lines, making the table difficult to read.
**Formatting issues corrected.
In table 3: I propose to modify the table by placing functional groups and test results under analysis for family.
**reformatted to simplify table
Four decimal places for p-values are sufficient.
**corrected
If you say „There was no significant difference for any family or functional group in the Centennial Forest site”, the results should be included in the table.
**Only significant results for Museum Fire were included in the table and discussed in-depth in the text. Others were removed for clarity and brevity, including non-significant Museum Fire and Centennial Forest groups.
