Current Utilization and Further Application of Zooplankton Indices for Ecosystem Health Assessment of Lake Ecosystems

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper summarizes related environmental factors affecting the abundance, biomass and richness of zooplankton, and the metrics for freshwater ecosystem health assessment recorded in literatures. In the Discussion part, it is suggested that zooplankton biomass should be a better index to assess the aquatic ecosystem in various aspects. However, there are several questions existed:

1) From previous studies, it can be found that several metrics (including number of some special individuals, biomass, percentage of special individuals, abundance, diversity and body size) were applied to assessment of health condition of lake. The authors conclude that biomass is a better index. Maybe comparisons of the accuracy or applicability of these existed metrics can better support the conclusion.

2) The title and most parts of the paper are trying to find a better zooplankton index for lake ecosystem health assessment. However, in part 3.2, it starts to simply introduce the application of eDNA in quantify the diversity and abundance of zooplankton.

It will be better if the authors can reorganize some parts of the paper. Maybe you can conduct some analyses based on existed data and provide further discussion, and present the viewpoints clearer in the abstract.

Minor revisions on English language are needed.

Author Response

Thank you for your positive feedback on our paper. We sincerely appreciate your comments. We have modified the text as you mentioned, and please see the attachment for our response. Thank you.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The proposed review is a well organized paper and focused on an important topic. The language, however, is not ptoper of a scientific work (e.g., jergon names are used for taxa, up to the point to confuse amphipods with amphibians!) and I warmly suggest to use only and exclusively scientific terms, at least for taxa. a large part of the research on freshwater plankton is that on resting periods (and resting eggs) and the existence of a Resurrection Ecology based on this particular aspect and responsible of the community resilience. 

all the numerous points deserving attentions and/or change are directly indicated on the manuscript (see annexed pdf file).

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you for your positive feedback on our paper. We sincerely appreciate your comments. We have modified the text as you mentioned, and please see the attachment for our response. Thank you.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors, please check my comment and answer the questions.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you for your positive feedback on our paper. We sincerely appreciate your comments. We have modified the text as you mentioned, and please see the attachment for our response. Thank you.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

A few spelling mistakes still existed, like line 22, 127, 286. Please check the whole text.

The English in the paper is fine.

Author Response

Thank you for your overall detailed review of our manuscript. We have checked the text in general and corrected the typos, including the lines 22, 127 and 286 you mentioned. Thanks to you, We were able to improve the quality of our paper.

Best regards

Reviewer 2 Report

Just a few (minor) corrections (directly suggested on the pdf file)

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you for your overall detailed review of our manuscript. We have checked the all text and corrected the typos, including the lines 22 and 186 you mentioned.

- We also added citation #17 to line 62 as you suggested. 
- Corrected the spelling of Prymnesiophyta in Table 2.
- Table 3 has also been modified to make it more clearly.

Thank you so much, we were able to improve the quality of our paper.

Best regards

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper focus better the zooplankton communities and the WFD, Great work

Author Response

Thank you for your overall detailed review of our manuscript.

We have checked the all text again and corrected the typos.

Thanks to you, we were able to improve the quality of our paper.

Best regards