PONE-D-20-33120

NICHE CONSTRUCTION MEDIATES CLIMATE EFFECTS ON RECOVERY OF TUNDRA HEATHLANDS AFTER EXTREME EVENT

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

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Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: The study by Gonzales et al. presents the results of a very interesting long-term experiment on how Empetrum nigrum heaths recover from extreme events, such as pathogens or winter warming events. The authors show that this species recover very slowly, with little biomass returning after ten years, and that the presence of E. nigrum also prevents the establishment of other species. This is an important indication that areas dominated by E. nigrum may be harder hit in the long-term by recurring extreme events than areas dominated by other species. I have very few comments on this paper, which I think is well-executed and fills an important knowledge gap on the long-term impact of extreme events on these ecosystems.

Some minor comments:

Line 103 and line 106: This is confusing. Were the study sites situated in the tree line or just above the tree line?

line 158: 'mean daily temperature': is this soil temperature? Please specify

Line 241: 'were' should be 'where'

Lines 55, 67, 94, 149 and 374: 'further' should be 'furthermore'

Reviewer #2: This study aims to assess the role played by a niche constructor species after an extreme event (i.e., removing aboveground vegetation) along long environmental gradient and over ten years in tundra heatlands in Northern Norway. This is a very interesting and well-conducted study, that certainly will attract the attention of PLOS ONES's readers. Studies exploring vegetation recovery in such a long gradient over a long period of time are scarce even though they are extremely needed. Although in general I'm very sympathetic with the story, I miss some explanations for a couple of issues.

First, I miss a more thorough development for plant traits extraction from LEDA and TRY databases. Please, add more details about how trait values were assigned. Did you look for trait values of your species in the same location that you are sampling? Or did you extracted trait values from different locations?

Regarding aggregated values of leaf traits, did you calculate them for each year?

Finally, B. nana, another dwarf species, and E. nigrum were equally abundant in the two most continental sites (L340). I was wondering if in those sites won´t be expected that B. nana will have an important role in vegetation recovery as they could also act as niche constructors. Is there any work with this species that shows that it also has that role?

Minor comments

L168 I think that you don’t need to repeat that you are recording the frequency of all plants as it is in L165.

L168-172 “Vegetation frequency appeared to stabilize…”

It is not clear when plant biomass was estimated, please clarify. The first part of the sentence looks like a result.

L172 “All vascular plant species present within the plot but not hit were also accounted for giving them an abundance value of 0.1”

I’m not very familiar with the method, thus I was wondering if this is a common procedure when using the point intercept method? I though that you just consider plants that hit the pin.

L219 Correct: one species

L255 “We chose faster growing species than E. Nigrum”

Please add which ones within brackets.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Frans-Jan Parmentier

Reviewer #2: No

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NICHE CONSTRUCTION MEDIATES CLIMATE EFFECTS ON RECOVERY OF TUNDRA HEATHLANDS AFTER EXTREME EVENT

PONE-D-20-33120R1

Dear Dr. Gonzalez,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

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Kind regards,

Craig Eliot Coleman, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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