PONE-D-20-31398

Relationships between topographic factors, soil and plant communities in a Dry Afromontane forest patches of Northwestern Ethiopia

PLOS ONE

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PLOS ONE

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https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11676-010-0089-9

https://www.ajol.info//index.php/sinet/article/view/18247

http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/9163

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/20964129.2017.1385004

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Reviewers' comments:

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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: No

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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: PONE-D-20-31398

It is rather interesting and refreshing to read a paper about the characterization of plant communities. This is of obvious importance in this region of Ethiopia, where plant communities have not been previously categorized.

The point of this study was to document distinct plant communities in the Dega Damot District, and to relate these to various environmental factors.

One of the difficulties in establishing vegetation types (communities) is natural variability. Thus, it is important to sample from a large number of habitats in order to determine how reproducible a particular community composition is, how much variability occurs within a single community type, and how much control various environmental factors exert on community structure.

Based on the description of the sampling effort, it is difficult for me to determine how much sampling actually occurred within a community type. The authors refer to “forest patches”, but just what these are is not clear. “Sampling sites were arranged along transects from the forest patches”. There were 6 transects in both in Shangi Derke and Bunsie patches. There were 4 transects in the Aradie patch. And there were 3 transects in both Masikana and Samana patches. Were these patches already known to contain distinct plant communities so the level of replication within a community type could be controlled? If not, how did the authors control the level of replication within a community type?

By my reading, it appears that 86 plots were sampled in each of the 5 patches, for a total of 430 plots. Is that true?

The authors wrote “The first transect and plot were selected purposely which are free from any anthropogenic disturbances.” How was that determined? Does that mean that some plots were disturbed? If so, wouldn’t disturbance influence the structure of the plant community, and wouldn’t this bias our understanding of these communities?

There were apparently 5 smaller plots per larger plot for herbaceous plant sampling for a total of 2,150 small plots. Is that true? Also, please specify when the smaller plots were sampled. Is it possible for sampling time to affect the herbaceous species that were observable? Please specify.

Because the spatial and temporal aspects of the vegetation and soil sampling schemes were not clear to me, perhaps a figure illustrating them would be helpful.

I am not sure how the cluster analysis was performed. The authors wrote that clustering was performed based on attributes and floristic similarities. What is meant by “attributes”? Does that include physical traits of the habitat? Please be more specific about the exact variables that were used in the cluster analysis.

Some of the information given in the results is repeated in the discussion unnecessarily. To eliminate this repetition, it may be better to have a single section of text called Results and Discussion rather than separate sections.

It would be nice if the location of the forest patches could be placed on Figure 2.

Table 7 indicates that several of these variables are significant, but the authors should be cautious as none of them account for much variability (sums of squares are all low). This should be indicated in the text.

Reviewer #2: This work by Birhanu et al. describes the results of comprehensive vegetation surveys across 86 sites in Northwestern Ethiopia. They evaluated how climatic and topoedaphic variation determine patterns of plant community composition and species abundance across the region. They highlighted clusters of community types based on hierarchical analysis and a series of standard community composition metrics. These species-rich sites were compared to other high diversity forest areas in the region, as well as to forests in Cameroon. The methods used in this study were appropriate and rigorously applied, and the conclusions they drew in their analysis are supported by their results. This well-written work appropriately characterizes the roles of soils, climate and topography in driving community composition across the region, and I recommend it be accepted for publication.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Relationships between topographic factors, soil and plant communities in a Dry Afromontane forest patches of Northwestern Ethiopia

PONE-D-20-31398R1

Dear Dr. Birhanu,

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,

Mehdi Heydari

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments: