PONE-D-24-48625High diversity of fungal ecological groups from ice-free pristine and disturbed areas in the Fildes Peninsula, King George Island, AntarcticaPLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments:

The expert reviewers have recommended some changes that should be carefully considered with a minor revision.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

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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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: 

The manuscript presents highly relevant results that contribute significantly to scientific understanding, offering novel and important insights into the ecosystem of the Antarctic continent. However, I have a few suggestions for improvement.

Introduction Text:

• Line 52-53: I recommend including relevant references regarding endemic fungi in Antarctica to support the discussion and provide a broader context for the research.

• Line 61: The word "fishing" should be removed, as it may not be directly relevant to the topic.

• Line 64: It would be beneficial to include citations for the studies referenced in this sentence to provide proper attribution and strengthen the credibility of the information presented.

Methodology text

• It would be helpful to provide a clear explanation of what is meant by "sediment" in the context of your study. (part of soil?????)

Results:

• Figure 2: The Aphelidiomycota phylum is not represented in the figure. I recommend either updating the figure to include this group or providing an explanation in the text regarding its omission or its absence from the group.

• Methodology and Discussion: The authors mention the Shannon and Simpson indices in the methodology, but these indices are not discussed in the results or the discussion. It would be useful to either include a discussion of these indices in the appropriate section or revise the methodology to remove the mention if they were not ultimately used in the analysis.

The recommendation is for minor revisions to the manuscript. The suggested changes are relatively straightforward and involve clarifying certain points, adding relevant citations, and ensuring consistency between the methodology, results, and discussion sections. These adjustments will enhance the clarity and overall quality of the manuscript.

Reviewer #2: In this study, the authors present a metabarcoding analysis of fungal diversity in the Antartica comparing pristine sites with disturbed sites. The work include the commonly used analysis for community ecology. While the importance of the study relies on the system and is mainly descriptive, the paper is a valuable contribution to the study fungal diversity.

In general, the manuscript is well written, the objectives are clear, and the statistical analyses basic, but adequate for the objectives.

Comments

Consider to represent differences among sites using a dissimilarity measure that uses only presence/absence of genera/OTUS.

Specify the version of the UNITE database.

Line 319. I’m not sure that the genus Mortierella should be considered as psychrophilic. The genus as a wide distribution and can live as saprotrophs, live in fecal pellets or even as pathogens. Do you refer to any species in particular? It is important to differentiate “strict” from “facultative”.

Line 320. The reference Gonçalves et al is cited in References as 43 not 42

Line 342. Here, the authors mention ASVs, however they were not defined previously. So, in this case, the ASVs were first obtained and then grouped as OTUS? Please describe in methods.

Please indicate in Figure 1 the Pristine and the Disturbed locations.

Figure 3. Please change the color palette of the relative frequency to make easier to evaluate differences across sites.

Figure 6. Specify which sites are from Pristine and the Disturbed locations. Also, dots represent locations, not OTUs.

Figure 7. The legends should be rescaled to distinguish the boxplot colors. The differences reported are within Pristine and Disturbed groups? What about between groups? In the figure, the pink box may be statistically to the light-blue one, ¿did the authors consider to use a ad-hoc Tukey test? On the other hand, ¿ANOVA is suitable for this kind of data? A test for variance homogeneity should be performed prior to the test.

Figure 8. Use relative frequency or other standardized measure to avoid bias due differences in sample sizes.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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High diversity of fungal ecological groups from ice-free pristine and disturbed areas in the Fildes Peninsula, King George Island, Antarctica

PONE-D-24-48625R1

Dear Dr. Garnica,

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,

Erika Kothe

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #2: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #2: Comments were responded accordingly.

Please, check that images resolution meets Plos One standards.

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If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #2: No

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