Dear authors,

based on your responses to the reviewer comments I invite you to submit a revised manuscript.

I understand that you will not be able to implement all the suggestions made by the reviewers. However, whenever appropriate the related discussion should be clearly reflected in your revised manuscript, and not just your response letter. This includes 1) the discussion of bioclimatic and other effects of altitude across the two transects studied, and how they could influence the studied traits, 2) a justification of your meta-analysis approach.

I furthermore ask you to remove any reported autocorrelation from the study, esp. the reporting of LNC vs C:N does not add any novel information.

Best regards,

Michael Bahn

Dear Dr. Bauters and co-authors,

the two reviewers are satisfied with your revisions and have some suggestions for further improvement.

In addition to their comments I ask you to take care of the following:
* Key words: I agree that „elevational gradient“ is more appropriate than „altitudinal gradient“, and suggest to delete „elevational transects“, which overlaps significantly
* l. 75 To my understanding elevational gradients typically do imply changes in growing season length. Please correct / delete this part of the statement.
* l. 100 add reference
* l. 242 your reasoning is hard to follow: why should it be nonsensical to report on and test for these abiotic drivers in your study?
* Table 2: add unit for SLA

Please address these remaining issues and carefully correct the typos in a revision, and explain in your response letter how you have dealt with the comments and what changes you have made to the manuscript.

Best regards,

Michael Bahn