Carbon sources of benthic fauna in temperate lakes  across multiple trophic states

Fiskal, Annika; Anthamatten, Eva; Deng, Longhui; Han, Xingguo; Lagostina, Lorenzo; Michel, Anja; Zhu, Rong; Dubois, Nathalie; Schubert, Carsten J.; Bernasconi, Stefano M.; Lever, Mark A.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-4369-2021

Articles | Volume 18, issue 14

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-4369-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-4369-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 18, issue 14

Research article

|

28 Jul 2021

Research article |

| 28 Jul 2021

Carbon sources of benthic fauna in temperate lakes across multiple trophic states

Annika Fiskal, Eva Anthamatten, Longhui Deng, Xingguo Han, Lorenzo Lagostina, Anja Michel, Rong Zhu, Nathalie Dubois, Carsten J. Schubert, Stefano M. Bernasconi, and Mark A. Lever

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Final revised paper (published on 28 Jul 2021)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 11 Sep 2020)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #1, 16 Nov 2020
- AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Annika Fiskal, 28 Jan 2021
RC2: 'Comments to the Manuscript submitted by Fiskal et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 26 Mar 2021
- AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Annika Fiskal, 29 Mar 2021

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (05 Apr 2021) by Aninda Mazumdar

AR by Annika Fiskal on behalf of the Authors (26 Apr 2021) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (12 May 2021) by Aninda Mazumdar

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (17 May 2021)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

I think the authors have done a good job improving the manuscript and it is now suitable for publication in Biogeosciences. Even though the data is based on single cores collected at various water depths I think the overall conclusions, based on all samples from all stations, holds and makes ecological sense. With both the isotope and microbiology data indicating a low contribution of methane-derived-carbon to the biomass of the studied macrofauna.

I just have a few technical minor comments that can be fixed with a quick resubmission or potentially during the proofing stage.

MINOR COMMENTS

Page 5, line 2: Clarify that DNA was pooled after library preparation.

Page 5, line 2: It would be useful to mention the sequencing setup used with the MiSeq to know the fragment length sequenced. If it is the same as Han et al (2020) it should say: paired-end 2 x 300 bp.

Page 5, line 5: It would be great if it would be possible to write a few sentences summarizing the workflow of the bioinformatics done. I know this is mentioned in Han et al (2020) but considering the subheading says "Bioinformatics analyses" at least something is expected. For example at the end of line 5 there could be two new sentences: Briefly, raw sequence data was initially quality trimmed using seqtk (ref), paired-end reads merged using FLASh (ref). This was followed by a final quality filtering using prinseq (ref), and the sequences were then used to generate ZOTUs with USEARCH unoise3 using a 97% clustering identity (ref).

page 8, line 40: Why is this text Bold? It also ends with a parenthesis.

page 9, line 35: "for" misspelled

page 9, line 38: Why is this text Bold? It also ends with a semicolon.

page 0, line 14: Why is this text Bold? It also ends with a parenthesis.

Table 1: The O2 data is shown as a range without an explanation in the table legend. Is this duplicate samples? Or perhaps a range of values from seasonal sampling?

Table 2: This table shows +/- values with no explanation in the table legend if this is standard deviation or standard error, also the number of replicates are not mentioned.

Table 3: Here it could be useful to clarify which of the tested factors were higher for each test, e.g. in the first cell it could say: ***, Oligochaetes higher, (p=0.000002).

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (31 May 2021) by Aninda Mazumdar

AR by Annika Fiskal on behalf of the Authors (02 Jun 2021) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (21 Jun 2021) by Aninda Mazumdar

AR by Annika Fiskal on behalf of the Authors (29 Jun 2021) Manuscript

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Short summary

Microbially produced methane can serve as a carbon source for freshwater macrofauna most likely through grazing on methane-oxidizing bacteria. This study investigates the contributions of different carbon sources to macrofaunal biomass. Our data suggest that the average contribution of methane-derived carbon is similar between different fauna but overall remains low. This is further supported by the low abundance of methane-cycling microorganisms.