Interesting study testing for ectomycorrhizal colonization of tree seedlings near ectomycorrhizal trees, arbuscular mycorrhizal trees, or arbuscular mycorrhizal trees with added ectomycorrhizal forest soil. Controls are difficult in a field experiment of this nature, but the authors made reasonable efforts. The similarity among the selected sites is striking and helps minimise the many potentially confounding factors and their high variability. Corrections are outlined below.

10 - height
21 - Replace modestly with significant or insignificant.
39 - Clarify whether there are any understory ectomycorrhizal plants.
41 - Clarify why this is a problem.
53 - Explain this is controversial (e.g. Henriksson et al. 2023 New Phytologist).
55 - Explain briefly how ectomycorrhizal fungi disperse.
73 - Could arbuscular mycorrhizal trees be better adapted to environmental change, and thus confer improved forest resilience and function?
139, 144 - Justify using 15m.
171 - Sterilized how?
182 - Only five is a minute proportion, could there be undetected contaminaton?
187 - Mention whether dark septate endophytes were recorded and whether oak seedlings can form arbuscular mycorrhizas.
239 - Petri not petri.
248 - Explain that morphotyping per seedling followed by restriction fragment length polymorphisms to screen representatives for Sanger DNA sequencing leads to diversity underestimation and misassignments.
Move Tables 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6 to supplement.
Table 5 - if no significant results for shoot biomass or total height, move those columns or the whole table to supplement.
Move Figure 1 to supplement.
507 - Replace subtle with significant or insignificant.
517 - Replace many with a percentage.
524 - Atmospheric nitrogen deposition can also affect conifer specialists more than broadleaf specialists (Lilleskov et al. 2019 Environmental Pollution).
536 - Is the evidence from this one study sufficient to generalize?
549 - Could there be competition and/or inhibition by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi?
570 - Replace much higher with a percentage or multiplier.