We agree with the reviewer that we have to avoid misunderstandings of this kind and added a very clear statement to the discussion: “Moreover it has to be emphasised that a close analysis of the actual properties of the cyanobacterial groups tested is limited by the fact that we used the provided R3 names for the sequences and groups. Thus this study intends only to verify the existence of a barcoding gaps within the 16S rRNA sequences of certain cyanobacterial groups, and by no means revise or confirm the complex cyanobacterial taxonomy.”
Given that both reviewers commented on this issue, we tried to clarify our aims and included a sentence at the end of the introduction, in order to clarify the point.