Thank you for reading carefully the manuscript as well as for your comment.
Indeed, the use of the word “microorganisms” would include as well for example symbionts in the digestive tract or cuticula which are not pathogens. We had been unclear in our sentence formulation but were considering those with a potential negative impact. M. Gilliam (Review Gilliam 1997) identified over 6000 organisms/strains with medium culture. In reality it is likely to be much less than previously thought based on sequencing efforts, e.g., for the 16S region of bacteria and via metagenomic approaches (Cox-Foster et al., 2007, Martinson et al, 2011) Current work suggests something like 9-20 primary taxa each in the viruses, bacteria, and protists, and maybe a bit more in fungi with a larger set of incidental saprophytes and pollen/plant-associated microbes, but not into the thousands. We agree nevertheless that “most” would not be appropriate and could be changed for “some” when considering microbes as a whole.
The authors.