The article I selected as my source of ecological information is titled: Fungal communities decline with urbanization – more in air than in soil. The link of the paper: https://helda.helsinki.fi/server/api/core/bitstreams/3b46162c-2603-495f-bc3a-40f8a4469f5f/content
This article is an academic, peer-reviewed research paper. According to the tutorial notes, this article would be considered academic peer-reviewed since it contains in text citations, contains a bibliography and was also written by experts in the field (which is indicated on the very first page of the paper) . Also this paper contains methods and results sections which also makes it academic, peer reviewed research as experiments were done. “NA wrote the first version of the paper that was commented by all the authors” which indicates that it was peer reviewed since all the authors commented/reviewed the paper before publishing it and these authors did research related to the study in different universities as mentioned.
You are correct though your evidence for peer review is not correct. Peer review means someone other than the authors. In the acknowledgements you will see reference to anonymous reviewers and/or the journal webpage information will say if the journal does peer review.