Resident Perceptions of Mosquito Problems Are More Influenced by Landscape Factors than Mosquito Abundance
, Kelli L. Larson 2,3, Susannah B. Lerman 4, Alexandreana Cocroft 5 and Sharon J. Hall 5
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript by Brown and colleagues offers important insights regarding how environment can influence resident perceptions of pest issues. The work is interesting and important but a few critical details, especially regarding the mosquito trapping protocol, require attention. First, the authors need to explain what mosquito traps were used and with what lures. Were the ‘complaint traps’ the same type? What was the relative proportion of complaint traps used (and how did that vary across the different neighborhoods)? If complaint traps were more common in some types of neighborhoods - how was potential bias addressed?
Second, the seasonality of the trapping intensity/frequency must be detailed. Mosquito populations are seasonal and the growth curves might differ (temporally) or between species across an urban gradient such as described. The current analysis assumes that the same part of the seasonal cycle is captured at all sites (and that differences in mosquito species across space are negligible). It is not possible from the current methods text to deduce if these assumptions are plausible. Further, the 1 km radius is quite large for some species and a spatial map showing how abundance varies across the study landscape would be useful.
Many of the key results are open to interpretation and the manuscript would be strengthened if additional information was available to help move from plausible correlation to some greater evidence for causative relationships – which are perhaps over stated in the discussion. For example, youth and lower education both came out as important variables in the model but it isn’t clear if these younger and/or lower ed respondents were dispersed across neighborhoods or clustered in a location. Discussion includes reasons why youth might be more prone to mosquito exposure but this assumes some random sampling of youth across the spatial template (across which mosquito habitat is also likely variable/clustered). I think the addition of spatial maps showing variation in the dependent variable, as well as counts and some other demographics might be needed. If lower education for example is persistently a positive predictor of perception across neighborhoods and not just because a low income/socio-economic status neighborhood is driving that response then the implications for importance are different.
Other points for consideration:
Figure 1. The inset (PWR) neighborhood might be easier to understand if it was visibly connected or extended from the larger map (reduce readers’ need to search).
L151 typo ‘til’
L164 grammar – seems to be disagreement in use of plurals
L175 grammar – seems to be disagreement in use of plurals
L 179 typo ‘a’
L227 40% returned surveys is a decent return rate. How variable was this across different neighborhoods? Are the survey results likely to be dominated by responses from specific types of neighborhoods/demographics? It looks like # was ~20-60 surveys but is this just due to population size or to return rate?
L333 Typo ‘who’
L351 Typo ‘within across’ ?
L392 Missing ‘as’
Author Response
Thank you very much for your thoughtful and helpful comments. Please see below for how we addressed each comment. Additionally, we have attached a document with all reviewer comments and changes so you may have a fuller contextualization of the changes to the manuscript.
Reviewer 4 Comments and Responses:
The manuscript by Brown and colleagues offers important insights regarding how environment can influence resident perceptions of pest issues. The work is interesting and important but a few critical details, especially regarding the mosquito trapping protocol, require attention. First, the authors need to explain what mosquito traps were used and with what lures. Were the ‘complaint traps’ the same type? What was the relative proportion of complaint traps used (and how did that vary across the different neighborhoods)? If complaint traps were more common in some types of neighborhoods - how was potential bias addressed?
Author’s Response: Thank you for this comment. We have added additional information about the trapping methods in the paper to clarify these questions. We used the per trap per trap day metric to standardized across the study since traps were set out for different lengths. We have re-written the section to make it clearer that the mosquito abundance information was calculated as the average number of mosquitoes per trap per trap day.
Second, the seasonality of the trapping intensity/frequency must be detailed. Mosquito populations are seasonal and the growth curves might differ (temporally) or between species across an urban gradient such as described. The current analysis assumes that the same part of the seasonal cycle is captured at all sites (and that differences in mosquito species across space are negligible). It is not possible from the current methods text to deduce if these assumptions are plausible. Further, the 1 km radius is quite large for some species and a spatial map showing how abundance varies across the study landscape would be useful.
Author’s Response: We would like to thank the reviewer for this thoughtful comment. The routine traps are rotated on a schedule, so each region is sampled for approximately the same amount of time across the year. Since we are averaging across all trap days, the effects of seasonality will be normalized across all traps. We also added language to the methods to clarify trapping methods. As to the second comment, we confirmed with experts about the range of mosquito dispersal and found several papers suggesting 1 km is a reasonable dispersal distance for misquotes. We have clarified this in the text. As to a species distribution map, this is outside of the scope of this research as we are specifically interested in linking social survey data to data collected from Maricopa County vector control. Finally, we also clarified that the 1 km radius matches what many survey respondents consider to be “around their home” and this helps us better link responses to landscape variables.
Many of the key results are open to interpretation and the manuscript would be strengthened if additional information was available to help move from plausible correlation to some greater evidence for causative relationships – which are perhaps over stated in the discussion. For example, youth and lower education both came out as important variables in the model but it isn’t clear if these younger and/or lower ed respondents were dispersed across neighborhoods or clustered in a location. Discussion includes reasons why youth might be more prone to mosquito exposure but this assumes some random sampling of youth across the spatial template (across which mosquito habitat is also likely variable/clustered). I think the addition of spatial maps showing variation in the dependent variable, as well as counts and some other demographics might be needed. If lower education for example is persistently a positive predictor of perception across neighborhoods and not just because a low income/socio-economic status neighborhood is driving that response then the implications for importance are different.
Author’s Response: We thank the reviewer for these comments. We have softened the language throughout the text to emphasize that our results are all correlative. Since we do not have a mechanistic link, this work is meant to highlight correlations and provide possible explanations that are grounded in previous research and theory. As to the correlation between variables, one of the checks we ran prior to running our boosted regression tree was to look for correlation between variables which we did not find. We also added information to the text to make this more apparent. Additionally, we selected BRT because this method builds multiple regression trees from subsamples of the entire dataset and is robust to spatial autocorrelation. Finally, information on the spatial distribution of these variables across the study neighborhoods is available in the 2017 PASS report and PASS data is also publicly available. We site both the data and the report in this study for those interested in a closer examination of the data.
Figure 1. The inset (PWR) neighborhood might be easier to understand if it was visibly connected or extended from the larger map (reduce readers’ need to search).
Author’s Response: We have remade figure 1 to show multiple study neighborhoods as well as to make the blow out maps clearer and easy to find.
L151 typo ‘til’
Author’s Response: thank you, we have corrected the grammar
L164 grammar – seems to be disagreement in use of plurals
Author’s Response: thank you, we have corrected the grammar
L175 grammar – seems to be disagreement in use of plurals
Author’s Response: thank you, we have corrected the grammar
L 179 typo ‘a’
Author’s Response: thank you, we have corrected the grammar
L227 40% returned surveys is a decent return rate. How variable was this across different neighborhoods? Are the survey results likely to be dominated by responses from specific types of neighborhoods/demographics? It looks like # was ~20-60 surveys but is this just due to population size or to return rate?
Author’s Response: We have added information about the return rates from the different neighborhoods. As we have 439 respondents in the most recent version of the analysis, a single neighborhood is unlikely to be driving results, especially because of the random sub-sampling method implemented with boosted regression trees.
L333 Typo ‘who’
Author’s Response: thank you, we have corrected the grammar
L351 Typo ‘within across’ ?
Author’s Response: thank you, we have corrected the grammar
L392 Missing ‘as’
Author’s Response: thank you, we have corrected the grammar
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments to the Author
I acknowledge to authors for the clearness and comprehensiveness of the manuscript. In this work, the authors analysed the relationship between mosquito abundance and landscape and sociodemographic variables on residents’ perceptions of mosquitoes in an urban area of Arizona. The findings of this study evidenced that the abundance of mosquitoes around the citizen´s homes does not influence their perception of mosquitoes as a problem for public health. However, citizen´s perception of mosquitoes was related to landscape features as proximity to wetlands and sociodemographic factors such as educational level. Overall, this is a very interesting study for city management and adaptation to climate change for a wide audience from local to global scale.
The manuscript is overall very well structured, concisely written and therefore easy to follow as a reader. Moreover, the novelty of the study is repeatedly highlighted as well as based on essential and sound literature. The methods are solid, well-described and could be reproduced by the reader. The results are vividly depicted and complemented by Appendix material. The discussion is very interesting to read as generating important guidelines for urban ecologists and city planners. I do not have any major points of criticism regarding the study, but something is wrong in the margins or x-axis of figure 2.
Hope to see the manuscript be published soon
Author Response
Thank you very much for your thoughtful and helpful comments. Please see below for how we addressed each comment. Additionally, we have attached a document with all reviewer comments and changes so you may have a fuller contextualization of the changes to the manuscript.
I acknowledge to authors for the clearness and comprehensiveness of the manuscript. In this work, the authors analyzed the relationship between mosquito abundance and landscape and sociodemographic variables on residents’ perceptions of mosquitoes in an urban area of Arizona. The findings of this study evidenced that the abundance of mosquitoes around the citizen´s homes does not influence their perception of mosquitoes as a problem for public health. However, citizen´s perception of mosquitoes was related to landscape features as proximity to wetlands and sociodemographic factors such as educational level. Overall, this is a very interesting study for city management and adaptation to climate change for a wide audience from local to global scale.
The manuscript is overall very well structured, concisely written and therefore easy to follow as a reader. Moreover, the novelty of the study is repeatedly highlighted as well as based on essential and sound literature. The methods are solid, well-described and could be reproduced by the reader. The results are vividly depicted and complemented by Appendix material. The discussion is very interesting to read as generating important guidelines for urban ecologists and city planners. I do not have any major points of criticism regarding the study, but something is wrong in the margins or x-axis of figure 2.
Hope to see the manuscript be published soon
Response to Review 1:
Thank you for much for your kind review and comments. Figure 2 was adjusted so the x-axis is no longer cut off.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
-In the title the authors could specify the investigation area (Phoenix);
-Lines 24-27 (abstract) and 132-135 (introduction) are the same. I suggest changing the words or to eliminate lines 132-135;
-bibliographic references n. 46 and 93 need to be fixed and completed;
-There are some typos that still need to be addressed (eg. lines 330, 381, 501, 596, 665), so it is advisable to give the text a final attentive reading.
Author Response
Thank you very much for your thoughtful and helpful comments. Please see below for how we addressed each comment. Additionally, we have attached a document with all reviewer comments and changes so you may have a fuller contextualization of the changes to the manuscript.
Reviewer 2 Comments and Responses:
-In the title the authors could specify the investigation area (Phoenix);
Response: Thank you for your suggestion. We have not altered the title as we believe including the full study site (Phoenix Metropolitan Area, USA) would cause the title to be too word, especially since it is already a 14-word title
-Lines 24-27 (abstract) and 132-135 (introduction) are the same. I suggest changing the words or to eliminate lines 132-135
Response: We have removed the second instance of the text from the introduction as suggested. Thank you.
-bibliographic references n. 46 and 93 need to be fixed and completed
Response: Thank you for your keen attention to detail. Both citations have been updated. We also went through all the citations to ensure formatting was correct for additional citations added to address additional comments from reviewers.
-There are some typos that still need to be addressed (eg. lines 330, 381, 501, 596, 665), so it is advisable to give the text a final attentive reading.
Response: Thank you again, we have gone through the full manuscript to catch typos and grammatical errors throughout.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 4 Report
This study investigated the relationship between mosquito abundance and landscape-level and sociodemographic factors on residents’ perceptions of mosquitoes, which can help inform practices for vector control agencies.
This is a worthwhile paper on an interesting topic, and the writing is generally good. However, I think this article needs some appropriate revisions before it can be published.
Details are as follows:
Point 1 (Line 28) Suggest adding a keyword "sociodemographic factors";
Point 2 (Line 232) To what extent are mosquitoes a problem for you at your current home?
Why is at the home? Does this create a biased understanding of the problem: i.e., a mosquito problem indoors rather than in an outdoor environment?
Point 3 (Line 298-299) On average, a respondent lived within 1 km of 2.9 traps (min 0 traps, max 12 traps).
How do authors ensure the validity of this data in subsequent analyses? Why did authors choose to retain the data of residents without trapped rather than delete them?
The reader may be confused that the number of mosquitoes cannot be determined if there are no traps around the respondent (i.e., the number of mosquitoes is 0), yet the true situation is that the number of mosquitoes cannot be 0. Therefore, these residents data appear to be invalid, and the effect of these invalid data cannot be diluted by averaging.
Point 4 (Line 310-318) These results need to be found in the appendix, so it is recommended to add a citation to help the reader find the data.
Point 5 (Line 319) Seems to be an incomplete picture? The text below the image is displayed incomplete.
Point 6 (Line 319) I think it would be better to show the reader all the pictures (instead of just 2 variables) to help them understand the result.
Point 7 (Line 322-324) For example, respondents who lived greater than 0.5 km from natural vegetation, vacant lands, and desert parks were not likely to perceive mosquitos to be a problem, but wetlands influenced negative perceptions up to ~2 km distance.
Please explain how this conclusion was reached? In particular, the threshold of 2 km.
Point 8 (Line 331-333) Importantly, 30% of the predicted outcome that mosquitoes are problematic comes from the single variable of whether or not individuals who strongly agree their neighborhood looks messy.
Please explain how this conclusion was reached? Or did I miss something?
Point 9 (Line 381-383) Our findings suggest more educated people perceive lower risks, perhaps because they feel more comfortable around mosquitoes [98].
How would a person feel more "comfortable" around mosquitoes? Although the data show such a relationship, I still think the authors need a stronger reasoning to elucidate this result.
Point 10 (Line 441-444) Increasing the effectiveness of managing mosquitoes, and therefore vector-borne diseases, is dire as the climate continues to change, and a growing amount of the global population, increasingly in cities, will be susceptible to disease transmission.
This paragraph is recommended to be moved to the very beginning of this section.
Point 11 (Line 445) It should be Appendix A.
Point 12 (Line 446) It should be Supplemental Table 1.
Author Response
Thank you very much for your thoughtful and helpful comments. Please see below for how we addressed each comment. Additionally, we have attached a document with all reviewer comments and changes so you may have a fuller contextualization of the changes to the manuscript.
This study investigated the relationship between mosquito abundance and landscape-level and sociodemographic factors on residents’ perceptions of mosquitoes, which can help inform practices for vector control agencies.
This is a worthwhile paper on an interesting topic, and the writing is generally good. However, I think this article needs some appropriate revisions before it can be published.
Thank you for your detailed comments. Please see below for how each comment was addressed:
Point 1 (Line 28) Suggest adding a keyword "sociodemographic factors";
Author’s Response: The suggested keyword was added
Point 2 (Line 232) To what extent are mosquitoes a problem for you at your current home?
Why is at the home? Does this create a biased understanding of the problem: i.e., a mosquito problem indoors rather than in an outdoor environment?
Author’s Response: We ask about mosquitoes around the home because we are interested in perceptions of local problems where people live. For this survey question, we asked about respondents to consider indoor and outdoor spaces of their home including yards and patios. We have clarified this in the manuscript.
Point 3 (Line 298-299) On average, a respondent lived within 1 km of 2.9 traps (min 0 traps, max 12 traps). How do authors ensure the validity of this data in subsequent analyses? Why did authors choose to retain the data of residents without trapped rather than delete them?
The reader may be confused that the number of mosquitoes cannot be determined if there are no traps around the respondent (i.e., the number of mosquitoes is 0), yet the true situation is that the number of mosquitoes cannot be 0. Therefore, these residents’ data appear to be invalid, and the effect of these invalid data cannot be diluted by averaging.
Author’s Response: Thank you for this thoughtful insight. We agree with your comment and have undergone changes to the analysis to only include respondents with at least one trap within the 1km buffer. This removed 55 individuals from our sample and changed the results of the BRT. We have rewritten the results and the discussion to reflect the updated results.
Point 4 (Line 310-318) These results need to be found in the appendix, so it is recommended to add a citation to help the reader find the data.
Author’s Response: Thank you for the suggestion, we have cited the supplemental table for clarity.
Point 5 (Line 319) Seems to be an incomplete picture? The text below the image is displayed incomplete.
Author’s Response: You are correct; this was a formatting error which we have now rectified.
Point 6 (Line 319) I think it would be better to show the reader all the pictures (instead of just 2 variables) to help them understand the result.
Author’s Response: Thank you for this comment. Figure 2 has been recreated to show the partial dependency plots for all variables with over 5% relative influence. Further, we reference this figure more in the results and discussion to clarify the results for the individual variables of interest.
Point 7 (Line 322-324) For example, respondents who lived greater than 0.5 km from natural vegetation, vacant lands, and desert parks were not likely to perceive mosquitos to be a problem, but wetlands influenced negative perceptions up to ~2 km distance. Please explain how this conclusion was reached? In particular, the threshold of 2 km.
Author’s Response: The results here came from the partial dependency plots which were not all shown. To rectify this, and to respond to one of your other comments, we included all partial dependency plots where the relative influence was over 5% in figure 2. We clarified these results throughout.
Point 8 (Line 331-333) Importantly, 30% of the predicted outcome that mosquitoes are problematic comes from the single variable of whether or not individuals who strongly agree their neighborhood looks messy. Please explain how this conclusion was reached? Or did I miss something?
Author’s Response: As with the comment above, you did not miss anything as we had not included all partial dependency plots where this information came from. Due to the change in sample size, the results have changed slightly from the original submission and we re-wrote the results and the discussion toto highlight these changes.
Point 9 (Line 381-383) Our findings suggest more educated people perceive lower risks, perhaps because they feel more comfortable around mosquitoes [98]. How would a person feel more "comfortable" around mosquitoes? Although the data show such a relationship, I still think the authors need a stronger reasoning to elucidate this result.
Author’s Response: Thank for this comment. Since comfortability is often related to familiarity (e.g., people are less likely to perceive something as risky if they are more familiar with it), we have elaborated on this idea and included additional citations for clarity. We added additional citation and elaborated on this idea in the discussion.
Point 10 (Line 441-444): Increasing the effectiveness of managing mosquitoes, and therefore vector-borne diseases, is dire as the climate continues to change, and a growing amount of the global population, increasingly in cities, will be susceptible to disease transmission. This paragraph is recommended to be moved to the very beginning of this section.
Author’s Response: Thank you for this suggestion. We agree that this change helps the flow of the paragraph and we have moved the two sentences accordingly.
Point 11 (Line 445) It should be Appendix A.
Author’s Response: Thank you for the comment. The formatting guidelines state that any supplemental figures or tables should appear in Appendix B and only additional text relevant to the work but not including in the main manuscript should appear in Appendix A. We do not have an Appendix A so this does seem confusing, however, we will default to the guidelines of the journal and the editor’s opinion.
Point 12 (Line 446) It should be Supplemental Table 1.
Author’s Response: This has been changed.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors have done a good job incorporating suggestions and the manuscript is well-improved. The new Figure 2 has an incomplete sentence at the end of the caption that may be a formatting issue. Otherwise, I think the manuscript is ready for publication.
Reviewer 4 Report
The author has revised all my comments accordingly. And these revisions have greatly improved the quality and presentation of the manuscript.
In the current version, the validity of the data is high and Figure 2 has been completed so that the reader can clearly read the results.
Therefore, I recommend the publication of this interesting and valuable manuscript.
-A small hint:
Maybe there are some errors in Supplemental Table 1, because the last column only has some unintelligible numbers.
