Effects of Hemlock Woolly Adelgid Control Using Imidacloprid on Leaf-Level Physiology of Eastern Hemlock

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)

Very interesting information. Your results will be very useful.

Author Response

Thank you for your work on our manuscript.

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 4)

I read the revised paper and check the comment made by the authors and I have to comment on this statement: "HWA becomes active in the fall (mid-October). This would be fairly common knowledge with most readers so we do not believe it requires a citation". I kinda disagree with this, since HWA is not spread all over the world and your paper refers to a specific site. So you must be specific without thinking that a reader from another part of the world is familiar with this parasite. Please add a citation and/or you can write a more general phrase mentioning only the season (in the Southern Emisphere this might happen in March-April)

Author Response

Thank you for your persistence and we have added a citation to the statement.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

REVIEW REPORT

Ms title- Effects of Hemlock Woolly Adelgid on Leaf-Level Physiology of Eastern Hemlock

Journal: Forests

Reviewer’s Recommendation: Major Revision

Reviewer’s comments to Authors-

1.      Grammatical errors are present, please revise the whole manuscript to remove any possible grammatical errors, redundancy and typos.

2.      The title of present study is fine however, the paper somewhat failed to answer some objectives of the study. This needs to be clearly addressed in the manuscript. Please revise it.

3.      Error in sentence formation, please revise the whole manuscript to avoid the use of long sentences and some paragraphs are very short. Revise it.

4.      Please maintain the uniformity while in-text citation and referencing.

5.         In the keywords, it is strongly advisable use suitable words that can aid in finding out the manuscript in current registers or indexes. Strictly avoid the use of title words in the keywords, and the keywords must be in italics and arranged alphabetically.

6.         The beginning of a new paragraph should be after some space and avoid beginning of new sentences with abbreviation, check in complete manuscript.

7.         Uniformity in referencing is missing from the manuscript. Revise it.

 

Highlights, Abstract and Introduction:

1.      A graphical abstract is recommended for better perception of the present study.

2.      Add significant results from all the sections precisely in the abstract.

3.      A novelty statement is recommended for better perception of the uniqueness of your study and its significance.

4.      “At each site, half the trees were treated with imidacloprid.” specify what is imidacloprid in bracket for drawing a clear picture to the readers.

5.      “making any attempt to halt the spread along the front of invasion inevitably unsuccessful”. grammatically incorrect, please revise.

6.      “and bud break in response to HWA control with treatment with imidacloprid”., remove redundancy in the sentence please phrase the sentence properly.

7.        Add the objectives of your study at the end of ‘Introduction’ section.

   Materials and Methods:

1.      “Treatments were applied in August 2011 at Fishburn, 109 November 2011 at Mountain Lake and October 2011 at Twin Falls.”. Any specific reason for application of treatment is different months in different areas?

2.      “The year following imidachloprid treatment, at the Fishburn and Mountain Lake sites, chlorophyll fluorescence was measured monthly from June through October 2012 for each tree using a Handy PEA fluorometer” Why fluorescence was measured at only two sites?

            References:

There are lots of statements throughout the manuscript that essentially require proper validations and citations with previous studies which are seriously missing in the present manuscript. Introduction, Result, and Discussion sections poorly cited with the references and strongly recommended to update and validation with previous studies. Therefore, the relevant papers listed below should be considered and cited appropriately in the Introduction, Result, and Discussion sections of this manuscript which will certainly upgrade and enhance the Ms. quality significantly. Omitting any of these papers will certainly compromise the scientific quality of this manuscript.

·         Kumar D., et al. (2023). Titanium dioxide nanoparticles potentially regulate the mechanism (s) for photosynthetic attributes, genotoxicity, antioxidants defense machinery, and phytochelatins synthesis in relation to hexavalent chromium toxicity in Helianthus annuus L. Journal of Hazardous Materials. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhazmat.2023.131418

·         Gupta P., et al. (2022). 24-Epibrassinolide Regulates Functional Components of Nitric Oxide Signalling and Antioxidant Defense Pathways to Alleviate Salinity Stress in Brassica juncea L. cv. Varuna. Journal of Plant Growth Regulation, 1-16.

·         Yadav, M., et al. (2022). Foliar application of α-lipoic acid attenuates cadmium toxicity on photosynthetic pigments and nitrogen metabolism in Solanum lycopersicum L. Acta Physiologiae Plantarum, 44(11), 1-10.

 

Results and Discussion:

1.      Discussion section must include more studies from previous reports as evidence for your study, recent studies must be included. Follow and cite some of the recommended important papers in the reference section of this comment.

2.      “Both Fishburn and Mountain Lake showed an overall decrease in chlorophyll fluo- 269 rescence (Fv/Fm) with an increase in day of year likely due to decreasing temperatures” what does increase in day of year signify? Is it a correct statement, please rectify?

3.      “Our modeling of leaf-level photosynthesis found that site significantly impacted model parameters, even with temperature, humidity and soil moisture already included in the model”, Mineral nutrient parameter could also have been an important factor for completing the model. Is there any specific reason for not including it in the study?

4.      The authors failed to explain all of their findings in the discussion section with specific mechanisms. It is advisable to maintain balance between the result and the discussion section.

Conclusion:

1.      The conclusion section should be in accordance to the result and discussion section, random addition of results should be avoided.

2.    Conclusion section must also include the future perspectives of this study which is lacking in the manuscript.

3.    Referencing in the figures should not be done, please remove.

 

Tables and Figures:

1.      The legends of the figures are not crisp and not completely bringing out the sense of the figures. Rewrite it accordingly.

2.      The placement of tables and figures in the manuscript should be done appropriately, which is missing in this manuscript. Please revise it.

3.        The Tables and Figures are not clear and significant difference is not denoted alphabetically which is a serious error.

no comments

Author Response

General comments

Comments 1-3 - The manuscript was checked throughout and grammatical errors and sentences were changed where we found mistakes.  The title of the paper was changed to reflect that the trees were treated with imidacloprid.

4. Citations have all been fixed.
5. Key words have been alphabetized and changed/added.
6. We believe this is all now correct.
7. We believe this is now all correct.

 Highlights, Abstract, Introduction

1. We do not wish to utilize a graphical abstract unless it is now mandatory for the journal.
2. We believe the abstract reflects all the important sections of the papers.
3. We emphasized that the physiological measurements were collected for an entire year.
4. The specific imidacloprid product is listed in parenthesis.
5. This has been reworded and broken into two sentences.
6. This has been fixed.
7. Objectives are clearly stated at the end of the introduction.

Materials and Methods

1. There is no specific reason for different treatment dates other than scheduling trips to the various locations. All of them were completed in the fall and had all winter to take effects before measurements were collected.
2. There was a sentence explaining this in the manuscript “Since low-hanging branches were not present on all trees at Twin Falls, fluorescence measurements were not collected.” We moved the sentence up in the paragraph.

References

We examined the papers suggested by reviewer one and respectfully disagree that they are relevant to our paper.  

Results and Discussion

1. Several new papers have been added. Two that address the phytotoxicity of imidacloprid and a new relevant paper on photosynthesis as impacted by HWA.
2. We reworded this slightly. An increase in day of year signifies that it is later in the year.
3. We agree but examining soil variables was not an objective of the study.
4. We believe the discussion covers all the important findings. We would never imply that we can explain all our results with “specific mechanisms”.

Conclusions

1. We do not believe we have added an “random ...results” to our conclusion section.
2. The last sentences of the conclusion suggest future work in the area of process modeling.
3. No figures are referenced in the conclusions.

Tables and Figures

1. Several captions have been added to clarify the research is on hemlock
2. We believe all the figures and tables are located appropriately.
3. We believe significant differences are clearly indicated.

Reviewer 2 Report

McDonald et al.'s manuscript deal with the physiology of Hemlock Woolly Adelgid on Leaf-Level Physiology of Eastern Hemlock in Montgomery County, Virginia, USA. The information generated is valuable and results could be useful for local farmers and stakeholders to preserve the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid tree. 

Introduction: Add the importance of imidacloprid because the study is based on its application to improve physiology, however, there is lack of information present there. 

In addition, one possible side effect of imidacloprid is "phytotoxicity", Phytotoxicity occurs when the insecticide causes damage to the plant, such as yellowing or browning of the foliage, stunted growth, or death of the plant. Hemlock trees are particularly sensitive to imidacloprid, and even low doses of the insecticide can cause phytotoxicity. 

are authors considered these aspects in the current study?

# in materials and methods graphical representation of trees location using GISarc or google map could improve readability for reader.

Some references are too old and need to update after 2018 where necessary. 

Author Response

This is a great point (with regard to phytotoxicity). We have added information with regard to the phytotoxicity of imidacloprid (both to the introduction and the discussion).  We have also changed the title so that it readers know we used imidacloprid.

We do not have information on the geolocations of the trees.

Reviewer 3 Report

I am a little surprised that you used only one individual per tree size class per plot. Although I am not an expert in statistics, I found this unusual. I suggest you to give a brief explanation in the Materials and Methods section.

Author Response

We did not use subsampling within each experimental unit (plot).  We did however have 5 (one location) and 6 (two locations) plots (replications of each treatment). 

Reviewer 4 Report

The paper "Effects of Hemlock Woolly Adelgid on Leaf-Level Physiology of eastern Hemlock" compares the effects of Imidacloprid treatment with respect to physiogical responses of adult plants of Tsuga canadensis grown in three different plots in US. The paper gives a coherent theoretical overview of the problems and the hypothesis is clearly explained with arguments and evidence based on earlier findings and theory.

The paper is clear, well-written and results well discussed. I only have some minor amendments that follow

- line 53. I think that you should add the effect of tree mortality caused by HWA on forest fire. Some information can be found in "Khodaee, Mahsa, Taehee Hwang, JiHyun Kim, Steven P. Norman, Scott M. Robeson, and Conghe Song. 2020. "Monitoring Forest Infestation and Fire Disturbance in the Southern Appalachian Using a Time Series Analysis of Landsat Imagery" Remote Sensing 12, no. 15: 2412. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12152412" that you also cite in the paper.

Line 131. On how many trees the measurements were done. It's not specificied

line 149- Same as above. How many leaf/trees you sampled?

line 326 You state "This may be a result of HWA being dormant in September and breaking dormancy in October". Do you have any references or is it just your hypothesis? Is there any reference about HWA Life cycle? 

Author Response

We have added the suggested citation to our introduction.  Thank you.

The number of replicates is mentioned earlier in section “2.1. Sites”

HWA becomes active in the fall (mid-October).   This would be fairly common knowledge with most readers so we do not believe it requires a citation.  

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Reviewer’s Comments to Authors:

 This paper must be rejected as it does not meet the standard quality and requirements to be published in the prestigious journal. As you very well know that it is a high ranked journal and publishing the article focused on scientific audiences and current and demanding research which sounds good to the academician and researchers. All the sections of manuscript from title, abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, conclusion, references have been poorly written and do not meet the scientific standards/quality. The results and discussion section do not reveal the significance of the present experiment and do not add any new knowledge to the existing knowledge. In the past and recently there are so many papers published in almost same directions and this paper almost is the repetition of old things. This manuscript does not have any innovation except repetition of the old things in different manners. I do not convince with this paper and due to the serious and fatal errors about scientific merit this paper must be rejected. This paper seems to be like M.Sc. Dissertation and may be suitable for any local journal(s).

 The other specific comments are given below:

1.      this paper failed to attract the general interest of the readers.

2.      The presentation of the paper attempting to reflect present state of knowledge is very poor. The same can be checked through the figures used in this study.

3.      The relevant aspect of study is incompletely addressed.

4.      The literature is not sufficiently critical, current, and has not been internationally evaluated.

5.      This paper does not include the appropriate content according to the size of the article. The figures are presented across the different pages of manuscript but the weightage to the content in regards to the content quantity is not justified.

6.      Importantly, a paper should be written in such a manner that a researcher from other discipline can understand. However, this papers is not presented in a simple manner that scientists in other disciplines will understand.

 

7.      The figures presented in the manuscript are not arranged clearly and concisely as most of the data lines plotted in the graph are presented in a way that are difficult to infer.

 

8.      The abstract also do not include significance of this work which clearly fails to justify the content of the article.

 

9.      The conclusion does not justify the relationship between the observed results across the manuscript.

 

10.  The title does not appropriately reflect the contents of paper.

 

 

very poor