Prediction of the Global Distribution of Arhopalus rusticus under Future Climate Change Scenarios of the CMIP6

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors,

Thank you for the interesting manuscript, I have some comments in the attached file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer：

Thank you very much for correcting the details of the article, I have made the changes.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript is a good contribution in the field of forestry and modeling of species under the influence of climate change. Authors have used a modeling approach involving multiple approaches and used the best one for making predictions. I have some suggestions for the improvement of the manuscript.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Moderate revision needed

Author Response

Dear  reviewer：

Abstract：
Thank you for carefully checking out my grammatical errors, which I have corrected in the manuscript and refined in the overview with the methods section, the values of the assessment metrics, and the percentage of the distribution area for the different fitness classes.
Introduction:
I have made changes to the literature citation to include in the description of the species distribution model the prediction of success stories and how environmental factors can affect the biological characteristics of the insect.
Materials and Methods：
I have added the URLs of the websites and r-packages used in the methods.
Removed the descriptions of the six modelling methods and added them to the general overview.
Added how to select the final model, how to plot the final predictions and how to calculate the area.
Added documentation of the modelling code in r language format as a supplementary file.
Results：I adjusted the resolution of the 3-6 graphs and the font type.
Discussion and Conclusion ：I have made some changes in this section, and I would like to thank you for reviewing it again.

 Thank you very much for your comments on my article, from grammatical issues to direction, I feel that these comments will be of substantial help to my article and my future research.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is an interesting work about the future potential distribution of a forest pest in different climate change scenarios. I see many positive and significant results, but I have some concerns. I am not an expert in distribution models, I hope the editors will find someone who could revise that part. However, what I see in this manuscript is some doubtful decisions. First of all, given that the species has a wide distribution, and that models are based on presence/absence, I do not understand why authors have decided not to include many of the presence areas that are mentioned in the introduction. It will give wrong distributions. Also, authors need to explain why they are projecting future distributions for a period so far, instead of a more close period such as 2050 and beyond, for instance. Furthermore, giving that the aim of the manuscript is to show future distributions of this species, I would have expected a wider discussion on this part, but only three references were used for sections 4.2, 4.3 and 4.4, limiting the discussion to some shallow explanations.

Furthermore, I have some specific comments that I will explain next, section by section.

Title and abstract

I suggest removing “the” from the title.

Abstract has some problems: in lines 12-13: “These projections were based on…”, but projections were not even mentioned before in the abstract; in line 13: “Projections and made for…” I guess should be saying “Projections are made for…”).

Introduction

Reference in lines 42-43 must be checked.

I do not see the point of explaining the different methods that are used for modelling. It would be needed if the aim of the manuscript was to develop a new method for modelling, and therefore limitations of previous methods should be presented. However, although some models are actually compared in this research, comparison was not the aim per se, so it is not required.

Line 77: Why is “optimal modelling” alone in a sentence?

Materials and Methods

Lines 102-103: The last sentence is wrongly repeated.

Figure 1: The known distribution points in the map do not agree with the regions mentioned in the introduction (lines 52-56).

Results

All figure captions must be self-explanatory. Most of them seem nice, but that from figure 3 is incomplete.

Table 4 should be table 2.

In figure 5, the different lines are hard to differentiate one from another, I suggest to make them in more distinguishable colors.

Discussion

I do not see the point of the first paragraph (lines 303-308), I do not think it is needed.

Please explain a little more which were the shortcommings of the CMIP5, in order to help the reader to understand the importance of having used CMIP6 (lines 314-316).

What has the Tenebrio species has to do with A. rusticus? (lines 369-370) Also, it is said here that the A. rusticus distribution has not been documented in many South American countries, but in the introduction it was mentioned that the species arrived there in the last century, so there must be any information.

I suggest to expand the discussion of the likely relation of the species distribution and its host distribution. Is this species only related to coniferous? How is coniferous distribution expected to be in the future? Are there any other studies about this or other coniferous-related pests?

When you say “this study has improved the potential distribution range of A. rusticus…” (line 384), what do you mean? Improved related to what? There was any other potential distribution of this species previously presented?

General comments

There are many problems with punctuation, either because a period is placed where a comma should be or because the lack of a space right after the period. It needs to be thoroughly revised along the entire document.

Also, some issues have been detected in taxonomy. Please remind that genus names must be also written in italics.

 

Author Response

Dear reviewer：

Because the distribution points of Arhopalus rusticus are widely distributed and scattered, including some non-native areas, I want to make a prediction through the distribution points of the native areas on a country basis, and use some of the retained loci to verify the accuracy of the model and whether it achieves the effect of a real projection.
According to the Sixth Working Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, climate change will be a continuous process, the global temperature is increasing year by year, and the extreme weather events are also increasing, so I choose the time period furthest away from the current period to make the prediction, which can better highlight how the distribution trend of Arhopalus rusticus is changing under the situation of greater climate change compared with the more recent years.

Title and abstract:
I have made changes to this section and highlighted it in red.
Introduction:
I have removed the introduction to the six models
Materials and Methods:
I have corrected the writing problem you pointed out.
The distribution points used for modelling are not all the available loci, the final points used are the regions mentioned in the "Occurrence data collection".
Results: I have expanded on Figure 3 and changed the colours of Figure 5.
Discussion and Conclusion: I have made some overall changes, and I would like to ask you to review it again for me.

I have checked as well as revised the grammar and punctuation issues throughout, and thank you very much for your suggestions on my article, which I feel will substantially help my article as well as my future research.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors have improved the manuscript in the light of suggested corrections. I congratulate them for such a nice publication. I have not seen the supplementary file attached with the manuscript.