Relationship between Plant Habitat Types and Butterfly Diversity in Urban Mountain Parks
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsI found this manuscript interesting and well written. However, there are a few minor things that need to be fixed. Please see comments below.
LL162-164: you need to cite the relevant references here.
Results: all stats should be added to this section (f-values, degrees of freedom, sample size, confidence interval, etc.), not only the p-values.
L459: “Figure 11 shows that …” instead of the current.
L504: “Akaike Information Criterion” instead of “Akachi”. Please correct this throughout the manuscript.
LL576-579: relevant references should be cited here to support these statements.
L595: not all butterflies are beneficial for plants. Therefore, the relationship between plants and butterflies cannot be described as generally symbiotic. You need to specify which butterflies could be symbiotic with plants.
Figures
Figure 7: the y-axis needs a unit. Also, the figure should show the significant differences among sites or lack thereof.
Figure 8: the y-axis needs a unit.
Figure 9: the y-axis needs a label.
Figure 10: The figure should show the significant differences among sites or lack thereof.
Tables
Table 5: statistically significant factors should be given in bold font.
Table 7: statistically significant factors should be given in bold font.
Table 9: statistically significant factors should be given in bold font.
Author Response
Please see attached for responses.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe research topic of the authors is relevant. The scope of work is large. However, there are some comments on the presented material.
Keywords: vegetation habitat; butterfly diversity; landscape enhancement; urban mountain parks
Two keyword expressions repeat the part of the Title. Keywords are necessary for search systems, therefore an author must be interested not to repeat them.
line 228: ωi is the ratio of the number of species of tree species i to the total number of species of plants in the community, i =1, 2, ..., S, S is the total number of plant species.– may be: “the number of tree species i”
line 289 – a legend must be added to Figure 6: to explain the abbreviations and colors.
lines 300–301: add the reference (references) about the “common” use of the approach.
line 304: Urbanization type was the dependent variable, whereas the independent variable was Shannon diversity. Did you mean the impact of butterfly diversity on the urbanization type? It seems to me, that the butterfly diversity depends on the urbanization type.
line 357: add “butterflies” to the first sentence because plants were described earlier...
line 358: here you must refer not to Table 1 but to the Supplement with the list of species (Table S1).
In Table S.1, it is necessary to number the species and point full names with authors and years, for example, Pieris rapae (Linnaeus, 1758). In this Table, the parks or urbanization types may be mentioned for each species, as well as other useful data at the discretion of the authors (abundance, prevalence, etc.)
line 368: 2506 butterflies per time – per which time? per year?
If you reference a table, it should be placed close to the first mention.
line 393. Figure 7. The axes must have names (X – the habitats? Y – number of families, genera, or species? or their proportion, % from which indicator? It is not a “structural composition”, it is the number of butterflies taxa in different habitats...
lines 395–396: Is it Chao-1 index? Must be mentioned in the name of axis Y. A legend may be explained that habitats are described in Table 1.
line 407: both axes must have names (NMDS1 and NMDS2)
line 409: is it Figure 3 or Figure 8?
line 445–446. Figure 10 – boxes, whiskers, and dots must be explained under the title of the figure (mean, minimum-maximum, standard deviation, percentiles???).
line 458: do you mean Figure 7??? I don’t see this in Figure 7.
line 476: it is not “variation” but a seasonal dynamics of diversity indices.
In all fragments of Figure 11, it is enough to leave one sign on the y-axis after the point (1.8, 0.8 ...)
line 535: “model model”
I propose to place the intermediate results of model calculations (Tables 2-9 at the discretion of the authors) in a supplement, and in the text of the article to pay more attention to the ecological meaning of the data obtained.
When data analyzing, it is necessary to pay attention to the trophic relations of butterflies (their caterpillars). Not all butterflies are useful pollinators. The number of species whose caterpillars are phytophages, and some plant pests (for example, Pieris rapae), can increase their numbers many times and dominate in the habitat with the high prevalence of host plants.
It may be necessary to pay attention to the dominant butterfly species and their prevalence in different habitats.
Comments on the Quality of English Languageminor revision is needed
Author Response
Please see attached for responses.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
