Assessment of Biological and Ecological Characteristics of Sievers Apple Tree Pests in Trans-Ili Alatau, Kazakhstan
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Jashenko et al. assessed the biological and ecological characteristics of the three main pests (Yponomeuta malinellus Zell., Archips rosana L., and Cacoecia crataegana Hb.). The results of this study found that these three pests damage the leaf of the Malus sieversii with different damage degrees. The paper is generally well-written and structured. I enjoyed reading the manuscript.
Before this manuscript can be accepted for publication, I have a few minor comments and would like the authors to consider! I would suggest adding a background text to the abstract, as the authors didn't provide sufficient information about the study's main targets, which are three pests and the main host, "Malus sieversii". Scientific names of species should always be italicized!
Grammar checks are required for the entire manuscript.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer
Please find revised manuscript and step-by-step answer file
All correctioans are in red and green colours
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
This manuscript evaluated the primary insect pests of Sievers apple trees, an important source of genetics for apple breeding, across six locations in the Trans-Ili Alatau area of Kazkhastan. They further evaluated the biological characteristics (emergence time and so on) of the top three pest species to inform future monitoring and control strategies. This type of work is very valuable; and the researchers appeared to do quite a bit of work. However, major writing revisions need to occur for the manuscript to be ready for publication.
The primary issue is that the methods lack many key details critical to understanding the results section and replicating the experiment.
The introduction is very redundant and long and does not set up the context for this particular study well. The first three paragraphs and lines 89-92 were particularly redundant with each other. There is too much focus on biodiversity and the importance of apple genetics. However, this study is focused on the primary insect pests in this system for the purposes of future monitoring/control and this is hardly brought up in the introduction.
Parts of the discussion section would be better suited in the introduction. The descriptions of the main pests and typical control measures should be addressed primarily in the introduction and reiterated briefly in the results/discussion section.
The figures were often lacking information about axes labels and units of measurement.
Throughout the manuscript, the scientific names are not italicized. There is also a shift in how the species are referred to in the results section. Throughout all of the introduction and methods, the scientific names are used, but this is abruptly changed to common names later on. Either can be used, but both should be introduced at the initial description of these species in the introduction and one method chosen and used for the rest of the manuscript.
Line by line comments:
Lines 84-88: This paragraph describing where the trees grow would be better suited to the first sub-section of the methods.
Line 103: What is “ecological adaptation” referring to here?
Line 110: Remove “conducted”.
Methods section 2.1: How many sites in total? The results section indicates 6? A map would also be useful.
Methods section 2.4: Move this section to before the sections on sampling and pest counting (those two sections could be combined as well).
Methods section 2.2: Change “mown” to “swept” or “sampled” or similar. This section needs much more detail. What time of year was sampling done? What time of day was the sampling done? How many branches per tree? How does this sampling match the ratings of damage and measurements of leaf damage?
Methods section 2.3: Need more detail in this section as well. How many leaves were assessed per tree? How many times? How was the damage estimated (give more detail in addition to the references)? How were ratings done (again give more detail than the references)?
Methods section 2.5: This section also needs more details. How were they reared throughout the year? How often was food changed out? Were they kept in a growth chamber? How many individuals per species were assessed? What was the temperature settings? Relative humidty? Light:dark cycle? For each species.
Methods section 2.6: How were the ratings then used for the statistics as these could be assessed as ordinal values? How many replicate time points? What does the triplicate refer to? Three branches per tree per time point?
Line 140: Change “objects” to “objectives”.
Line 145: Change “binoculars” to “microscope” or similar.
Line 151: Change “contaminated” here and throughout to “infested” or “damaged”
Results section: Add “and discussion” to the section header as there is otherwise no discussion section.
Lines 171-182: The first paragraph of the results section is redundant with the introduction and can be removed entirely or very briefly summed up here (1 sentence).
Line 179: Change “dangerous” to “economically damaging”.
Table 2: How to the “+”s translate into the ratings from the methods section? The description also talks about “breeding mass” but this is not evident in the table.
Figure 2: Missing y-axis description. Change “forestry” to “forest” here and throughout. The figure caption talks about “leaf blade” but this is not brought up anywhere in the methods. There should be error bars on these data. I think Table 3 is redundant with these data but does a better job showing results than figure 2.
Table 3: “Branch” is only sometimes capitalized. What does branch represent here? A single branch from a tree? There should be more details in the methods to interpret this as well as in the table description.
Figure 3: There are a lot of sampling dates here not mentioned in the methods. All data associated with was not well described in the methods (including the years of study).
Line 296: Change “decade” to “half”?
Figure 7: What are the units of measurement for “abundance” here? The caption talks about “temperature”, but these data are not clear on the figure itself nor are they described in the methods.
Results sections 3.5/3.6: All the data associated with these sections were not described in the methods.
Line 334: Need a comma rather than semicolon after “tree” here.
Lines 340-341: Cite this statement.
Very minor corrections to terminology listed in the line by line comments above.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer
Please find revised manuscript and step-by-step answer file
All correctioans are in red and green colours
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The titled manuscript, "Assessment of Biological and Ecological Characteristics of Sievers Apple Tree Pests in Trans-Ili Alatau, Kazakhstan," provides important findings on the insect pests affecting the Sievers apple tree. The research sheds light on the distribution and damage caused by these pests and emphasizes the need for effective pest management strategies. However, some improvements in terms of clarity and organization of the content would enhance the readability and impact of the study.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Careful proofreading is required.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer
Please find revised manuscript and step-by-step answer file
All correctioans are in red and green colours
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors have made all of the requested adjustments. Thank you for your efforts!
Author Response
Thank you!
Reviewer 3 Report
Thank you for accepting my suggestions.
Regards
Carefully proof reading is required.
Author Response
Thanks
Grammar mistakes were corrected
