Influence of Canopy Cover and Meteorological Factors on the Abundance of Bark and Ambrosia Beetles (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) in Avocado Orchards Affected by Laurel Wilt
, Armando Padilla 1, Pollyana C. Chagas 1,3, Edvan A. Chagas 1,4, Jonathan H. Crane 1 and Daniel Carrillo 1
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Review Comments
The manuscript entitled “Influence of canopy cover and meteorological factors on the 2 abundance of bark and ambrosia beetles (Coleoptera: Curculio-3 nidae) in avocado orchards affected by laurel wilt” has been reviewed. The topic of this research is within the scope of the agronomy journal, and the manuscript presents a self-consistent story.
I only have one question regarding the general idea of this study. For the meteorological factors, could the authors please explicitly present the variations of the meteorological factors? We know the large the variations, the more the model is convincible.
Also, could the authors please indicate if meteorological factors are the direct factors and has causal relationship with the avocado orchards. For example, we learn the famous example in machine learning that hot temperature is positively related to the shark attack along Florida beach, but the relationship is “secondary”. Because all the plant can “buffer” some meteorological variations, I am wondering if the meteorological factors are just “secondary”, or “non-direct” factors.
Author Response
Comments from the editors and reviewers:
-Reviewer 1
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The manuscript entitled “Influence of canopy cover and meteorological factors on the 2 abundance of bark and ambrosia beetles (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) in avocado orchards affected by laurel wilt” has been reviewed. The topic of this research is within the scope of the agronomy journal, and the manuscript presents a self-consistent story.
I only have one question regarding the general idea of this study. For the meteorological factors, could the authors please explicitly present the variations of the meteorological factors? We know the large the variations, the more the model is convincible.
Response: The variability of meteorological factors is presented in 5 supplementary figures. Figures S1- S5 display the variation of meteorological factors over a one-year period. These figures have all the available data, which is also available online at https://fawn.ifas.ufl.edu / as indicated in the text. See supplementary materials lines 473-489.
Also, could the authors please indicate if meteorological factors are the direct factors and has causal relationship with the avocado orchards. For example, we learn the famous example in machine learning that hot temperature is positively related to the shark attack along Florida beach, but the relationship is “secondary”. Because all the plant can “buffer” some meteorological variations, I am wondering if the meteorological factors are just “secondary”, or “non-direct” factors.
Response: Clarifications were added in lines 475 and line 496
Line 475: “This suggests that their abundance and activity are mostly affected by cultural practices within each avocado orchard and that meteorological factors play a secondary role.”
line 496: This implies that invasive species are more sensitive to weather conditions, but other factors might be of more relevance for resident species.
Reviewer 2 Report
The current research work is an interesting and scientifically/technically sound study that tells how the canopy covers affect the abundance of ambrosia beetles by modifying the levels of meteorological factors (light intensity etc) in the orchards of an economic fruit crop species – Avocado. In addition, the linguistic quality, as well as scientific interpretation, is excellent. There is just confusion regarding the self-citations which should be removed if found necessary to avoid contradiction as per Journal author guidelines.
Author Response
-Reviewer 2
The current research work is an interesting and scientifically/technically sound study that tells how the canopy covers affect the abundance of ambrosia beetles by modifying the levels of meteorological factors (light intensity etc) in the orchards of an economic fruit crop species – Avocado. In addition, the linguistic quality, as well as scientific interpretation, is excellent. There is just confusion regarding the self-citations which should be removed if found necessary to avoid contradiction as per Journal author guidelines.
Response: Citations including names were removed from the text to avoid confusion. Only three citations referring to the taxonomic keys used for identifications were left with names in the text. Citation of some of the authors’ previous papers on the subject is necessary because this study is part of a larger research project and a consequence of previous findings. However, this was reduced as much as possible.
Reviewer 3 Report
Add references to all paragraphs.
Justify the selection of these tree orchards due to having different ages and conditions, how does this affect the study?
Size of canopy mesh
Use the abbreviation LW along with the manuscript after the first time that appears.
If you use "significantly" you can avoid the p-value.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
-Reviewer 3
Add references to all paragraphs.
Response: We followed the journal guidelines for citations and references. All cited references are already included in the text.
Justify the selection of these tree orchards due to having different ages and conditions, how does this affect the study?
Response: A justification was added in line 104 “ All three orchards had a north-south row orientation and were selected because each had large areas with different canopy coverage under the same pest management strategy.”
how does this affect the study?
Response: Orchard was a factor considered in the analysis. See lines 148: “The effect of canopy cover, orchard, and its interaction were evaluated for the total number of beetles (i.e., all species combined) and the number of each species using a two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA).” and line 214: “When separate ANOVAs were conducted by species, captures of X. crassiusculus were significantly affected by canopy cover and orchard (F = 3.01; df = 4, 1206; p = 0.0175). In contrast, captures of X. affinis (F = 4.67; df = 2,603; p = 0.0097), X. volvulus (F = 15.92; df = 2, 928; p < 0.001), X. bispinatus (F = 3.07; df = 2, 543; p = 0.0473), X. saxesenii (F = 3.8042; df = 2, 640; p = 0.0225), and X. ferrugineus (F = 4.98; df = 2, 1204; p = 0.0070) were only affected by canopy covers.”
The discussion was also slightly modified to address this issue: See lines 455-460 “This implies that invasive species are more sensitive to weather conditions but other factors might be of more relevance for resident species. Overall, our results suggest that the abundance and species composition of bark and ambrosia beetles in avocado orchards is determined by the interaction of multiple factors, including orchard management history, abiotic meteorological factors, age (i.e., tree size), and physiological state of trees (i.e., stress), and the biology of the beetles.”
Size of canopy mesh
Response: No canopy mesh was used. Unable to answer this query.
Use the abbreviation LW along with the manuscript after the first time that appears.
Response: Corrected. The abbreviation (LW) was used throughout the text except in the title, subheadings, figure captions, and the first mention in the abstract and the text.
If you use "significantly" you can avoid the p-value.
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Response: The word significantly together with the p value was only used four times when deemed necessary. Most of the time (11 out f 15) the word significantly is not followed by the p value. We appreciate the reviewers’ comment but we believe that the p value and the word significantly were used correctly throughout the manuscript.
