Effects of Ground Cover Management, Landscape Elements and Local Conditions on Carabid (Coleoptera: Carabidae) Diversity and Vine Vitality in Temperate Vineyards

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors studied the effects of ground cover management on carabid diversity and vine vitality in temperate vineyards. I think this study is interesting and innovative and recommend it should be published. However, the authors should cite more newly published papers on this topic (i.e., ground cover effects on insect management). Several questions that the authors should address:

1. In the abstract section, the authors should give the conclusion and potential meaning of this study. For example, this study concluded that….; this study suggests
2. In the first paragraph in the Introduction section: the authors should introduce the background of agrobiodiversity (especially ground cover vegetation) effects on insect pests and natural enemies as you topic is focused on insect management and agrobiodiversity/ground cover vegetation, instead of empty relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem services. In addition, please do not pay much attention on the biodiversity effects on soil as this is not your topic in this paper.  Recommended papers as as follows: Ji XY, et al, 2022. Ground cover vegetation promotes biological control and yield in pear orchards. Journal of Applied Entomology, 146: 262-271. 
3. In the last paragraph in the Introduction section: the authors should propose their hypothesis. For example, we hypothesize that......
4. In the Materials and Methods: what is the longitude and latitude of your study? What about the agricultural practice (pesticide use and fertilizer use?). please describe the sampling methods of arthropods in detail. Referring to the above-recommended papers.
5. In the discussion section: ground cover vegetation is one of the most important biodiversity modes (See Wan NF, et al, 2020. Global synthesis of effects of plant species diversity on trophic groups and interactions. Nature Plants, 6: 503–510), and ground cover vegetation has multiple ecosystem services including natural pest control which is one of the important ecosystem services. Thus, the authors should focus on the discussion of ground cover and pest control. In addition, the authors should discuss the limitation of this paper and present a potential perspective on this study.
6. References: the authors should focus on the topic of the relationship between plant diversification and pest control. Thus, more citation should be presented.

Author Response

Answers to comments of Reviewer 1

The authors studied the effects of ground cover management on carabid diversity and vine vitality in temperate vineyards. I think this study is interesting and innovative and recommend it should be published. However, the authors should cite more newly published papers on this topic (i.e., ground cover effects on insect management). Several questions that the authors should address:

1. In the abstract section, the authors should give the conclusion and potential meaning of this study. For example, this study concluded that….; this study suggests

We modified the abstract on the basis of the suggestions provided by both reviewers. Thereby we hope to provide a more structured and comprehensive abstract better reflecting the objectives, the outline and the results and conclusions from our study.

1. In the first paragraph in the Introduction section: the authors should introduce the background of agrobiodiversity (especially ground cover vegetation) effects on insect pests and natural enemies as you topic is focused on insect management and agrobiodiversity/ground cover vegetation, instead of empty relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem services. In addition, please do not pay much attention on the biodiversity effects on soil as this is not your topic in this paper.  Recommended papers as as follows: Ji XY, et al, 2022. Ground cover vegetation promotes biological control and yield in pear orchards. Journal of Applied Entomology, 146: 262-271. 

The introduction was modified according to the recommendation.

1. In the last paragraph in the Introduction section: the authors should propose their hypothesis. For example, we hypothesize that......

The last paragraph of the introduction was re-written in order to be more specific in relation to problem statement, objectives and hypothesis of our study.

1. In the Materials and Methods: what is the longitude and latitude of your study? What about the agricultural practice (pesticide use and fertilizer use?). please describe the sampling methods of arthropods in detail. Referring to the above-recommended papers.

Figure 1 in Materials and Methods was modified and includes now the coordinates of Vienna as well as the x- and y-axis has now sexagesimal coordinates to orientate the vineyards into a specific area. The authors could provide the specific coordinates of each vineyard, but opted against the presentation of this information as this could be followed to the names of the involved wineries.

Our main objective was to investigate the effects of three different ground cover management strategies from open bare ground towards complete vegetation cover in vineyard inter-rows on carabid abundance and species diversity. We agree with the author that pesticide regimes and applied fertilization would add additional aspects do our study, but as all three treatments were implement in each vineyard, the influences on the treatment effect itself of other agricultural practices was neglectable. A different study design would be necessary to investigate the effects of different agricultural practices on carabid communities.

The authors used pitfall traps to collect arthropods throughout a period of 5 days in June and September 2016. Among the collected arthropods we focused on carabids for quantification, while other taxa were not considered in the presented study. The sampling method is described in section 2.3 carabid sampling. 

1. In the discussion section: ground cover vegetation is one of the most important biodiversity modes (See Wan NF, et al, 2020. Global synthesis of effects of plant species diversity on trophic groups and interactions. Nature Plants, 6: 503–510), and ground cover vegetation has multiple ecosystem services including natural pest control which is one of the important ecosystem services. Thus, the authors should focus on the discussion of ground cover and pest control. In addition, the authors should discuss the limitation of this paper and present a potential perspective on this study.

For sure pest control is a very important ecosystem service and the authors agree in this point with the reviewer. Nevertheless, the purpose and the design of our study was to assess the impact of different ground cover management strategies on vines and a selected group of insects, in our case carabids. To conclude on pest control in general, the setup and the sampling strategy would have been different. Therefore, conclusions on pest control related to our obtained dataset would be difficult, but we tried implemented this aspect in the discussion.

References: the authors should focus on the topic of the relationship between plant diversification and pest control. Thus, more citation should be presented.

See reasoning above – we aimed to include these aspects in the discussion

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

in the attachment you can see some comments on your ms.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Answers to comments of Reviewer 2

Suggestion to adapt the title

            The title was modified partly according to the recommendation of the reviewer.

Suggestions to improve the abstract

The abstract was modified according to the suggestions. The questions addressed at the end of the abstract by the reviewer were: What about sustainable vineyards? Do some ground cover treatments serve for maintain functional biodiversity?

We considered these questions as general recommendation to be addressed in the discussion and conclusion of the manuscript. We aimed to implement these aspects, but could not add them to the abstract has a limit of about 200 words. 

Suggestions to improve the introduction

            Suggestions were addressed in the resubmitted manuscript.

Suggestions to improve materials and methods

            Figure 1 is modified according to the suggestions of the reviewer

Experimental design: Suggested information to plant names was added at the order level as this information is not further used in our analyses.

Carabid sampling: Question about density and abundance – by using pitfall traps the collected individuals represent the activity density of carabid beetles. References are included to support this terminology.

Environmental and landscape variables: the units were adapted accordingly and measurement units were added to all variables

Data analysis:

• Sampling completeness estimator: estimation of sampling completness was calculated according to the recommendation and added into the Material and
• What similarity index did you use? – both of our ordination analyses CCA and forward-selection RDA is based on count data and not on similarity indices as which are e.g. used in distance-based RDA. All analyses were performed according to the standard Canoco settings.

Table 1 and Table 2 were transferred to the result section

Suggestions to improve results

            We changed minor parts of the result section in accordance with the suggestion of the reviewer

            Figure 4 was modified

Figure 5: error pars description was specified

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper was improved but the authors