Local Variation in Ground Arthropod Diversity Rises as Distance to Residential Areas Decreases in a Mature Evergreen Forest

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

MS diversity-3586100 review

General comments

In light of the growing global pressure of urbanisation on biodiversity, the paper by Su et al., looking into the variation in ground-dwelling arthropod diversity with decreasing distance to residential areas in central China, is both interesting and highly relevant. The topic aligns well with the aims and scopes of the journal Diversity. However, before the manuscript can be considered for publication, the authors need to clarify the sampling design and justify treating pitfall trap samples as independent replicates in their statistical analyses. This is a prerequisite for assessing the reliability of their findings – based on the limited information given in the Materials and methods section, there appears to be a risk of pseudo-replication. If this is indeed the case, the authors should carefully reconsider their approach and revise the statistical analysis accordingly. Please see more detailed comments below.

Title

Lines 2-4: If you use a comparative adjective in the title, e.g. “Higher local variation”, be sure to clearly state what it is being compared to – local variation is higher than what? However, I strongly recommend reconsidering the title, as the current one is too long.

Materials and methods

Lines 138-139: Please provide a scheme of the sampling design, since it is difficult to visualize by simply reading the text. You state that there was “a 5-m distance between each pair of adjacent traps”, but what was the distance between the neighbouring traps that form a pair? How exactly were those trap pairs organized within a grid, and how were the three grids organized relative to each other? What was the distance between the grids? This information is crucial and should be clearly presented to help the reader understand your sampling design and ensure its repeatability. For two pitfall trap samples to be considered spatially independent replicates, they should be collected at least 20 m apart, otherwise there is a high risk of pseudo-replication (see e.g. Elek & Lövei 2007, Acta Oecologica 32: 104-111). Therefore, without providing more information on your sampling design and the distances between the grids, trap pairs and neighbouring traps, it is not possible to assess the reliability of your findings.

Lines 144-146: “assess how distance to residential area affects ground-dwelling arthropod diversity while controlling the edge effect and the impact of habitat heterogeneity” – this is a more precise formulation of your study aim than the one you actually provide in the last paragraph of the introduction. Please rework your study aims using this sentence to make them more substantial, and then remove it from the Materials and methods.

Lines 157-160: So, each pitfall trap was considered an individual sample in the statistical analyses? As stated in a previous comment, pitfall trap samples should be collected at least 20 m apart to be considered spatially independent replicates. Otherwise, you are essentially sampling the same part of the ground-dwelling community, resulting in pseudo-replication. This means that if, e.g., the pitfall traps within a grid were only 5 m apart, they should all be treated as the same sample. In this case you would not calculate indices for each trap individually, because they are not independent. Please clarify the distances between grids, pitfall trap pairs and individual pitfall traps by including a scheme of the sampling design and clearly stating the missing information (see the comment above). If your current study setup results in pseudo-replication, please rethink your approach (which samples can you consider independent replicates?) and redo the data analysis.

Results

Line 189: The reliability of the findings cannot be assessed until the sampling design and the approach to data analyses are clarified (see the previous comments).

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

English needs minor improvements to enhance the readability of the manuscript.

Author Response

Responses to Reviewer 1

Comment 1: Before the manuscript can be considered for publication, the authors need to clarify the sampling design and justify treating pitfall trap samples as independent replicates in their statistical analyses. This is a prerequisite for assessing the reliability of their findings – based on the limited information given in the Materials and methods section, there appears to be a risk of pseudo-replication. If this is indeed the case, the authors should carefully reconsider their approach and revise the statistical analysis accordingly.

Response 1: Thank you for pointing this out. We realize the importance of clarifying our sampling methods and justifying the use of these methods with additional statistical tests on our data and results. For the sampling methods, we clarify the details and add an inserted figure to illustrate the sampling scheme. For the statistical tests, we calculate the effective number of species and repeat the analysis with the same finding. We also add Bray-Curtis dissimilarity of the morphospecies composition between each pair of pitfall traps to our analysis. The results show that pseudoreplication is not a concern in our study. We therefore keep most of our results and discussion in the revised manuscript. Thank you for reviewing our revised manuscript.

 

Comment 2: Lines 2-4: If you use a comparative adjective in the title, e.g. “Higher local variation”, be sure to clearly state what it is being compared to – local variation is higher than what? However, I strongly recommend reconsidering the title, as the current one is too long.

Response 2: Thank you for pointing this out. We agree that the title could be shorter. We now entitle our article as Local variation in ground arthropod diversity rises as distance to residential areas decreases in a mature evergreen forest to make it shorter and clearer.

 

Comment 3: Please provide a scheme of the sampling design, since it is difficult to visualize by simply reading the text. You state that there was “a 5-m distance between each pair of adjacent traps”, but what was the distance between the neighbouring traps that form a pair? How exactly were those trap pairs organized within a grid, and how were the three grids organized relative to each other? What was the distance between the grids? This information is crucial and should be clearly presented to help the reader understand your sampling design and ensure its repeatability.

Response 3: Thank you for pointing this out. We add an inserted figure to Figure 1 to illustrate the scheme of the sampling design. We hope that these details are useful for readers to understand our study.

 

Comment 4: Lines 138-139: For two pitfall trap samples to be considered spatially independent replicates, they should be collected at least 20 m apart, otherwise there is a high risk of pseudo-replication (see e.g. Elek & Lövei 2007, Acta Oecologica 32: 104-111). Therefore, without providing more information on your sampling design and the distances between the grids, trap pairs and neighbouring traps, it is not possible to assess the reliability of your findings.

Response 4: Thank you for raising this concern. We acknowledge the possibility of pseudoreplication when using pitfall traps to collect aboveground beetles. However, based on the Bray-Curtis dissimilarity of the morphospecies composition between each pair of pitfall traps, the risk of pseudoreplication in this study is low. We hope that you can continue assessing our findings.

 

Comment 5: Lines 144-146: “assess how distance to residential area affects ground-dwelling arthropod diversity while controlling the edge effect and the impact of habitat heterogeneity” – this is a more precise formulation of your study aim than the one you actually provide in the last paragraph of the introduction. Please rework your study aims using this sentence to make them more substantial, and then remove it from the Materials and methods.

Response 5: Thank you for this suggestion. We now rewrite the last paragraph of Introduction and edit Materials and Methods. This revision improves the logic flow and specifies the research question.

 

Comment 6: Lines 157-160: So, each pitfall trap was considered an individual sample in the statistical analyses? As stated in a previous comment, pitfall trap samples should be collected at least 20 m apart to be considered spatially independent replicates. Otherwise, you are essentially sampling the same part of the ground-dwelling community, resulting in pseudo-replication. This means that if, e.g., the pitfall traps within a grid were only 5 m apart, they should all be treated as the same sample. In this case you would not calculate indices for each trap individually, because they are not independent. Please clarify the distances between grids, pitfall trap pairs and individual pitfall traps by including a scheme of the sampling design and clearly stating the missing information (see the comment above). If your current study setup results in pseudo-replication, please rethink your approach (which samples can you consider independent replicates?) and redo the data analysis.

Response 6: Upon checking the Bray-Curtis dissimilarity of the morphospecies composition between each pair of pitfall traps, we conduct the two-way ANOVA on diversity indices by distances to edge and residential area. In this revision, we also add the effective number of species to the analysis, and achieve the same finding as on the Shannon, the Simpson, and Pielou’s indices. The analysis on the coefficient of variance remains the same as the first version of our manuscript, and our main findings are the same.

 

Comment 7: Line 189: The reliability of the findings cannot be assessed until the sampling design and the approach to data analyses are clarified (see the previous comments).

Response 7: We appreciate the comments raised on our methods, and we add details and more analyses to our manuscript. We hope that you can continue assessing our findings in the next round of review. Thank you.

 

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Title: The title of your manuscript should be concise, specific and relevant

Abstract: The abstract was contained in one paragraph. The abstract included: a broad background context and highlighted the purpose of the study, the main method, a summary of the results and conclusions. The abstract objectively presented of the article.

Keywords: Reduce the number of relevant keywords. Is it necessary to repeat the words that are mentioned in the title of the text?

Introduction: The introduction briefly defines the purpose of the paper and its significance, defines the current state of the research field with adequately cited publications. The main objective of the work is stated and the main conclusions are highlighted.

Materials and Methods:  The section Materials and methods are detailed and clearly described. This section included Study Area koja uključuje distribution of the pitfall traps set in grids along four 100-m transects (Figure 1), Pitfall Trapping and Diversity Indices (abundance, richness, Shannon’s, Simpson’s, Margalef’s and Pielou’s index). Two analyses were used to confirm whether arthropod diversity was affected by human disturbance and whether variations in arthropod diversity indices were different at different levels of human disturbance. A two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was applied to test if abundance, richness, and each of the four diversity indices of the pitfall traps vary by the distances to the forest edge and the distances to residential areas. The coefficient of variation of abundance, richness, and each of the four diversity indices within each grid was calculated.

Results: The results presented provide a concise and precise description of the experiment from which the following conclusions can be easily drawn. The results are significant and relevant, presented in a well-structured manner, as demonstrated through the following displays: the community composition, which includes a total of 30,616 arthropod individuals from 5 classes, is shown in Table 1 and Figure 2; Variations in diversity indices are shown through heatmaps of abundance, richness and each of the four diversity indices against distances to residential areas and forest edge are shown in Figure 3; Table 2 shows multiple comparisons confirming that traps located 100 m from residential areas show significantly higher diversity and evenness than those located 5 m, 15 m, 50 m and 60 m away; The multiple comparison shows that the CV of the Shannon and the Simpson diversity index and Pielou’s evenness index does not depend on the distance of the of the grids away from residential areas (Figure 4).

Discussion: The discussion is in accordance with the presented results.

References: The reference list should be edited according to the journal's propositions: abbreviated title of the journal, year of publication in bold, etc.

The language is appropriate and understandable. The topic is compatible with the journal’s scope. Data and analyses presented appropriately. The tables (1 to 2), figures (1 to 4)  and Appendix (Table A1 and Figure A1 ) are appropriate, they are clearly presented. This study found that higher levels of disturbance at sites closer to residential areas, such as light, noise, and solid waste, can cause the distribution of endemic species and specialist species to shift from these locations to less disturbed habitats. Populations of invasive species and generalist species, which benefit from reduced competition and open niches as a result of human disturbance, grow rapidly and become dominant species in disturbed sites. Apart from the impact of human disturbance, no edge effect or interaction between edge effect and human disturbance impact was identified in this study. The spatial distribution of terrestrial arthropods in the forest is less affected by the edge effect than by soil profiles, vegetation heterogeneity, canopy openness, forest age, and stand characteristics, which are of less concern in this study. Greater variation in diversity indices of networks closer to residential areas than those further away from residential areas suggests that the impact of human disturbance is less likely to be detected in disturbed sites and is more likely to bias estimates of arthropod diversity at these sites. Greater fluctuations in population dynamics and greater variation in species distributions of different terrestrial arthropod taxa can sometimes be detected in disturbed habitats and forest fragments. Future studies of arthropod diversity under different human disturbance regimes are needed to guide sustainable management of subtropical evergreen forests.

 

Accept manuscript with minor changes:

Lines 390 to 545: to edit according to the journal's propositions

Author Response

Responses to Reviewer 2

Comment 1: Title: The title of your manuscript should be concise, specific and relevant

Response 1: Thank you for pointing this out. We change the title to Local variation in ground arthropod diversity rises as distance to residential areas decreases in a mature evergreen forest for conciseness.

 

Comment 2: Abstract: The abstract was contained in one paragraph. The abstract included: a broad background context and highlighted the purpose of the study, the main method, a summary of the results and conclusions. The abstract objectively presented of the article.

Response 2: Thank you for your comment. We add the result of the effect number of species to the abstract.

 

Comment 3: Keywords: Reduce the number of relevant keywords. Is it necessary to repeat the words that are mentioned in the title of the text?

Response 3: We agree with your comment on reducing redundant keywords. We reduce the number of keywords to 5 and change the redundant ones.

 

Comment 4: Introduction: The introduction briefly defines the purpose of the paper and its significance, defines the current state of the research field with adequately cited publications. The main objective of the work is stated and the main conclusions are highlighted.

Response 4: Thank you for your comments on Introduction. We further improve this section with more literature review.

 

Comment 5: Materials and Methods: The section Materials and methods are detailed and clearly described. This section included Study Area koja uključuje distribution of the pitfall traps set in grids along four 100-m transects (Figure 1), Pitfall Trapping and Diversity Indices (abundance, richness, Shannon’s, Simpson’s, Margalef’s and Pielou’s index). Two analyses were used to confirm whether arthropod diversity was affected by human disturbance and whether variations in arthropod diversity indices were different at different levels of human disturbance. A two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was applied to test if abundance, richness, and each of the four diversity indices of the pitfall traps vary by the distances to the forest edge and the distances to residential areas. The coefficient of variation of abundance, richness, and each of the four diversity indices within each grid was calculated.

Response 5: Thank you for your comments. We add the methods of the effective number of species to this section.

 

Comment 6: Results: The results presented provide a concise and precise description of the experiment from which the following conclusions can be easily drawn. The results are significant and relevant, presented in a well-structured manner, as demonstrated through the following displays: the community composition, which includes a total of 30,616 arthropod individuals from 5 classes, is shown in Table 1 and Figure 2; Variations in diversity indices are shown through heatmaps of abundance, richness and each of the four diversity indices against distances to residential areas and forest edge are shown in Figure 3; Table 2 shows multiple comparisons confirming that traps located 100 m from residential areas show significantly higher diversity and evenness than those located 5 m, 15 m, 50 m and 60 m away; The multiple comparison shows that the CV of the Shannon and the Simpson diversity index and Pielou’s evenness index does not depend on the distance of the of the grids away from residential areas (Figure 4).

Response 6: Thank you for your comments. We add results of the effective number of species to this section, and update Figures 3 and 4.

 

Comment 7: Discussion: The discussion is in accordance with the presented results.

Response 7: Thank you for your comments. We add discussion on the validity of samples and justification for replications.

 

Comment 8: References: The reference list should be edited according to the journal's propositions: abbreviated title of the journal, year of publication in bold, etc.

Response 8: Thank you for mentioning this issue. We edit the reference list with abbreviated titles of journals and years of publication in bold.

 

Comment 9: The language is appropriate and understandable. The topic is compatible with the journal’s scope. Data and analyses presented appropriately. The tables (1 to 2), figures (1 to 4) and Appendix (Table A1 and Figure A1 ) are appropriate, they are clearly presented. This study found that higher levels of disturbance at sites closer to residential areas, such as light, noise, and solid waste, can cause the distribution of endemic species and specialist species to shift from these locations to less disturbed habitats. Populations of invasive species and generalist species, which benefit from reduced competition and open niches as a result of human disturbance, grow rapidly and become dominant species in disturbed sites. Apart from the impact of human disturbance, no edge effect or interaction between edge effect and human disturbance impact was identified in this study. The spatial distribution of terrestrial arthropods in the forest is less affected by the edge effect than by soil profiles, vegetation heterogeneity, canopy openness, forest age, and stand characteristics, which are of less concern in this study. Greater variation in diversity indices of networks closer to residential areas than those further away from residential areas suggests that the impact of human disturbance is less likely to be detected in disturbed sites and is more likely to bias estimates of arthropod diversity at these sites. Greater fluctuations in population dynamics and greater variation in species distributions of different terrestrial arthropod taxa can sometimes be detected in disturbed habitats and forest fragments. Future studies of arthropod diversity under different human disturbance regimes are needed to guide sustainable management of subtropical evergreen forests.

Response 9: Thank you for reviewing the Appendix and summarizing the study. We hope that our revised manuscript is further improved.

 

Comment 10: Accept manuscript with minor changes: Lines 390 to 545: to edit according to the journal's propositions

Response 10: Thank you for your acceptance with the requirements for minor revision. We now edit References in accordance to Diversity’s guidelines.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper "Higher local variation in overwintering ground-dwelling arthropod diversity at sites closer to residential areas in a mature subtropical evergreen forest" is interesting and gave important data about the diversity in urban and periurban forest. Nevetheless, there are some important papers that must be reviewed in order to support the introduction and the analysis of their results. Also, is no clear the identification of morphspecies, with 424 indivuals of springtails, I have doubts about their belong to only one species in all the transect. Also, can be more useful present the diversity index as effective number of species, and authors can be explorer analyzed the beta diversity along the transect. Community composition can be very useful to analize the effect of the urbanization. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Responses to Reviewer 3

Comment 1: The paper "Higher local variation in overwintering ground-dwelling arthropod diversity at sites closer to residential areas in a mature subtropical evergreen forest" is interesting and gave important data about the diversity in urban and periurban forest. Nevetheless, there are some important papers that must be reviewed in order to support the introduction and the analysis of their results.

 

Response 1: Thank you for your comments and suggestions for reviewing more papers to support Introduction and Discussion. We read these papers and add them to the reference list.

 

 

Comment 2: Also, is no clear the identification of morphspecies, with 424 indivuals of springtails, I have doubts about their belong to only one species in all the transect.

 

Response 2: Thank you for your question. One of our corresponding authors, Dr. Yang Zeng, double-checked all the 452 samples of Entomobryomorpha (springtails) preserved in 70% ethanol, and confirmed that each individual belongs to only one Entomobrya species. We also tried to extract DNA from the samples but the concentration of DNA was too low to be used for cloning its COI gene using the PCR technique, which was probably due to DNA degradation after 6 months since collection. For our future studies on arthropod diversity, we would extract DNA of each morphospecies within two weeks since collection and identification, which would allow us to identify these morphospecies using the DNA barcoding technique.

 

 

Comment 3: Also, can be more useful present the diversity index as effective number of species, and authors can be explorer analyzed the beta diversity along the transect. Community composition can be very useful to analize the effect of the urbanization.

 

Response 3: Thank you for your comments on using additional diversity index, i.e., the effective number of species, and considering beta diversity in our study. We repeat the analysis with the effective number of species, and find the same pattern, which is now added to our manuscript. In addition, we compute the Bray-Curtis dissimilarity between each pair of pitfall traps, but there is a high within-grid variation in the Bray-Curtis dissimilarity. For our future studies in this area, we will repeat the sampling by seasons to assess the spatiotemporal beta diversity gradient along the transect, which would be informative for the impact of human disturbance on the community composition of the ground arthropods.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

MS diversity-3586100 review 2

General comments

The authors have adequately addressed the reviewer’s comments and made the corresponding revisions to the manuscript. Therefore, I now consider the manuscript suitable for publication in Diversity, after some minor concerns have been addressed (see detailed comments below).

Abstract

Lines 20-23: Providing details about the exact values of results (e.g., “1.624 vs. 1.345; p = 0.044”, or “by 11.54% – 17.72%” etc.) unnecessarily burdens the abstract. Such details belong in the results section. Here, a concise description of your main findings in words is sufficient.

Lines 28-29: This conclusion lacks impact because it merely reiterates a well-established fact – diversity indices have long been used to assess the effects of human disturbance. Instead, please provide a conclusion that directly reflects the unique insights and implications of your own findings.

Introduction

Lines 97-98: Why did you decide to focus on overwintering arthropods, and what makes them significant in this context? Please provide a brief rationale, explaining their ecological importance and relevance to your study.

Lines 99-100: please add “for” in “… while controlling for the edge effect…”

Materials and methods

Lines 134-135: Unlike most ecological studies on ground-dwelling arthropods, which use pitfall traps for continuous sampling throughout the season to capture variations in activity across different periods, your study focuses exclusively on a 10-day window in October and November. If your objective was to study overwintering arthropods, why did you limit your sampling period instead of extending it throughout the winter, e.g. from October to February? Please include a clear justification for focusing on overwintering arthropods and for using such a limited timeframe in the introduction (see the earlier comment).

Lines 142-143: You are missing the verb in this sentence, please correct.

Lines 172-175: This segment describing the formula would fit better immediately after you first mention Bray-Curtis dissimilarity, e.g. after the line 168.

Line 176: Referring to this metric simply as “richness” is imprecise. You should specify what type of richness you refer to. In this case, I assume it should be termed “morphospecies richness”. While you may use an abbreviation in some parts of the text, the full name should consistently appear, not only when first mentioned but also in all tables and figures. Please correct.

Lines 185-191: The formulas would fit better immediately after the first mention of the indices they refer to, e.g. after the line 179 (see the previous comment).

Results

Lines 232-234: Please simplify and clarify the text describing the grid codes. For instance, first explain that the letters A, B, C and D represent the four transects, followed by the statement that the numbers of the grids (1-3) indicate the distance from residential areas (5-15 m, 50-60 m…). Please correct this in other table and/or figure descriptions as well, if applicable.

Line 251: Please enlarge the codes of the pitfall trap pairs in Figure 3, as they are currently too small to be readable – they appear as tiny red shapes rather than distinguishable letters and numbers.

Line 261: Please write “morphospecies richness” instead of just “richness” (see the earlier comment).

Lines 278-281: This sentence is very unclear – what exactly do the reported percentages represent? Please rewrite the sentence to clearly specify what the percentages indicate.

Line 300: Statistically significant differences between the distances should be clearly reported in the figure, for instance by using different letters (e.g., a and b) to mark the datasets that differ significantly. Statistical significance must be visually represented in the figure to make it immediately understandable, and the name of the statistical test used should be specified in the figure caption. Please correct.

Discussion

Line 313: This brings us back to the question of why you chose to focus exclusively on a 10-day window for this study - would not your results be more reliable if you sampled throughout the entire season? Please provide some justification for this (see earlier comments).

Lines 317-319: This part (reporting the exact values of results etc.) belongs to the results section – in the discussion section you should just briefly mention your key findings and discuss them in the context of previous studies and expert knowledge.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

I recommend that the manuscript be proof-read by a native English speaker, to further enhance the language quality.

Author Response

General comments

The authors have adequately addressed the reviewer’s comments and made the corresponding revisions to the manuscript. Therefore, I now consider the manuscript suitable for publication in Diversity, after some minor concerns have been addressed (see detailed comments below).

 

Abstract

Lines 20-23: Providing details about the exact values of results (e.g., “1.624 vs. 1.345; p = 0.044”, or “by 11.54% – 17.72%” etc.) unnecessarily burdens the abstract. Such details belong in the results section. Here, a concise description of your main findings in words is sufficient.

Response: We delete the statistical details in Abstract to make it clearer and less statistically burdensome.

 

Lines 28-29: This conclusion lacks impact because it merely reiterates a well-established fact – diversity indices have long been used to assess the effects of human disturbance. Instead, please provide a conclusion that directly reflects the unique insights and implications of your own findings.

Response: We rewrite the concluding sentence in Abstract as “We suggest that different aspects of community composition should be studied to assess the effects of human disturbance on ground-dwelling arthropod diversity.” to enhance its importance.

 

Introduction

Lines 97-98: Why did you decide to focus on overwintering arthropods, and what makes them significant in this context? Please provide a brief rationale, explaining their ecological importance and relevance to your study.

Response: We add a sentence emphasizing the ecological roles of overwintering arthropods in subtropical forests to justify our focus on them in this study.

 

Lines 99-100: please add “for” in “… while controlling for the edge effect…”

Response: Thank you for pointing this out. “Controlling for” is indeed our intended use of “control” here. We correct this expression throughout the manuscript in three sentences.

 

Materials and methods

Lines 134-135: Unlike most ecological studies on ground-dwelling arthropods, which use pitfall traps for continuous sampling throughout the season to capture variations in activity across different periods, your study focuses exclusively on a 10-day window in October and November. If your objective was to study overwintering arthropods, why did you limit your sampling period instead of extending it throughout the winter, e.g. from October to February? Please include a clear justification for focusing on overwintering arthropods and for using such a limited timeframe in the introduction (see the earlier comment).

Response: Thank you for raising this concern. We further explain the reason for the single sampling period in this study. The maximum length of consecutive sunny days in December 2024 and January 2025 was less than 5 days, and the study area was closed in February 2025 due to the Spring Festival, which prevented further sampling efforts on the arthropods in this winter. We will conduct further collection in the next winter and early spring to study the temporal variation in our next study. Thank you.

 

Lines 142-143: You are missing the verb in this sentence, please correct.

Response: We notice this issue and correct the sentence with “were set”. Now the sentence is grammatically correct.

 

Lines 172-175: This segment describing the formula would fit better immediately after you first mention Bray-Curtis dissimilarity, e.g. after the line 168.

Response: We change the sequence accordingly. Thank you.

 

Line 176: Referring to this metric simply as “richness” is imprecise. You should specify what type of richness you refer to. In this case, I assume it should be termed “morphospecies richness”. While you may use an abbreviation in some parts of the text, the full name should consistently appear, not only when first mentioned but also in all tables and figures. Please correct.

Response: Thank you for this suggestion. We indeed mean morphospecies richness throughout our manuscript. We change every richness to morphospecies richness to avoid inaccurate use of terms. Thank you.

 

Lines 185-191: The formulas would fit better immediately after the first mention of the indices they refer to, e.g. after the line 179 (see the previous comment).

Response: We change the sequence accordingly.

 

Results

Lines 232-234: Please simplify and clarify the text describing the grid codes. For instance, first explain that the letters A, B, C and D represent the four transects, followed by the statement that the numbers of the grids (1-3) indicate the distance from residential areas (5-15 m, 50-60 m…). Please correct this in other table and/or figure descriptions as well, if applicable.

Response: Thank you for pointing this out. We change the descriptions in Figure 1 and Table 1 to make them clearer.

 

Line 251: Please enlarge the codes of the pitfall trap pairs in Figure 3, as they are currently too small to be readable – they appear as tiny red shapes rather than distinguishable letters and numbers.

Response: We reproduce the Figure 3 with larger letters and clearer legends. Thank you for pointing this out.

 

Line 261: Please write “morphospecies richness” instead of just “richness” (see the earlier comment).

Response: We change every richness to morphospecies richness.

 

Lines 278-281: This sentence is very unclear – what exactly do the reported percentages represent? Please rewrite the sentence to clearly specify what the percentages indicate.

Response: We rewrite the sentence to show the results of coefficient of variation (in percentage) together with the results shown in Figure 5.

 

Line 300: Statistically significant differences between the distances should be clearly reported in the figure, for instance by using different letters (e.g., a and b) to mark the datasets that differ significantly. Statistical significance must be visually represented in the figure to make it immediately understandable, and the name of the statistical test used should be specified in the figure caption. Please correct.

Response: We realize this issue and create the Figure 5 with letters to indicate statistical differences in the figure itself.

 

Discussion

Line 313: This brings us back to the question of why you chose to focus exclusively on a 10-day window for this study - would not your results be more reliable if you sampled throughout the entire season? Please provide some justification for this (see earlier comments).

Response: Thank you for raising this concern. We further explain the reason in Methods, and we add a sentence in Discussion, “despite the unfavorable weather conditions in the subsequent two months and the temporary closure of the study area due to the Spring Festival,”. We will conduct further collection in the next winter and early spring to study the temporal variation in our next study. Thank you.

Lines 317-319: This part (reporting the exact values of results etc.) belongs to the results section – in the discussion section you should just briefly mention your key findings and discuss them in the context of previous studies and expert knowledge.

Response: We move the exact values to Results, and rephrase this part to express our intended meaning. Thank you.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Authors improve the manuscript and follow most of the recomendations made previously. Only a minor corrections must be done

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Comment 1: Better use ± SE in Lines 137, 138, and 140.

Response 1: We change the standard error to ± accordingly. Thank you for pointing this out.