The Effects of Trichoderma Fungi on the Tunneling, Aggregation, and Colony-Initiation Preferences of Black-Winged Subterranean Termites, Odontotermes formosanus (Blattodea: Termitidae)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I think this is a really interesting paper with well designed methods and sound conclusions based on the data. I have made some editorial suggestions in the attachment along with some references in this subject area that may help out the discussion. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We sincerely thank you for valuable comments that significantly improve our manuscript. We carefully went through your comments and revised the manuscript accordingly. We are resubmitting the revised manuscript. Following is the response to your comments. 

Line 49-50: We rewrote the sentence as “Subterranean termites are associated with high pathogen infection risk because of the high moisture environments of the soil they live in, which favor growth of various entomopathogenic microbes”.

Line 52: We changed “showed” to “have shown”.

Line 64: We added taxonomic authority reference at first mention of the species.

Line 73: We added the reference suggested by the reviewer, and listed mechanisms for the antagonistic effects of Trichoderma fungi against plant pathogens.

Line 84: We changed “serious” to “series”.

Line 84: We deleted “the” as suggested by the reviewer.

Line 85: We deleted “the” as suggested by the reviewer.

Line 92: We changed “the” to “a”.

Line 105: We confirmed the species of winded adults tested in this study. We mentioned this as follows:

“Species of winded adults was confirmed based on morphological characters described by Huang et al.”

Line 146: We changed “set” to “conduct”.

Line 236: Yes, this result indicate attraction rather than repellency.

Line 282: Thanks for the valuable comments by the reviewer. We cannot find data on cultural studies on Termitomyces vs. Trichodrma. We believe this would be valuable for future studies.

Line 328: We cited the study conducted by Zoberi and Grace (1990). We also cited a study showed that Trichodrma fungi may positively affect foraging of lower termites. (Mankowski et al. 1998). We think the idea that termite may acquire nutrition such as sterols from Trichodrma fungi would be a valuable direction for future studies.

Line 337: We changed “showed” to “indicate”.

Line 348: Thanks for the valuable comments by the reviewer. We are currently investigating the behavioral and electroantennogram responses of O. formosanus in response to volatiles of Trichoderma fungi to investigate the mechanisms accounting for recognition of Trichoderma. We mentioned this in the revised manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Please see attached PDF with comments.  Carefully read where reviewer has removed words and added new wording.  In some cases reviewer has not added new wording and wants word removed.  Please consider adding two suggested references regarding grooming behavior and effects of T. viride exposed wood fed to Zootermopsis.

Too much use of the word 'the' in the text.  You do need it in most cases and will make writing flow much better.

Experiments are sound and appear reproducible.  This is interesting work.  Hopefully your field projects with this will be successful.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We sincerely thank you for valuable comments that significantly improve our manuscript. We carefully went through your comments and revised the manuscript accordingly. We are resubmitting the revised manuscript. Following is the response to your comments. 

Line 16: We added “in China” after “ plantations and forests ”.

Line 17: We deleted “the” as suggested by the reviewer. We rewrote the sentence as “In a previous study we showed that ...”

Line 20: We deleted “generally ” as suggested by the reviewer.

Line 21: We changed font size as suggested by the reviewer.

Line 22: We deleted “the” as suggested by the reviewer.

Line 25: We changed “paired adults of O. formosanus” to “paired O. formosanus adults”, and deleted “the” as suggested by the reviewer.

Line 26: We deleted “the” as suggested by the reviewer.

Line 27: We deleted “the” as suggested by the reviewer. We added “tested” after “Trichoderma fungi".

Line 28: We changed “activities of” to “activity in”.

Line 29: We deleted “the” as suggested by the reviewer.

Line 31: T. viride did not exert significant attractive or repellent effect on O. formosanus workers in the aggregation-choice test.

Line 33: We rewrote the sentence as suggested by the reviewer.

Line 34: We added “in” after “tunneling”, and deleted “the” as suggested by the reviewer.

Line 41: We deleted “group of” as suggested by the reviewer.

Line 42: We changed “living environments” to “foraging habitat or foraging environment”.

Line 46: We added “with high moisture content” after “rotting wood”.

Line 47: We changed “of them” to “in this group”.

Line 48: We changed the sentence to “... are severe pests of wood in service and living plants”.

Line 49: We changed “high risks of infection” to “pathogen infection risk ”.

Line 50: We changed “because they nest in the moist environment” to “because of the high moisture environment of the soil they live in”, and deleted “the” as suggested by the reviewer.

Line 51: We rewrote the sentence as suggested by the reviewer.

Line 52: We changed “showed ” to “have shown”.

Line 53: We changed “in facing the challenges of pathogens” to “to deal with the challenges pathogens present”, and deleted “for example”.

Line 55: We added authority for all termite and fungi species discussed at first mention in the text.

Line 56: We deleted “the” as suggested by the reviewer, and changed “also” to “some”.

Line 57: We changed “symbiotic microbes” to “symbiotic actinobacteria”.

Line 60: We changed “would trigger the alarming” to “has been shown to trigger alarm responses”, and added the reference suggested by the reviewer.

Line 61: We changed “of” to “in”.

Line 64: We added authority for all termite and fungi species discussed at first mention in the text.

Line 65: We changed “that threaten the safety of water conservancy facilities” to “that can pose a threat to water holding facilities”.

Line 66: We rewrote the sentence as suggested by the reviewer.

Line 67: We changed “the soil” to “ground”.  

Line 68: We rewrote the sentence as suggested by the reviewer.

Line 73: We added “of this termite” after “fungus combs”.

Line 76: We rewrote the sentence as suggested by the reviewer.

Line 78: We changed “that in the” to “in”.

Line 79: We deleted “the” as suggested by the reviewer.

Line 80: We deleted “unknown” as suggested by the reviewer.

Line 86: We added authority at first mention of species.

Line 92: We changed “the repellent agents in the substrate” to “a potential repellent agent for this termite”.

Line 100: We deleted “the” as suggested by the reviewer.

Line 101: We deleted “the” as suggested by the reviewer.

Line 103: We also changed “chase” to “follow or engage in tandem running”.

Line 104: We added “and kept in an environmental chamber setting at 25°C” after “a new container”.

Line 122: We changed “within” to “in”.

Line 136: We deleted “the” as suggested by the reviewer.

Line 137: We added authority after species names in the table.

Line 161: We deleted “the” as suggested by the reviewer.

Line 173: We deleted “the” as suggested by the reviewer.

Line 203: We changed “open” to “opened”.

Line 250: We changed “significantly more proportion” to “a significantly higher proportion”.

Line 251: We deleted “the” as suggested by the reviewer.

Line 252: We changed font size as suggested by the reviewer.

Line 271: We changed “some” to “earlier”, and changed “for” to “to”.

Line 274: We changed “repelled termites” to “have been shown to repel termites”.

Line 277: We deleted “the” as suggested by the reviewer.

Line 282: We changed “study” to “work”, and changed “the commercial formulated” to “commercially formulated”.

Line 285: We changed “performed” to “showed”.

Line 286: We changed “the” to “this”.

Line 287: We deleted “the” as suggested by the reviewer.

Line 290: We changed “reduce” to “reducing”, and changed “to introduce” to “of introducing”.

Line 307: We changed “contribute” to “help”.

Line 309: We changed “also has been” to “has also been”.

Line 311: We deleted “the” as suggested by the reviewer.

Line 315: We changed “responding to” to “in response to”.

Line 318: We added “a” before “strong”.

Line 319: We deleted “the” as suggested by the reviewer.

Line 324: We changed “it is probably” to “it appears”.

Line 325: We deleted “the” as suggested by the reviewer.

Line 327: We deleted “the” as suggested by the reviewer.

Line 331: We deleted “for example” as suggested by the reviewer.

Line 332: We added the reference by Mankowski et al. (1998).

Line 339: We added “currently” before “comparing”, and changed “electroantennography” to “electroantennogram”.

Line 340: We changed “to the” to “ in response to”, and changed “accounted” to “accounting”.

Line 343: We changed “less” to “fewer”, and deleted “the” as suggested by the reviewer.

Line 345: We deleted “the” as suggested by the reviewer, and changed “this result showed that” to “results indicated that”.

Line 346: We deleted “the” as suggested by the reviewer, and changed “of” to “with”.

Line 347: We added “fungi” before “cultured by”.

Line 349: We rewrote the sentence as suggested by the reviewer.

Line 353: We rewrote the sentence as suggested by the reviewer.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx