Study on the Identification of Habitat Suitability Areas for the Dominant Locust Species Dasyhippus Barbipes in Inner Mongolia
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)
What are the main problems in current research in this field?
Put forward clearly what innovation is in the conclusion.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer:
First of all, I thank the experts for their guidance and help in my paper, I have in accordance with the expert advice to modify the targeted, as follows:
1.It is suggested to supplement the specific problems of this research and the deficiencies of existing research methods in the abstract;
Answer:The specific problems and shortcomings of the research methods in the summary have been supplemented: the existing research methods tend to extract large areas of grassland locusts, which is not conducive to the precise control of large areas of grassland locusts. Starting from the sample points of locust investigation, this paper makes a hierarchical prediction according to the density of locust occurrence, and uses the probability value of locust occurrence predicted by the maximum entropy model to divide the suitable living area according to the probability threshold of suitable species growth.
2. In the introduction, the summary of the previous literature is basically in the form of a list, and is not closely related to the topic of this paper. It is suggested to classify and summarize the literature in a targeted way;
Answer:The literature reviewed is basically about desert locusts. The author did not mention whether it is of reference significance to the grassland studied in this paper and what is the relationship between the two locusts;
Is this research a new research or is it aimed at the deficiencies of existing methods? If it is aimed at the deficiencies of the existing methods, what is the specific?
Reclassify and summarize some documents; The existing locust monitoring research work covers the aspects of grassland locust life cycle monitoring, locust capture and age recognition, and the extraction and monitoring of locust's suitable living area using mechanical learning methods, which provides powerful help for the efficient large-scale monitoring and accurate prevention and control of grassland locusts. This research in this paper is a new research, mainly aimed at the existing methods of grassland locust extraction results are too large, It is not conducive to the precise prevention and control of grassland locusts.
3.Recommendation 2.2 should be incorporated into 2.1 and the title of 2.1 should be modified; Or 2.1.2 is integrated into 2.2 and the title of 2.2 is modified;
Answer: 2.2 has been included in 2.1 and the title of 2.1 has been revised
- It is suggested that section 2.4 should be integrated into 2.3 and section 2.5 should be integrated into 3;
Answer:Section 2.4 has been incorporated into 2.3 and 2.5 into 3.
5. Why is the identification result (Figure 9) not presented in section 3, but in the discussion?
Answer:The extraction results (Figure 9) have been included in Section 3
6. The section 5 should summarize several substantive conclusions and clearly put forward what is the innovation of this article?
Answer:The conclusion part has been added and improved
Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)
the revisions are satisfactory
Author Response
Dear Reviewer:
First of all, I thank the experts for their guidance and help in my paper, I have in accordance with the expert advice to modify the targeted, as follows:
Answer to Experter 2:
(1) A general observation is to avoid using longer sentences in the paper to improve readability.
Answer:well, we have modified it according to your suggestions.
(2) In line 34 “water conservation” is repeated twice. And sentence 39-44 is long and can be broken to two sentences. Lines 91-95, basically is two sentences, so avoid using a semi-colon. Rewrite sentences 96-99 and 139-146. A general grammar check of the entire paper is suggested.
Answer:well, we have modified it according to your suggestions.
(3) Another suggestion is to use proper citation styles when referring to previous studies. Eg. Lines 60 and 64 mention Diego Gomez without years mentioned. The subsequent line 69, mentions papers [19-21] with 21 not belonging to Diego Gomez et al. Similarly, in lines 70-74, the reference to study by Petteri Tallas does not match [13] in bibliography. In line 195, study by Pu Shilong et al is mentioned without proper link to bibliography. There are many other citations in the paper requiring a careful check. Using a reference manager is recommended.
Answer:The references and existing problems of the literature have been rechecked and revised according to your suggestions.
(4) In lines 269-272, please explain clearly what “all the existing points 22,27,22,23 and 23 were selected” means. Does it mean that the initial 41 bioclimatic variables were filtered to those number of variables after the correlation analysis?
Answer:All the existing points 22, 27, 22, 23 and 23 referred to in this paper are the number of these variables filtered through the correlation analysis of the original 41 bioclimatic variables, which correspond to low density, medium and low density, medium and high density, high density, and all the bioclimatic environmental variables of the existing points.
(5) In line 308, “The different sample point models have good repeatability and stability.” How was this conclusion arrived at? was the model repeated over different samples (for example using a bootstrapping technique) to measure repeatability and stability? Please explain.
Answer:"Different sample point models have good repeatability and stability" is the conclusion drawn from the operation results of three sample point data used in this paper. The three sample data are the sample data of all existence points, the sample data with density greater than 15 pieces/m2, and the density stratified sample data. The results show that the AUC values of different sample data sets are above 0.9.
(6)Is the maxent model mentioned in the results section a “presence only” model? Please clarify.
Answer:The maxent model only uses the existence point for operation
(7)In fig. 6 (d), what does the various colours of the bar plot represent? Also, grassland type 2 and 4 are missing (though they are mentioned in the figure caption). Please only discuss grassland types relevant to the study area.
Answer:Red represents the average response of Maxent running for 10 times, blue represents the standard deviation of continuous variables, and the other two colors in Figure 6 (d) represent classification variables, which are used to distinguish from continuous variables.
(8) What do the tables (with suitability values) in fig 6 and fig 7 show, and how were they obtained? Why are they shown in different tables? Are they from different set of analyses/ models? Please explain.
Answer:The tables in Figure 6 and Figure 7 show the vegetation types and land types with high suitability values, which are the results of the operation of the maxent model. The reason why they are displayed in different tables is that different sampling methods produce different results. They all use the same model to express the importance of sample selection.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.doc
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This manuscript studies the suitable habitat of locusts in Inner Mongolia. Overall, it is reasonable and clear. The following suggestions are for the author's reference.
1. It is suggested to supplement the specific problems of this research and the deficiencies of existing research methods in the abstract;
2. In the introduction, the summary of the previous literature is basically in the form of a list, and is not closely related to the topic of this paper. It is suggested to classify and summarize the literature in a targeted way;
The literature reviewed is basically about desert locusts. The author did not mention whether it is of reference significance to the grassland studied in this paper and what is the relationship between the two locusts;
Is this research a new research or is it aimed at the deficiencies of existing methods? If it is aimed at the deficiencies of the existing methods, what is the specific?
3. Recommendation 2.2 should be incorporated into 2.1 and the title of 2.1 should be modified; Or 2.1.2 is integrated into 2.2 and the title of 2.2 is modified;
4. It is suggested that section 2.4 should be integrated into 2.3 and section 2.5 should be integrated into 3;
5. Why is the identification result (Figure 9) not presented in section 3, but in the discussion?
6. The section 5 should summarize several substantive conclusions and clearly put forward what is the innovation of this article?
Author Response
Dear experts, I have revised the paper according to your comments, thank you!
Author Response File: Author Response.doc
Reviewer 2 Report
11) A general observation is to avoid using longer sentences in the paper to improve readability.
22) In line 34 “water conservation” is repeated twice. And sentence 39-44 is long and can be broken to two sentences. Lines 91-95, basically is two sentences, so avoid using a semi-colon. Rewrite sentences 96-99 and 139-146. A general grammar check of the entire paper is suggested.
33) Another suggestion is to use proper citation styles when referring to previous studies. Eg. Lines 60 and 64 mention Diego Gomez without years mentioned. The subsequent line 69, mentions papers [19-21] with 21 not belonging to Diego Gomez et al. Similarly, in lines 70-74, the reference to study by Petteri Tallas does not match [13] in bibliography. In line 195, study by Pu Shilong et al is mentioned without proper link to bibliography. There are many other citations in the paper requiring a careful check. Using a reference manager is recommended.
44) In lines 269-272, please explain clearly what “all the existing points 22,27,22,23 and 23 were selected” means. Does it mean that the initial 41 bioclimatic variables were filtered to those number of variables after the correlation analysis?
55) In line 308, “The different sample point models have good repeatability and stability.” How was this conclusion arrived at? was the model repeated over different samples (for example using a bootstrapping technique) to measure repeatability and stability? Please explain.
66) Is the maxent model mentioned in the results section a “presence only” model? Please clarify.
77) In fig. 6 (d), what does the various colours of the bar plot represent? Also, grassland type 2 and 4 are missing (though they are mentioned in the figure caption). Please only discuss grassland types relevant to the study area.
88) What do the tables (with suitability values) in fig 6 and fig 7 show, and how were they obtained? Why are they shown in different tables? Are they from different set of analyses/ models? Please explain.
Author Response
Dear experts, I have revised the paper according to your comments, thank you!
Author Response File: Author Response.doc
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript has been well revised, but there are still an unsatisfactory parts. That is, this manuscript mainly focuses on grassland locusts, but the introduction focused on desert locusts; What are the differences and connections between the monitoring methods of desert locusts and grassland locusts? There should be transition and connection between the two.
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript has improved as compared to the first version but it now has newer issues because of the editing. It still requires extensive corrections.
Few issues are highlighted below:
1) Lines 72-75 has been repeated in lines 90-93.
2) the citation in 67-68, "Christopher A. Diego Gomez al.Scott1 et al[11]" is improper. They are two different studies and their author names are merged in this instance.
3) in text citation in line 106 is incorrect.
4) the bibliography is incorrectly numbered. So it is difficult to read the paper in context of previous studies. This was also pointed out earlier and the use of a reference manager was suggested. This has not been considered by the authors.
5) Fig. 6d in the earlier version seems to have been removed after issues were flagged. The authors have not mentioned this change in their cover letter. Yet they explain the figure in their cover letter which is confusing.
6) Methods have been incorrectly explained under the results section. for e.g. lines 354-379 are under the results section but it discusses the methodology. Also, the language used is colloquial.
7) Most of the explanations to queries have been addressed in the cover letter only and have not been included the paper.
8) in line 551, Fig.9 has its caption missing and rather includes table 5 without borders. Formatting is required.
