Effect of Near Ultraviolet Radiation on Varroa Destructor Using Digital Holographic Interferometry

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors, 

I believe your work is very important and provides a valuable alternative solution as control strategy on Varroa destructor mite. However, I believe the paper need improvements. Here I will indicate some of them.

1. I consider your work is of multidisciplinary interest. Because of this, your writing and communication must be clear to readers from most different research areas. Thus, when I read your introduction, I felt that the contextualization of your research is somehow vague. For example, in lines 17 to 19, you wrote "Traditional control methods have shown limitations [2-5], prompting the exploration of innovative approaches [2,6,7].". I would like to know why those traditional control methods has not been worked well lately and what are other innovative approaches, in addition to UV technique. As I mentioned, your work is of multidisciplinary interest and, then, it should be most clear as possible to readers from different areas. Please, review your introduction and provide more contextualization to your work. Also, expand your literature review for all of your manuscript.

2. Still considering the multidisciplinary approach, I believe you may include definitions and clarifications about the technical terms you present in the text. For instance, in the 16 to 17, you wrote "The mite not only feeds on the bodliy fluids of adult and developing bees but also acts as vector for various pathogens [1,2]". In order to better understand the challenges on mite control, you may present some arguments about the mite's cicle of life and the general epidemiology of the main diseases associated to this mite. In addition, in lines 37 to 40, you introduced the term "holography", "holograms", and a mathematical expression as equation 1. I believe you may provide to the reader more practical definition of those conceptions, including some conceptual ilustrations and practical exemples. As summary, I suggest you not only present the methodology indicating the technical terms, but also explain clearly what they are and how they will work. 

3. In the same approach of what was suggested to this work's introduction, I also felt the discussion is not strong enough. I believe the discussion of your work may improve if you consider the following questions, in this ordering (each answer would be a paragraph): 

- What was done in this study?

- What are the “novel” here?

- What are the positive points of this research?

- What does the obtained results means?

- What are the contributions?

- What are the limitations?

 

Thank you for attention.

Author Response

Thank you very much for the reviewer’s comments. We reply to each comment point-by-point. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Author, the paper is very interesting, the applied technology is really refined, but to my opinion the experiment is quite limited. The results are interesting, only from a theoretical point of view. I think that in the introduction it should be stated the aim of the study, in a more clear way: to set up a method to observe the micro-effects of a treatment. Instead it seems that the aim is to study the effects of the application of UVA beams, but in a way which is not applicable in practice.

Line 44    2.1.1. Experimental Setup:

comment: in case someone would want to reproduce the experiment, all the specifics (for example the brand) of the instruments used should be added: e.g. the laser beam was generated by which kind of instrument? Which was the brand of the CCD camera? And so on.

Line 54-55: Specimens were carefully mounted and continuously exposed to UVA irradiation.. what does it mean “continuously”? For how long? And mounted in which way? Afterwards: …  with an exposure time of 10 ms..:  please explain why an exposure of 10 minutes was chosen.

Line 62  2.2  Sample Collection:

Please specify how many varroa specimens were collected: it is shown in the figures, but it must be written in the material and methods section as well. Moreover, how many observations were made should be indicated as well.

 

Author Response

Thank you very much for your e-mail and the reviewer’s comments. We reply to each comment point-by-point.

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors, 

Thank you very much for your effort to review your work.

Kind regards,

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Author, the paper is very much improved. I have no observation regarding this last version