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  • Sebastião Martins Filho 1,*,
  • Marciel Lelis Duarte 1 and
  • Madelaine Venzon 2

Reviewer 1: Tao Tang Reviewer 2: Anonymous

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Coffee is an importantly economic crop in Brazil. The incidence of main pests including the coffee leaf miner Leucoptera coffeella (Guérin-Mèneville), the coffee berry borer Hypothenemus hampei (Ferrari), the red mite Oligonychus ilicis (McGregor), and so on cause huge losses of hundreds of millions of dollars to this crop. To date, chemical control is still the primary management for these pests on coffee in Brazil. However, synthetic insecticides exhibit negative effects on human health, outbreak of secondary pests, and loss of beneficial insects. Therefore, natural enemies or botanical insecticides have developed into an alternative for the sustainable control of pests on coffee. However, negative effects of botanical insecticides on natural enemies remain unclear. In this study, the authors investigated negative effects of neem-based products at different doses on the green lacewing Chrysoperla externa (Hagen) using the parametric models. They found that the survival curves of Log-logistic for Azamax, Weibull for Organic neem and Log-normal for Natuneem indicated an inverse relationship between increasing doses and survival time. The application dose should be less than 84 mg a.i. L-1 for Azamax, 19.8 mg a.i. L-1 for Organic neem, and 26.3 mg a.i. L-1 for Natuneem to keep 50% of C. externa alive for 13 days. 

In summary, the manuscript was well organized and easy to follow. The methods, results and conclusions were scientifically sound. However, this manuscript has some concerns which needed to be addressed as follows:

Major concerns: 

1. It is very puzzling that the authors didn’t provide some important sections including References, Acknowledgement, Funding, Author Contributions, Conflicts of Interest, and etc. at the end of the manuscript. Consequently, I can’t judge whether all the cited references were relevant to the research and don’t understand other important information about this manuscript.  

2. As for three botanical insecticides tested in this study, I strongly recommended the authors should use the common names of products including the content, active ingredient and the formulation, for example, 1% (or g a.i. L-1) azadirachtin emulsifiable concentrate. In addition, the commercial trade names and brand names of products should be confined to the section of Materials and Methods. Therefore, please check them out throughout the manuscript.

3. Please correct the spelling errors about the unit of mg a.i. L-1 throughout the manuscript.

4. In “2.2. Bioassays”, the authors did not show how many repeats and larvae for each concentration tested they performed?

Minor concerns:

1. As for the title, I suggest the authors should replace “Chrysoperla externa” with “the green lacewing Chrysoperla externa (Hagen)”.

2. In Line 11, delete a space in front of “Predator”.

3. In Line 14, “dose” should be revised as “the application dose”.

4. In Line 20, “Coffea canephora L.” should be corrected as “Coffea canephora Pierre ex Froehner”.

5. In Lines 27-31, the sentence should be revised as “The coffee leaf miner Leucoptera coffeella (Guérin-Mèneville) (Lepidoptera: Lyonetiidae), the coffee berry borer Hypothenemus hampei (Ferrari) (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Scolytinae) [4-6], the red mite Oligonychus ilicis (McGregor) (Acari: Tetranychidae) and scales Coccidae (Coccus viridis Green) and Pseudococcidae (Planococcus citri Risso) [7] are the main pests of coffee in Brazil.”.

6. In Line 40, “green lacewing” should be added in front of “Chrysoperla externa (Hagen)”.

7. In Line 41, “ are” should be revised as “is one of”.

8. In Line 42, delete “the”.

9. In Lines 49 and 55, “g L-1” should be written in superscript as “g L-1”. Please correct the same problem for the rest.

10. In Line 80, replace the south latitude and the west longitude with the north latitude and the east longitude, respectively, according to the convention.

11. In Line 85, “Organic Neem” should be revised as “Organic neem”.

12. In Lines 128-130, the developer information of the software should be provided.

13. In Lines 135-136, 144, 148, as for the use of a full name and its abbreviation, the full name was used firstly, and then its abbreviation was used and kept consistently.

14. In Figures 2-4, the unit should be added behind each concentration tested in the survival curves.

15. In Line 225, delete “(IPM)”.

16. In Lines 230-231, replace “of” with “for”.

Finally, I hope the authors should use these to correct the same problem for the rest.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,
In the attached article, corrections in red were suggested by Reviewer 1. In blue are those suggested by Reviewer 2.

Reviewer 1

Major concerns:

  1. It is very puzzling that the authors didn’t provide some important sections including References, Acknowledgement, Funding, Author Contributions, Conflicts of Interest, and etc. at the end of the manuscript. Consequently, I can’t judge whether all the cited references were relevant to the research and don’t understand other important information about this manuscript.

All these sections were in the original file that was forwarded to the editor. We believe he must have removed them to send to reviewers. They are presented in the attached file.

  1. As for three botanical insecticides tested in this study, I strongly recommended the authors should use the common names of products including the content, active ingredient and the formulation, for example, 1% (or g a.i. L-1) azadirachtin emulsifiable concentrate. In addition, the commercial trade names and brand names of products should be confined to the section of Materials and Methods. Therefore, please check them out throughout the manuscript.

In Brazil, these products' common and commercial names are the same. The azadirachtin emulsifiable concentration for each product and the chemical group has been added to the text.

  1. Please correct the spelling errors about the unit of mg a.i. L-1 throughout the manuscript.

corrected by the authors.

  1. In “2.2. Bioassays”, the authors did not show how many repeats and larvae for each concentration tested they performed?

corrected by the authors.

Minor concerns:

  1. As for the title, I suggest the authors should replace “Chrysoperla externa” with “the green lacewing Chrysoperla externa (Hagen)”.

accepted by the authors.

  1. In Line 11, delete a space in front of “Predator”.

corrected by the authors.

  1. In Line 14, “dose” should be revised as “the application dose”.

corrected by the authors.

  1. In Line 20, “Coffea canephora L.” should be corrected as “Coffea canephora Pierre ex Froehner”.

corrected by the authors.

  1. In Lines 27-31, the sentence should be revised as “The coffee leaf miner Leucoptera coffeella (Guérin-Mèneville) (Lepidoptera: Lyonetiidae), the coffee berry borer Hypothenemus hampei (Ferrari) (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Scolytinae) [4-6], the red mite Oligonychus ilicis (McGregor) (Acari: Tetranychidae) and scales Coccidae (Coccus viridis Green) and Pseudococcidae (Planococcus citri Risso) [7] are the main pests of coffee in Brazil.”.

corrected by the authors.

  1. In Line 40, “green lacewing” should be added in front of “Chrysoperla externa (Hagen)”.

corrected by the authors.

  1. In Line 41, “ are” should be revised as “is one of”.

corrected by the authors.

  1. In Line 42, delete “the”.

corrected by the authors.

  1. In Lines 49 and 55, “g L-1” should be written in superscript as “g L-1”. Please correct the same problem for the rest.

corrected by the authors.

  1. In Line 80, replace the south latitude and the west longitude with the north latitude and the east longitude, respectively, according to the convention.

The study was carried out in Brazil, located in the southern hemisphere and west of the Greenwich meridian. The papers use south latitude and west longitude to report this location.

  1. In Line 85, “Organic Neem” should be revised as “Organic neem”.

corrected by the authors.

  1. In Lines 128-130, the developer information of the software should be provided.

corrected by the authors.

  1. In Lines 135-136, 144, 148, as for the use of a full name and its abbreviation, the full name was used firstly, and then its abbreviation was used and kept consistently.

corrected by the authors.

  1. In Figures 2-4, the unit should be added behind each concentration tested in the survival curves.

When placing the units for each concentration tested in Figures 2-4, they became super polluted, making it difficult to understand, especially when the survival curves are close. Therefore, we preferred to place the unit (mg a.i L-1) in the figure titles.

  1. In Line 225, delete “(IPM)”.

corrected by the authors.

  1. In Lines 230-231, replace “of” with “for”.

corrected by the authors.

Finally, I hope the authors should use these to correct the same problem for the rest.

Thank you very much for the suggested corrections, which improved the article.

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript entitled "Survival analysis of Chrysoperla externa (Neuroptera: Chrysopidae) exposed to neem-based products t he assessment of botanical insecticide on one of the important bio-control agent. The utility of natural control agents can't be ignored in the pest management. The  manuscript is very well written and presented in scientific way. There are certain spellings and formatting issues e.g., the list of references is missing in the text including some more minor issues. All issues have been highlighted in the text for improvement

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear reviewer,
In the attached article, corrections in red were suggested by Reviewer 1. In blue are those suggested by Reviewer 2.

All suggested corrections have been made to the attached file

Thank you very much for the suggested corrections, which improved the article.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have revised the manuscript according to my suggestions and answered these questions point by point. I’m satisfied with almost all revisions they have made, except for their responses to the 2nd and 3rd questions of Major Concerns and the 1st question of Minor Concerns. So I don’t think this manuscript is suitable for publication at present. 

Major concerns: 

1. As for the 2nd question, I don’t think the author fully understand my suggestion. I strongly recommended the authors should use the common names of products including the content, active ingredient and the formulation at first time, and then use the commercial name simply. So, they should added the information of three products in Abstract. In addition, they need to use one method describing the content of products only in Lines 93-98.

2. As for the 3rd question, the spelling errors about the unit of mg a.i. L-1 are still needed to be corrected carefully. For example, in Lines 118-123, 184, 190, 194, 201, 214, 224, 240-241.

Minor concerns:

1. As for 1st question, the authors should replace “Chrysoperla externa” with “the green lacewing, Chrysoperla externa (Hagen)” in Lines 2-3 (the title) and 17 in the revised manuscript.

2. In Line 238, “Chrysoperla externa” should be revised as “C. externa”.

Author Response

We attach the letter point-by-point response to the reviewer.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf