Two-Sex Life Table Analysis of the Predator Arma chinensis (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae) and the Prediction of Its Ability to Suppress Populations of Scopula subpunctaria (Lepidoptera: Geometridae)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This article is a preliminary exploration of the biological control of S. subpunctaria with the natural enemy Arma chinensis, which is conducive to the sustainability of pest management in tea plantations. In addition, this research is significant from the perspective of obtaining the fundamental knowledge for the use of A. chinensis to control S. subpunctaria in tea plantations. Still, before publication, I think the author needs to make the following changes to improve the quality of the article.

1)        Lines 28 - 31 of the abstract describe the significance of the study, but I think this sentence could be more concise, so please check and modify it.

2)        The introduction to this manuscript provides sufficient background, but I believe the introduction needs to be made more concise and precise in its language. For example, what is the meaning of the phrase "with localized damage" in line 36, perhaps the description could be expressed in a different way, other than that, there may be other similar descriptions in the introduction, please check and correct.

3)        The manuscript should use 'present tense' in the manuscript, please check the tense of the manuscript and attention to grammatical corrections.

4)        In line 39, the word " states " may be " stages "? and here the authors state "4 insect stages", but in Figure 1 there are 8 prey stages shown, please explain this.

5)        In line 41, " causes " should be " cause ".

6)        line 100, "county" should be "County".

7)        Line 144, "S_xj" for "s_xj" may be more appropriate, please check all occurrences of S_xj in the manuscript.

8)        line 215, the total population of prey or total population of predators? If I assume that it is the total number of prey, then where is the number of predators?

9)        line 231, ", 4th " should be ", and 4th ".

10)    line 238, " females A. chinensis " should be " females of A. chinensis ".

11)    Table 1 gives results for the predator, but it is not clear to me how the mean longevity of all individuals is calculated, please provide an explanation for this.

12)    line 244, " Means " should be " This means ".

13)    line 286, " L5 nymph " should be "and L5 nymph ".

14)    Line 308, need to check the format of "℃" in the article.

15)    line 335, " around 72-74%" should be "at around 72-74%".

16)    line 375, " predators entered " needs to be replaced with " predators which entered ".

17)    In line 465, deleting the word "of" may be more appropriate.

18)    line 476, It may be more appropriate to add the symbol "," after S. subpunctaria.

19)    line 482, " insects’ " needs to be replaced with " insects ".

20)    In line 559, the word " protection " needs to be replaced with " Protection " in the reference.

21)    In line 609, the word "entomology " needs to be replaced with " Entomology " in the reference, please check the spelling of other references in the manuscript. In addition to this, please check the references in the article to make sure that all of them are relevant to this study.

No

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Scopula subpunctaria is one of the most serious pests in tea plantations. Arma chinensis is the natural enemy of S. subpunctaria. The authors investigated the prey efficacy of A. chinensis by the age stage, two-sex life table method, and simulation. Therefore, it is of practical importance to explore the predatory ability of A. chinensis as a biological control agent on S. subpunctaria. Results presented valuable information for an ecological management program for S. subpunctaria. The content of the work is very meaningful. I recommend the manuscript need to be minor revised by authors.

Following, the description of Line(s) is from the agriculture-2411175 PDF file.

（1） lines 17, what do you mean by “wide feeding habit”?

（2） lines 39, the correct one is not “states” but “stages”, I suppose. Would you please reconfirm it?

（3） Line 98-99, while 10% hydromel was used as the diet of 1st A. chinensis nymph (L1) in this study, what feed are you assuming under the tea plantation condition?

（4） Line 107, in this study, what is the reason that you used the 3rd instar of S. subpunctaria? Please explain the reason. Furthermore, are you planning to use other developmental stage samples in future work?

（5） Line 113, the word “Attached” may be better replaced by "attached”.

（6） lines 123-125, I do not understand the sentence “When … supplement” do you mind explaining it?

（7） Line 125, the correct one is not “were” but “was”, I suppose. Would you please reconfirm it

（8） Line 241, Table 1 gives results for the predator, you may need to state that n is the number of live insects that survived at this stage. Please check other tables in the article.

（9） line 244, you say “(100,000 bootstrap samples)” and I suppose “100,000 times” might be more appropriate.

（10） Line 261, the correct one is not “figure” but “Figure”, I suppose. Would you please reconfirm it?

（11） Line 263, the correct one is not “S_xj” but “s_xj”, and please check the use of terms in other parts of the article.

（12） Line 353, the correct one is not “nymph” but “larvae”, and please check the use of terms in other parts of the article.

（13） Line 466, I think “A. chinensis from” may need to be replaced with “A. chinensis was from” more appropriate.

（14） Line 495, because I think there is a logical relationship between these two sentences, therefore, I think “. We” may need to be replaced with “, we”.

（15） Line 571, the correct one is not “andintegrated” but “and integrated”, I suppose.

（16） Line 583, the correct one is not “studybased” but “study based”, and please check the format of other references in the article.

Minor editing of English language required

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors studied the developmental duration and fecundity of S. subpunctaria fed on tea, and A. chinensis fed on 3rd instar S. subpunctaria larvae, under a 25°C and 75% RH. The manuscript is well written for the parts of methods and results, however; literature review (related to the similar study especially on the tested insects) was not provided. The authors should also compare their results with the data in literature. The authors only used the third instar to feed the Arma chinensis and then predicted the population and predation Projections. This only works for this specific instar. Do other instars influence this prediction or not?

Followings are the suggestions:

Explanation of Fig. 1 caption is not clear. The 1 mm is the length of the egg or the original size of the picture? The similar question for the larva.

In Eq. 3, what does f_xj stand for?

Eq. 3 and 10 is the same for both insects. The similarity of Eq. 6 to 12. Please delete these redundant.

Table I, please explain the meaning of n and mean. Specify the statistical method used for the statistical tests and their parameter values. The same comments for Tables 2, 3.

Fig. 3. Put A, B, B. and D inside the figures.

Please specify the conditions used for the population projection such as temperature and relative humidity.

L433 to 438. It is one sentence after [47].

English statement is fine.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf