Floral Diversity Shapes Herbivore Colonization, Natural Enemy Performance, and Economic Returns in Cauliflower

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript is important and deserves to be published, however, there are some improvements, especially to make the text clearer and avoid doubts that needs to be performed before it being ready to be accepted. Also, the format of the tables and the title need to be improved. Please, follow the detailed comments made in the pdf in the attachment. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The quality of the English seems average to me. Some suggestions were done in the text but a review of final text by an specialist will also be helpful.

Author Response

Comment 1: Too long title what makes it not attractive. Please reduce it at least 50%         

Response 1: Complied with. As per the suggestion, the title is reduced without compromising the meaning of the text.

Comment 2: Despite a nice piece of information, it is not related to the topic of your manuscript, which is pest! Then 1 sentence expressing the global importance of Cauliflower is enough and, then, go straight to the topic of your manuscript - pests!mAlso, please, do not forget to include a reference to support the first sentence expressing the importance of Cauliflower!     

Response 2: We thank the anonymous reviewer for the suggestions. As per the suggestions, we removed the information.

Comment 3:1) if possible add a figure (% of yield reduction for example) that can be triggered by the outbreaks of such pests if not properly managed to illustrate better the financial losses caused by those pests. 2) Do not forget to add a reference at the end of this sentence to support this statement that those pests cause significant losses for farmers!        

Response 3: As per the suggestions, we have included the percent yield losses due to major insects were added in the text. Further supporting references were added.

Comment 4: It was mentioned without abbreviation only in the abstract. I suggest mentioning without abbreviation also in the first time it appears in the manuscript starting from the introduction and only after then start abbreviating. There are readers that start reading the paper from the abstract but there are readers of the paper that start direct in the introduction. It makes Abstract and text two things almost independent in understanding.        

Response 4: Suggestions, well taken. While using the scientific names for the first instances, I have given without abbreviations and also authority given with it.

Comment 5: In this case you can be more specific and replace "pesticides" for "insecticides"

Response 5: Complied with.

Comment 6: It is important to add at least one reference at the end of this sentence to support this statement!         

Response 6: Complied with.

Comment 7: I see more often the use of "major" or "key pests" than "troublesome pests". However, I have English as a second language and can not say for sure if this collocation is appropriated of not for a scientific paper. Please, double check it if the use of this adjective is appropriated and maybe consider changing for the use of key or major pests.          

Response 7: Suggestions, well taken. The term troublesome pest, replaced with “key pest”

Comment 8: Pest management approach of cauliflower pests?     

Response 8: As per the suggestions, sentences rephrased.

Comment 9: I did not understand why authors are starting the common names of the crops with capital letter. I suggest changing for "candytuft" 

Response 9: Suggestions, well taken. As per the suggestions. The starting letter of flower crop, written in small letter.

Comment 10: Which are the treatments and replications? There are 5 flour plants mentioned with a control of only cauliflower would make 6 treatments. Also the replication is not clear. It was mentioned later the plot size of each treatment. What about the replication size? Pseudo-replicates were used inside the treatment plots? 5 m x 5 m is a big enough size for a whole treatment?? Please make those points clearer and edit the text accordingly!  

Response 10: The sixth treatment involved a flower mix, with ten plants of each flower species grown together within a single plot. The plot size of each replication was 5×5 m, hence the total area of replicated trial was 15×15 m.

Comment 11: Add the reference or references or those practices are described!

Response 11: Complied with

Comment 12: I am not sure if a picture like this or a drawing were distances, names of plants, treatments and other details are added is not more useful for the scientific purpose of understating the layout of the experiment. I personally prefer the drawing and believe it is more useful for the readers and, therefore, suggest such change.

Response 12: We totally agree with the reviewer. As per the suggestions, drawing was made and replaced.

Comment 13: It was not clear for me if the observations were destructive or not if any kind of collected plants or insects were taken to the laboratory and how identification of the species can be precise only observing the insects? I suggest authors to add more details in this subsection considering my points mentioned to avoid doubts.

Response 13: We followed non-destructive sampling methods, and observations were made on visual counts. Only in the instances, where the parasitized mummies or larvae were collected during weekly observations.

Comment 14: Only abbreviate if it was already mentioned in the text without abbreviation considering my previous suggestion that abstract and text starting from introduction are independently formatted.

Response 14: Totally agreed and suggestions were followed throughout the manuscript.

Comment 15: Please avoid at the last version of the text a title starting at the end of the page without a single line still in the same page.            

Response 15: Complied with.

Comment 16: consider my previous comment about abbreviation of the genus       

Response 16: Complied with.

Comment 17: Why seven treatments as asked before?      

Response 17: The experiments consists of seven treatments five flower crops, flower mix as sixth treatment. The seventh includes control.

Comment 18: Confusing here the species studied? Cheilomenes sexmaculata or C. septempunctata?

Response 18: Thank you for the critical comments, it was suitably addressed.

Comment 19: I suggest making this text a subsection of 1.2. For me it should be 1.2.1 Indentification .... and comes at the end of subsection 1.2 before.            

Response 19: Complied with.

Comment 20: No references are mentioned in this subsection????              

Response 20: Reference given.

Comment 21: Format of tables can be improved. tables should have only horizontal lines. Also tables and figures should not be broken in 2 pages.

Response 21: Complied with.

Comment 22: Tables and figures should have independent understanding from the text. Then, here it can not be abbreviated. 

Response 22: Complied with.

Comment 23: where is the seven treatments? This should be clarified in the text.

Response 23: We have not considered control plot for the analysis.

Comment 24: why those values are only given for marigold? What about the other flowers? Maybe a foot note could be added to explain it better in the table.

Response 24: We got the  single “r” value, for all the analysis 

Comment 25: Make the lines different. For example formed with points and continuous. it help the ones who print black and white the manuscript. Also between parentheses indicate which equation is for protein and which one is for total sugar. The use of * and ^2 can be replaced by x and 2 which will be more appropriate. It is not an excel formula here          

Response 25: The figure is output files, hence we could not make the suggested changes. 

Comment 26: Make the font size in the picture bigger, it is too small and, therefore, difficult to read. The treatments were not statistically compared? are the treatments different or not in the different crop seasons?   

Response 26: We thank the reviewer for the comments, we have made necessary changes.

Comment 27: why a statistical treatment was not given to those results?? Table can be better formated as mentioned for other tables before!

Response 27: Complied with.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

Thank you for the opportunity to review your manuscript. My review report, as well as specific comments and suggestions directly annotated within your manuscript, can be found in the attached file.

I hope these comments will help you further strengthen your work.

Best regards.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Comment 1: Consider simplifying or specifying it further. It is quite long. For instance, “Exploring the economic impact of floral diversification on pest and natural enemy dynamics in cauliflower” could be one option.        

Response 1: Complied with. As per the suggestion, the title is reduced without compromising the meaning of the text.

Comment 2: It looks like an error that C. sexmaculata and C. vestalis share the same accession number. Please correct this and consider removing accession numbers from the abstract entirely (the species names alone are sufficient for the broad audience; accession IDs can be given in the main text or a footnote if needed).              

Response 2: Thank you for the suggestions, as per the suggestions, we have removed from the abstract.

Comment 3: Currently you have “Ecological engineering; Habitat manipulation; Intercropping systems; Plutella xylostella; Total sugar…”. Perhaps replace a less informative term (e.g. “Total sugar”) with “biological control” or “natural enemies” which are central to the study.  

Response 3: Thank you for the suggestions, as per the suggestions, we have removed the “Total sugar” and replaced with “biological control”

Comment 4: The last paragraph should clearly state the hypothesis or expectation- e.g., “we hypothesized that floral intercropping would reduce pest colonization by interfering with host-finding and by enhancing natural enemy populations, leading to improved cauliflower yield and profitability.” This helps frame the subsequent sections.             

Response 4: Thank you for the suggestions, as per the suggestions, the sentence was rephrased.

Comment 5: Clarify how frequently and when observations were taken (you mention weekly intervals and “benchmark >30 aphids/plant for damage incidence” – interesting criterion, perhaps explain why 30). Also clarify how natural enemies were sampled: you mention visual counts and yellow pan traps – were the pan traps data used quantitatively or just for species identification? It sounds like primarily observational counts were used for analysis, with pan traps to catch flying insects. If so, state that clearly. 

Response 5: Thank you for the suggestions, the visual count was used for intercropping analysis, while yellow pan trap data used for estimating biodiversity indices.

Comment 6: Add a sentence about the experimental setup (e.g., adult lady beetles were confined with access to specific fresh flowers vs. a control (no food) and their survival monitored; how many replicates? Was this in lab conditions?). Also mention how total sugar and protein in flowers were measured (which you did via some assays – presumably Anthrone method for sugars and Bradford for protein, given the references 19 and 20). Indeed, you cite Dubois et al. (1956) and Bradford (1976) in the references, so include a line: “Flower samples were analyzed for total soluble sugars (phenol-sulfuric acid method) and total proteins (Bradford method) to correlate with predator longevity.”. This will connect the methods to the data in Table 10.

Response 6: Thank you for the critical comments, as per the suggestions, the changes were made in the manuscript.

Comment 7: Mention the software (it appears WASP (Web Agri Stat Package) was used – listed in abbreviations). Provide references or URLs for any software. Indicate the significance level and any post-hoc tests: e.g., you denote letters in tables for significance – presumably from an ANOVA Tukey’s test or similar; state this.              

Response 7: Complied with.

Comment 8: Specify that the diversity indices are Shannon, Simpson, etc., and that they refer to insect community diversity in each treatment at a certain date. It’s a bit unusual that Table 9 only shows one time point (second week of March) for each season – if that was the final sampling, state it. Also, the Shannon index values in 2021–22 seem lower in some intercrops than control (e.g., candytuft 1.316 vs control 1.113 – actually higher; but cineraria 1.131 is about the same as control). You did mention in text that marigold had highest Shannon in 2021–22, which matches 1.896 in table. Just ensure the interpretation is accurate: discuss why some intercrops had lower diversity (perhaps dominance of one species?).           

Response 8: The peak activity data used for estimating biodiversity indices, while in other weeks the count used for identification of beneficial insect groups. The cineraria has more foliage and bit late in flowering, which might have attributed for similar Shannon index.

Comment 9: The caption currently is “Effect of flower intercropping on mean cauliflower head weight (g) per plant.” This is clear. Add symbols or letters for significance if applicable (e.g., if certain bars differ significantly). It might also be helpful to indicate which bars correspond to which treatments (likely labeled on x-axis).

Response 9: Complied with.

Comment 10: Avoid very long paragraphs – consider splitting the discussion into a few focused paragraphs (e.g., one on pest incidence reduction via diversity, another on natural enemy enhancement, another on hyperparasitoids, and another on yield / economic outcomes).  

Response 10: Complied with.

Comment 11: For example, it’s not explicitly stated whether the two seasons’ data were combined or analyzed separately – from the results, it appears each year was analyzed independently (ANOVAs per year in Tables 1–2, with “mean data of both years” only discussed qualitatively). The authors should clarify their statistical approach: was there any combined analysis or testing for a year effect? Given the four-year gap between trials, differences in pest pressure are evident (e.g., aphid numbers in 2021–22 were much higher than in 2017–18). It would strengthen the paper to discuss how seasonal variation was handled.   

Response 11: Complied with, as per the suggestions. The mean data used for the analysis, Due to low pest count and corona pandemic, the trail was postponed to 2021-22.

Comment 12: The manuscript contains a large number of tables and some figures. While the data are valuable, the presentation could be made more reader-friendly by consolidating or moving some details to the Supplementary Material. For example, Tables 3–8 present regression coefficient outputs for each pest in each year; six tables of regression data interrupt the flow of the Results. Consider summarizing these in the text or a smaller number of tables/figures, or move the full regression tables to the supplement. The key findings (which factors had significant effects on each pest) can be described without listing every coefficient in the main paper. Similarly, Table 9 (diversity indices) and Table 10 (ladybird longevity on flowers) are interesting side findings; they can stay, but ensure they are necessary for the main narrative. If not, they could be supplementary. Currently, the sheer volume of results (11 tables in the main text, plus many more in the Supplement) is overwhelming. Reducing non-essential tables in the main text will improve readability. In summary, scrutinize each table/figure for necessity: could some information be combined or presented more succinctly? The goal should be to streamline the results while still providing access to the full data (which the Supplement already does for weekly observations, etc.). This will greatly help readers focus on the most important findings. 

Response 12: I totally agree with the reviewer, as per the suggestions, Coefficients, Std. Err., P>t., are important to present our data, while t-statistic (t) is redundant; not usually interpreted directly, hence removed. While, 95% Confidence Interval despite useful, but often redundant, hence both values removed.

Comment 13: While the study is valuable and largely well-executed, I recommend major revisions before acceptance. The revisions should address the clarity of methods (especially the statistical modeling), streamline the presentation of the extensive results, and correct various formatting/grammatical issues. If the authors make these improvements, the manuscript could be suitable for publication in Horticulturae. At present, significant changes are needed to meet the journal’s standards and to enhance readability.    

Response 13: We are thankful to the critical suggestions of the reviewer, we have addressed most of the comments suggested by the reviewer.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This manuscript focuses on the identification of insect species associated with cauliflower intercropped with various flower crops. Throughout the crop growth period, systematic insect sampling was conducted to detect the presence of pests, predators, and parasitoids. Additionally, the study evaluates the return on investment of intercropping systems compared to monocropped cauliflower. In general the document is well written and its content is interesting. 

I have some suggestions:

1. Add the authority name for each species the first time it is mentioned in the text. Subsequently, use the genus abbreviation and species epithet. Do this to all insect and plant species names.

2. Line 120–121: Please check the missing spaces (e.g., "77°09" and "228.61m").

3. Line 144: Include the abbreviation "IS" after the first mention of "intercropping system".

4. Line 162: Please indicate the reference or composition of Hoagland’s medium.

5. Line 167: Indicate the trademark or manufacturer of the glucose used as a standard.

6. Line 168: Please write whether the Bradford reagent was prepared in the laboratory or purchased; if purchased, mention the trademark.

7. Line 169: Usually the abbreviation BSA, means Bovine Serum Albumin.

8. Line 169: The abbreviation (BSA) is unnecessary, as it is not used later in the text.

9. Figure 2: I recommend adding a reference scale line to facilitate flower size comparison.

10. Line 222: Please explain the abbreviation DBM (diamondback moth) in the text.

11. Line 230: Use C. instead of writing Coccinella in full.

12. Line 232: Use C. instead of Cheilomenes.

13. Line 236: Change "sp" to "sp." (the period is required).

14. Line 239: Use D. instead of Diaeretiella.

15. Line 244: Use P. instead of Plutella, or use the previously defined abbreviation DBM.

16. Line 247: The correct name of the species is likely Bagrada hilaris Burmeister.

17. Line 247: Change "are" to "were".

18. Line 251: Use only the abbreviation IS; delete the repeated phrase "intercropping system".

19. Line 262: Use C. instead of Cotesia, and D. instead of Diaeretiella.

20. Table 1: DBM was not previously explained; please define the abbreviation.

21. Line 296: Use "flower mix" instead of "mix of flowers", as in the tables. Check this throughout the text.

22. Line 332: Correct the formatting of "sp.".

23. Line 333: Add the authority name of Dinocampus coccinellae.

24. Line 334: Add the authority name of Pachyneuron aphidis.

25. Lines 377–397: These results are not clearly related with the methodology section.

26. Table 11: These data do not appear to be related to methodology. Clarify how they were obtained.

27. Line 425: Use C. instead of Calendula.

28. Lines 454 and 457: Use IS instead of repeating "intercropping system".

29. Line 463: Eliminate the abbreviation (HIPVs), as it is not used later in the text.

30. Line 469: Use IS instead of "intercropping systems".

31. Lines 476–479: The text beginning with “Further, up to 7.96:1...” seems to report results. Consider removing it to improve the conclusion.

Author Response

Comment 1: Add the authority name for each species the first time it is mentioned in the text. Subsequently, use the genus abbreviation and species epithet. Do this to all insect and plant species names. 

Response 1: Complied with.

Comment 2: Please check the missing spaces (e.g., "77°09" and "228.61m")             

Response 2: Complied with.

Comment 3: Include the abbreviation "IS" after the first mention of "intercropping system".             

Response 3: Complied with.

Comment 4: Please indicate the reference or composition of Hoagland’s medium.

Response 4: Complied with.

Comment 5: Indicate the trademark or manufacturer of the glucose used as a standard.     

Response 5: Complied with.

Comment 6: Please write whether the Bradford reagent was prepared in the laboratory or purchased; if purchased, mention the trademark.      

Response 6: It was prepared in the laboratory

Comment 7: Usually the abbreviation BSA, means Bovine Serum Albumin  

Response 7: We are sorry for our ignorance, we have corrected it.

Comment 8: Please explain the abbreviation DBM (diamondback moth) in the text.              

Response 8: Complied with.

Comment 9: Other minor changes suggested by reviewer

Response 9: Complied with.

Comment 10: Use "flower mix" instead of "mix of flowers", as in the tables. Check this throughout the text.      

Response 10: Complied with.

Comment 11: Add the authority name of Dinocampus coccinellae.              

Response 11: Complied with.

Comment 12: dd the authority name of Pachyneuron aphidis.        

Response 12: Complied with.

Comment 13: These results are not clearly related with the methodology section. 

Response 13: We made attempt to link with the M&M section

Comment 14: These data do not appear to be related to methodology. Clarify how they were obtained.            

Response 14: The methodology for recording yield and BC ratio calculation was given in the M&M section.

Comment 15: Eliminate the abbreviation (HIPVs), as it is not used later in the text. 

Response 15: Complied with.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf