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Dear Dr. Namyatova,
I am pleased to accept your manuscript for publication in PeerJ! COngratulations on your hard work!
Sincerely,
Daniel Silva
[# PeerJ Staff Note - this decision was reviewed and approved by Jennifer Vonk, a PeerJ Section Editor covering this Section #]
The manuscript addresses an important issue and emphasizes the importance of the climate change effect on the Paleartic plant bug multispecies.
I appreciate the opportunity to read your manuscript. Methods analysis were carried out carefully, reflecting the expertise of the authors.
Finally, I congratulate you on the presentation of results and discussion, and the study of such a relevant topic. In my opinion, the manuscript is ready to be published.
No comment
No comment
No comment
Dear Dr. Namyatova,
After this review round, both reviewers accepted your manuscript! Congratulations. Still, reviewer #1 indicated a potential suggestion of moving some figures to the supplementary materials. Therefore, please consider your manuscript accepted, pending this minor change involving some figures. If you believe this change is impossible, please provide some final argument for your reviewer and the MS will be formally accepted.
Sincerely,
Daniel Silva
The writing is clear and the questions well framed. In a previous version of this manuscript it was difficult to follow the overall story and that has been greatly improved. I comment the authors for putting in this effort. I reviewed the response to reviewers document and feedback has been incorporated. No concerns in this section.
The authors use a variety of techniques, all of which are well described. The data and sources are well described and possible limitations that I thought of were already addressed by the authors. I have nothing further to add here.
The authors have done a good job of clearly describing their models and evaluation techniques. They are clear about limitations of their findings, while at the same time accurately depicting their results. I do not have any concerns in this section.
My only minor comment is on figures 2-5 which all have many panels and are a bit overwhelming to the reader. If possible, it would make it easier for the reader to move the current versions into a supplement and have a reduced set of panels in the main text. For instance, what if figure 2 was just the area plots and the ratio plots were moved? This is a minor point however, and I am satisfied overall with the current version.
The authors made changes and edited the text in accordance with the reviewer's suggestions. I think that after these emendations it is possible to publish the article in its present form.
see section 1.
see section 1.
None
Dear Dr. Namyatova,
The reviewers found the improvements from the previous version to this new one important. Still, there are critical issues involving the written ENglish of your text, along with other structural text issues that hinder me from accepting your manuscript at this time. I really hope that the issues raised by the reviewers are able to allow you to improve the that and make it acceptable for publication in the future.
Sincerely,
Daniel Silva
The article was fundamentally revised and its first part was completely deleted. This change appropriately emphasized the main contribution of the original article. In my opinion, the new version brings new and interesting insights. To assess the content and elaboration of a substantial part of the current version of the article is necessary a review by a specialist in the field of statistics and modeling of temporal changes in the distribution of animals. I attach comments that may increase the comprehensibility of the text to readers interested in ecology and zoogeography of insects. It seems to me that a language revision made by a specialist in the field of computer modeling is necessary.
Abstract
l. 16-17 „the temperature rise“ … „will be beneficial for the species preadapted for the different conditions…“ – logic unclear, please change
l. 20 „inhabiting“ change to „at present inhabiting“
l. 25 – 27 „Maxent“ … – sentence unclear, please change
Throughout:
„preferable climatic condition area“ I suggest to change to „area of preferred climatic conditions“
References
Please, check the journal titles, eg. „Global change biology“ change to „Global Change Biology“
Figures
Please explain the figures in more detail. It is necessary for their accessibility and comprehensibility to a wide audience!
Figure 1. Explain the circle tickmarks, what the solid lines delimiting the regions mean, and what each color means.
Figure 3 Please explain the x-axis labels and the meaning of "rcp26" and "rcp85"
Figures 4, 5 and 6
"Last integlacial" change to "Last interglacial"
Explain what the solid lines delimiting the regions mean, and what each color means. Explain "Future 2070 rcp26 (MPI-ESM-RL)!" and "Future 2070 rcp85 (MPI-ESM-RL)!"
OK - see Basic reporting
OK - see Basic reporting
no comments
Overall, I think that the English language is good, with a few cases where simple edits would make it sound less clunky (i.e. changing “the temperature” to “temperature, lines 23 and 29).
The phrase “climatic condition areas” is used several times in the manuscript, but I don’t think it is ever defined. The first time it is used on line 54 it seems like it is referring to all the climatic factors (i.e. temperature, precipitation, variability in those metrics) affecting species distribution, but on line 83 it comes up when we are talking solely about the effects of temperature on the distribution of species. I recommend defining “climatic condition areas” early in the introduction so it is clearer for the reader.
The abstract presented on page 6 is clearer than the abstract on page 4. I am not sure why two are included in the review PDF.
“ENM” and “Environmental niche model” are used interchangeably for section headers. Either the abbreviation or the full name should be chosen for consistency (i.e. lines 163 and 177 use “ENM” and line 205 uses “Environmental niche model”).
Lines 282-289: I would suggest replacing “confirmed”/”confirm” with “supported”/”support” in this section (i.e. “Our results support that…” in place of “Our results confirm that…”).
Lines 367-371: Spell out what the variables mean instead of using their names from the worldclim dataset.
The sentence starting on line 391: I think that you are referring to the different emissions scenarios (RCP26 and RCP85) here. I agree with the statement, but the sentence should be modified to clarify that you are referring to the emissions scenarios.
Figure 1: Explain that the yellow circles are occurrence records in the figure caption. It might also benefit from a legend showing what the different colors mean on the map.
Figure 3: You might explain that RCP85 is the higher emissions scenario and RCP26 is lower in the figure caption. It helps a reader who is looking at all the figures first to understand the story a little easier.
Figures 4-6: While not necessary, you might consider adding the current projections to the figure to serve as a comparison (helps the readers to compare the different projections to the current condition side-by-side without having to flip or scroll through pages to figure 1).
I thought that the section of the discussion where the authors tie in life history with the most important bioclimatic variables for each species was great.
Not all of the figures included on the PeerJ website are called out in the paper. It was unclear if they will all be included in the final manuscript or added to a supplement. All figure mentions above refer to the figures included at the end of the manuscript PDF.
I have no methodological issue with section 158, but it could be worth mentioning why you tried all combination of variables for your logistic regression models instead of choosing the variables you thought would be most biologically relevant to each of the species in the study (or why you didn’t only use the temperature measurements as predictors, since you are testing whether temperature is the sole predictor of distribution). I’m assuming that there are gaps in our understanding of the life history of each of the three plant bugs which is why all possible models were tested, but it could be worth stating this explicitly for the reader.
Similarly, it could be worth mentioning why all variables in the WorldClim dataset were used in the Maxent models instead of choosing a subset that are biologically relevant to each species and the plants that support them. I take no issue with the approach used in the paper, but other folks working in the ENM/SDM space (especially folks who work with better-studied taxa like large vertebrates who might not know how little is known about many insect species) might wonder why all the bioclimatic variables were used. Same as above, I think that adding one sentence explaining this decision is enough.
Line 423: Omit the word “the” in the section header (“Niche dynamics with respect to temperature change”).
No comment.
The link in line 207 does not work. Maybe part of the URL is missing?
Overall, I found this an interesting read. I was impressed by the scope of the work (the collecting efforts are particularly commendable) and think that the authors did a thorough investigation of the role of climate in shaping the distribution of these three species. All of my suggested revisions are minor.
I find your study very interesting and contributes to understanding the climate change effects on the plant bug species. I include some suggestions that may help improve some aspects of your study.
The modifications made by the authors in the latest version have improved English writing and the structure of the manuscript in general. Although the order of the subtopics on methods, results, and discussion is still confusing. The authors had two objectives for the study. First, it is to test the dynamics of species distribution in temperature fluctuation since the Pleistocene, and second, it is to analyze which climate variables contribute to the species distributions. However, the presentation of methods, results, and discussion does not have this order. This brings me to another point, throughout the manuscript, the authors present other topics not mentioned in the objectives such as the comparison between pairs of species.
I also suggest reviewing all descriptions in the figure captions. I don't think it is necessary to describe the license to use the programs in the subtitles, but the figures should be better described.
In the topic "Variable selection for ENM", you intend to avoid the collinearity of variables. Why perform the models on both Climate Full and Reduce datasets? What is the point of comparing models with variables that are highly correlated and can inflate the models?
The values for the models' evaluation parameters provided in Table S11 are very similar to each other in the two species, which makes it uncertain how the authors chose the best models in these values.
The PCA section is still unclear perhaps the modification of the authors. What is the purpose of using the climate data for the localities of the pair of species if the intention is to differentiate the species?
About the PCA and regression models, if you have the entire potential current distribution of the species from the ENM, why did you not use this data? Why is it best to use the actual distribution rather than the potential distribution in this analysis?
The results and conclusions are very interesting and contribute to understanding how climate variation affects species. However, the study needs some improvements.
Dear Dr. Namyatova,
After this first review round, the reviewers believe the MS is worth of publication, but now improvements are encessary. The main concern is that the reviewers believe your study could be separated in two different manuscripts rather than one. In addition, written English improvements, increase clarity concerning the question addressed, and decrease the number of figures is advisable at this time.
I hope you can implement these changes and grant you the acceptance of the manuscript in its next version.
Sincerely,
Daniel Silva
In this section I think the article needs improvement. The language is sufficient throughout (I have pointed out some typos in the additional comments). The references are also fine. My main concern here is a lack of clarity of the question being addressed. Upon reading the abstract and introduction I was expecting a manuscript about climate change and distributional change in the three study species. This paper certainly addresses this, but much of the methods, results, and figures are also dedicated to differentiation of the three study species. To me this reads like two entirely different studies: one about separating the three species, and another about their climate niche and future changes. My main suggestion would be to split these into two distinct papers. If this is to remain one manuscript, the introduction and abstract should better prepare the reader for both major axes of the research. Additionally, I think there are too many figures (see more information in the additional comments).
My concern raised above crosses into this section as well. The research fits this journal and I do not find any major issues with the analyses presented, but the questions are not well defined. Additionally, since the methods sections presents so many different analyses for different questions, I think additional clarity is needed (see additional comments). One major suggestion here is a short introduction paragraph in the methods to help orient the reader to the information about to be presented.
The research and conclusions presented in regards to the spatial modeling are appropriate.
Line 17: delete “the” before “climate change’s.”
Line 22: delete “the” before “climate”
Line 23: change to “rising temperature”.
Line 24: The sentence beginning with “The climatic variables” can be deleted. It is redundant with what comes after.
Line 71: I would change “with wide distribution” to “with a wide distribution.”
Line 79: Mention the species in this sentence, then when you refer to them at “these species” in the next sentence it makes sense.
Lines 79-91: This entire section could be moved to the methods if desired. To me the jump from the taxonomic problems to “this work aims…” reads better.
Lines 92-98: This would be a good place to expand the introduction to include some information about species identification in your study. The problem has already been introduced in lines 69-78, now you can state that this is a major focus of the study.
Line 144: change to “included.”
Lines 156-157: This part of the methods is outside of my expertise, however if you made modifications to the kit, I find myself asking why? Can you add this information?
Line 185: Over what time span are the samples from?
Lines 200-201: Can you clarify this sentence? Does this mean that you removed records that were closer that 50km to each other (preferring more recent observations)?
Line 228: Can you give a little more information about how the bias file was generated? Is it based on the occurrence points of the actual data being analyzed? Or some closely related or representative group? It seems to me that you would want some larger group to represent bias in sampling, perhaps all Miridae (after excluding your study organisms).
Line 294: It is unclear to me the question be asked and answered with the PCA section. What is the data set on which the ordination is being performed? It seems like climate? What are the species pairs? Also, if it is climate how were these data extracted? Was it using the climate from the point location of the specimen?
Line 314: Again, this section is not fully clear to me. What are the response variables? Are the predictors the bioclim variables?
Line 332: Since a L2 penalty is being used this would classify as a logistic ridge regression? Perhaps this terminology should be used at the start of the paragraph since this is something people are familiar with. Also, please clarify what is meant by species pairs.
Lines 346-349: This could be moved to the introduction as motivation for this study.
Line 441: Okay so here it is clearer that the PCA is based morphological traits. There is clarification needed in the methods as to which variables went into this PCA.
Line 462: By species pair, do you mean you ran three models comparing each pairwise combination of species predicting differences using the climate variables? If so, this should be more clearly stated in the methods section. Also, which variables were selected in one interesting question, however what about the effect sizes? Which have more impact of differentiating the species?
I only have one general comment on the discussion. How do the authors think these distribution changes will interaction with trophic interactions? I am particularly curious if they think these species (being pest species) are not in danger of spatial mismatch with current host plants.
Line 734: Change to: “from temperature changes, however, …”
Figures 1-8: I think there are too many figures in this manuscript, many should be moved to the supplement. I would suggest condensing figures 1-6 into 2 figures that highlight the difference in the species the authors are trying to convey. I think the trees in figures 7 – 9 can be moved to the supplement.
Figure 10: This is finally getting at the stated questions of the manuscript! Please change the y-axis labels to identify what the bioclim variable is (even if abbreviated). Please use a more informative label than “beeswarm plot” (or just remove the title). Please define what a feather value is. Also, please put more description in the figure caption as to what the reader should be getting out of this plot.
Figure 11: Is this important to the story of the paper? This feels like it can be put in the supplement. I would suggest using a more descriptive caption as well. What am I as the reader supposed to get from this?
Figures 14-16: These are the ones that everyone will want to see! For three species this ends up being a lot of plots. Perhaps consider only showing a subset of these for each species and having the full set in the supplement?
see 4,
see 4,
see 4,
Potentially interesting MS, but in need of extensive additions.
The first part is dedicated to the review of three species of Heteroptera (Liocoris tripustulatus, Lygocoris pabulinus, Lygus punctatus). Extensive material was collected in the East Palaearctic region. The review uses morphological, molecular and zoogeographic data and is carefuly prepared and well written.
The second part uses MAXENT, a program that constructs the extent of the area where the species could occur under various climatic conditions using the already established places of occurrence of the species. This issue is interesting. However, the MS completely lacks the text that would formulate the problems to be solved and comment on the results that have been achieved. I suggest adding the missing parts of the text in Material and Methods, Results and Discussion, and in the figure captions.
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