Review History
Tea saponin reduces the damage of Ectropis obliqua to tea crops, and exerts reduced effects on the spiders Ebrechtella tricuspidata and Evarcha albaria compared to chemical insecticides

Final copyedit: L382: "guaranting" should be "guaranteeing"

I'd suggest the authors consider making their title more informative by adding a few words: "Tea saponin reduces the damage of Ectropis obliqua to tea crops, and exerts reduced effects on the spiders Ebrechtella tricuspidata and Evarcha albaria compared to chemical insecticides"

Otherwise, I still find some issues in the language, and one issue of misinterpretation of the findings. Most of these have been introduced in the revision, and a few are issues I missed at the previous read (but note that it is the authors who are to take care of language issues, not the editor)

L99 trails should be “trials”
L101 has should be have
L104 find alternative
L127 a strong lethal effect on the pest E.obliqua, while
L169 larval mortality
L170 unclear what this means “Surviving larvae were used for the following enzyme activity assays in 1 h.”
L184 Spider mortality after 48 h was calculated as: (number of dead spiders / total number of spiders) × 100%.
L206 “, 50% Di EC” by “and 50% Di EC”
L210 delete “and” in “with and three”
L214 correct the sentence: “An untreated control plot which involving application of clean water was simultaneously proceed during the study”. Example: “We also established untreated control plots which involved application of clean water.”
L221 it should be “the spiders were sampled”
L225 canopy should be singular.
L308 not sure “antibiotic” is the right word.
L320 oliqra should be obliqua
L326 this statement is a misrepresentation of the results: “These results indicated that in the laboratory 30% TS had a reduced effect on the two spiders when compared with clean water”
Indeed, it seems from Table 2 that there is no mortality in the control treatments, but 16-20% mortality in the TS treatment. These differences are statistically significant.
365-366 change to “This results in insect paralysis,”
L415 I think the sentences are a bit strange and difficult to understand. Replace “This finding could be a point of view of controlling E. obliqua larvae without the use of chemical insecticides. This approach remains important in controlling the E. obliqua larvae and would” by “Our findings suggests a perspective for controlling E. obliqua larvae without the use of chemical insecticides. Using TS to control E. obliqua larvae would…”

(a) The manuscript has been nicely revised and most of the points have been addressed - with some exceptions that still need to be addressed. One remaining issue is language. One of the reviewers has provided an annotated document highlighting the parts of the manuscript that need language changes, and I detail in the following a long list of other changes that I recommend. A second issue is the lack of detail with respect to the data collection in the field experiment.

L184-185 Please describe the method used to record the spiders. also: How large were the bushes? Can a photograph of the field setup be included? The spiders counts seem to have very low variance (5-7 spiders per plot before treatment), is it possible to give an explanation why this may be so?

L46 I suggest to delete ”a type of voracious worm”, which is very colloquial. The rest of the sentence makes it clear that it is a severe pest.
L50 “indiscriminate uses” by “indiscriminate use”
L55 replace “exert” by “have”
L58 replace “have multiple bioactivities” by “, as well as multiple bioactivities.”
L61 replace “pest management” by “managing pests”
L68-69 delete “their properties, causing”
L70 delete “the” in “TS has the potential”
L72 delete “and presents no harm to the environment”. This is not supported by any literature reference. On the contrary, strong insecticidal activity suggest that there is potential for harm to the environment via effects on non-target organisms.
L73 30% (w/v) TS needs to be put in words first.
L75 Delete “To date,”
L80 Do not start a sentence with “And”. Here, I suggest to just delet and start with “Yang et al. (2017)…”
L84 greater acceptability than what?
L86-87 Better: “Likewise, insects are defended against insecticides via…”
L89 it is not clear exactly what is mean with “identical and similar”. In what respect?
L103 replace “but is not toxic to predators, such as” by “whil. Ebeing non-toxic to predators such as”, and remove the comma after albaria.
L104 Instead of “participates(…) TS assault;”, write “is involved in defending the larvae against TS;”
L105 Replace “and dose(…) plantation” by “does not harm natural enemies in tea plantations”
L244 “In terms of IOBC categories for spiders, treatments of clean water were classified as X, wheras xxxxx were classified as X”
L263 Replace “As predators of the larvae of E. obliqra, E. tricuspidata and E. albaria are easily affected by insecticides and are the important non-target and beneficial species in tea plantation.” By “The beneficials E. tricuspidata and E. albaria are predators of the larvae of E. obliqra, and thereby important non-target species in tea plantation that can easily be affected by insecticides.”
L267 These results indicated that in the laboratory 30% TS had a reduced effect on the two spiders when compared to clean water.
L301 “shown” repeated twice.
L307 move the word “underlying” so that the sentence ends with “seems to be one of the underlying modes of action.”
L314 Capitalize spodoptera and schistocerca
L328 “reduced prey availability”
L339 replace “friendlier” by “less harmless”
L349 “such as spiders”

Raw data: for the field experiment the authors should include the actual raw data at the smallest unit of observation (per bush) if available, as well as the taxonomic information on the spiders collected.

(b) the manuscript cannot be accepted before the language is satisfactory, so I recommend the authors not only act upon the reviewers suggestion and the changes suggested above, but also check through the rest of the manuscript.

(c) on this basis I recommend minor revisions.

The study is an assessment of the impact of a botanical insecticide on an important pest and associated beneficial insects in the lab and the field. It is relevant from both a crop protection and an environmental perspective. Overall, the study has been thoroughly conducted and the methods are appropriate. There are a number of points that the reviewers and myself have found to need improvement.

The English must be revised in the whole manuscript. It is imperative that the authors take care of this before the manuscript can be accepted.

The article is currently lacking some background on the natural enemies of the pest, and whether the two chosen spider species are important for the natural control of the pest. This is key to the framing of the research question.

The reviewers highlight that some information is lacking before one can consider the study as being reproducible.

While adequate controls were included, the controls are not always reported adequately (see comments by reviewer #2).
.
The data on which the conclusions are based must be provided or made available in an acceptable discipline-specific repository. This is not currently the case. Data in tables and figures are secondary data, not primary data.

As for the conclusions, I would like to point out that it is increasingly clear that acute toxicity tests do not reflect the full range of effects of a compound on an organism. The article should include as discussion of the limitations of the approaches used in assessing non-target effects.

Please review the formatting of the reference list and make sure it adheres to the PeerJ format. Currently, this is not the case, for instance, the issue is listed in addition to the volume.

Please take care to carefully respond to the reviewer comments, which contain further valuable points.