Spatiotemporal Statistics for Analyzing Climatic Conditions Influencing Lymantria dispar Outbreaks
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)
Although the manuscript has passed through several revisions, portions remain where the reviewer suggests improvements at the following lines:
Line 20 “factors were identified”
Line 24 “spongy moth outbreaks may result from particular combinations of variable seasonality in temperature and precipitation, including high temperatures during cold periods and low precipitation during developmental periods.” The reviewer would delete the last sentence of the abstract.
Line 46 “with high precipitation”
Line 103 delete “as a result of the field survey,”
Line 146 “the global distribution was lower than in South Korea in 2020, suggesting that the South Korean temperatures were higher than the conditions to which the species has been adapted.”
Line 153 “2020” The reviewer would delete the last two sentences of this paragraph. They detract from the meaning of the paragraph.
Line 226 “hatched earlier”
Line 233 “Therefore high winter temperature and precipitation when spongy moths begin to develop”
Line 263 “Because Lepidopteran populations are often cyclic, usually with”
Author Response
Please, see the attachment. Thank you for your comments.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)
This is an interesting manuscript that describes the spatiotemporal statistics for analyzing climatic conditions influencing Lymantria dispar outbreaks. There are some comments.
(1) It would be good if the authors can compare or discuss the analysis in this paper with other methods.
(2) Please mention in more detail about the climatic factors as a key factor in the terms of temperature and precipitation during the winter season.
(3) Please discuss about applications of this work toward real world (industrialization view).
(4) It is recommended to double check the format in this manuscript (e.g., typo-errors).
Author Response
Please, see the attachment. Thank you for your comments.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Gypsh moth has changed to spong moth, Other comments are as follows
- The focus of the article is not clear，I can't understand what the author is really trying to solve.
The title and abstract of the article clearly indicate that the purpose of the study is to explore the relationship between the outbreak of gypsy moth and climate. However, there are many chaotic phenomena in the article, such as “outbreaks ”and“ occurrence ”: the author seems to think that these two words represent the same meaning. Besides, “Gypsy moths were not observed ”and“where gypsy moth outbreaks were not reported. ” The author does not seem to understand the differences between these concepts. The author seems to believe that no outbreak is no occurrence. It is not clear whether the purpose of the manuscript is to explore the relationship between the outbreak of gypsy moth and climate or the relationship between the occurrence of gypsy moth and climate. Examples are as follows：
â‘ In field survey,“We also surveyed additional sites where gypsy moth outbreaks were not reported in 2020 to compare the environmental characteristics of areas with gypsy moth occurrence and non-occurrence”.This sentence is ambiguous. The author misunderstood "no outbreak" as "non-occurrence", but even if the gypsy moth did not outbreak, it may occur at low density in reality. So the author confuses the two concepts, correspondingly, the selected survey location is also inaccurate.
â‘¡ Figure 1b is illustrated as the low gypsy moth density, but it is described as gypsy moth non-occurrence in the corresponding article, .
In summary, the authors have confused the meanings of these terms, so the fieldwork experiments carried out in this case are not comparative.
- There are two flaws in the experimental design of the field survey:
â‘ The field survey area selected in 2021 was the area with high and low density of gypsy moth in 2020, but the occurrence of gypsy moth in these five areas in 2021 was not explained. According to the description of the article, South Korea experienced an outbreak of gypsy moth in 2020, but no outbreak of gypsy moth in 2021. It is assumed that the population density data for 2020 are missing. However, it is useless to replace the 2020 data with the 2021 population density data for analysis. And the manuscript does not show the population density data from the field survey.
â‘¡The authors selected three high-density occurrence areas and two low-density occurrence areas to explore whether there were significant differences in climatic factors in different regions so as to speculate the relationship between the outbreak of gypsy moth and climatic factors. However, one situation was overlooked in the selection of the occurrence area: due to the geographical differences between the selected places, the differences in climatic factors such as temperature and humidity are obvious. There is no evidence that the difference in climate between the places is responsible for the high-density gypsy moth outbreaks.
- The title order of the article is repeated.
pls see 2.2,2.3,2.4.
Suggestion
Given the periodicity of pest outbreaks, it is recommended to select the same site for consecutive annual observations and correlate with climatic factors to study the relationship between outbreaks and environmental factors. It does not make sense to use spatial scales instead of time scales in this paper.
Author Response
Thank you for your valuable comments. We attempted to answer for each comment, and revised the manuscript as best as we can. Please, see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The topic of cycles in pest insect populations is very important. This manuscript addresses the topic from a limited perspective, and in this case may be correct in its assessment. However, the full topic of L. dispar cycles is more complicated. It may be worthwhile for the authors to address the full topic peripherally and then explain the specific task that was addressed, so as not to confuse readers who otherwise might expect more coverage. In addition, the reviewer has suggestions at the following lines:
First, the common name of Lymantria dispar has been changed recently from gypsy moth to spongy moth. Please change throughout the manuscript.
Line 21 Monthly temperature does not seem like a “climatic factor” unless the months are compared over several years. Comparisons within a year are more likely to be considered a weather factor, especially if they cover less than a full season. In many cases where the authors refer to climatic factors, they possibly mean weather factors.
Line 56 Given the effects of previous December precipitation and the previous July minimum temperature noted by Williams and Liebhold [8], wouldn’t it have been useful also to consider the domestic weather in 2019? The reviewer suspects that the authors could easily include lag effects from months in previous years in their analyses. Indeed, it would be worthwhile to consider other aspects of the Moran effect, which was first described in 1953. Surprisingly the authors never refer to the Moran effect. Another factor that was not mentioned is the tree species composition of the forests and the differences in the susceptibility of different tree species to L. dispar defoliation, which appears to change the timing of outbreak cycles (Johnson et al. Ecography 29, 367, 2006). Tree species could have been addressed at line 90.
Line 143 “similar to that of 2020”
Line 181 Tables 1-2 are difficult to read and interpret. What do the a and b’s mean? Is month the best way to spread out the temperature variation? Seasonal temper possibly is a better factor to work with than monthly. Was season compared in the authors’ analyses?
Line 185 In general, the reviewer suspects that the Liebhold et al. 2000 [24] review is closer to the correct interpretation in general than the authors interpretation, i.e., that multitrophic relationships exist among acorn production, moth predators, and L. dispar populations. The authors would be wise to acknowledge that possibility if oak trees or another species preferred by L. dispar are a significant part of the forests in which outbreaks occurred. The reviewer agrees, however, in the specific example of one year in South Korea, the difference in the weather between the northern and southern region probably contributed to the result that an outbreak occurred in the north but not in the south.
Line 213 “Therefore, winter temperature and high precipitation”
Line 223 “conclusive” probably should be “likely”
Author Response
Thank you for your valuable comments. We attempted to answer for each comment, and revised the manuscript as best as we can. Please, see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
I carefully read the manuscript of Song et al., titled “Spatiotemporal statistics for analyzing climatic conditions influencing Lymantria dispar asiatica outbreaks”. The authors presented interesting research on the effect of weather indices on the spongy moth population dynamics in Korea. Despite the tremendous work that the authors invest in this research and some very interesting results, there are some weak points that have to be improved.
There is no data about the population density in 2020 and 2021 for both, high- and low-density locations? Also, data from previous years are very welcome and necessary to explain when the spongy moth outbreak started. Outbreaks are usually lasting for several years and provided climatic data, first of all, the higher precipitation in 2021, can eventually explain the crash of an outbreak in Korea, but does not provide information about the condition that cause an outbreak, and what was the authors' ambition. Therefore, some changes in the title will be welcome. Word "outbreak" should be replaced by the phrase {population dynamics". In addition, it would be worth it if the authors are able to determine what was the cause of the population decline from the collected spongy moth samples, parasitoids, NPV, pathogenic fungi, or just unsuitable weather conditions.
There is no information on whether spongy moth occurrence data were exclusively restricted to the global climate data span 1970-2000. Data on spongy moth occurrence after 2000 should be excluded from the dataset.
Weather data in the current year can be linked with changes in the spongy moth population dynamics only.
Statistical differences in climatic data among locations with high and low population density are obvious in some months, but not detrimental to the observed differences in population density. For example, how precipitation in February can affect spongy moths while they are in the stage of the egg. How these data are relevant for spongy moth biology!? Did they already hatch!? Therefore, It would be very illustrative and extremely helpful, if the authors provide a timetable with all developmental stages for the spongy moth in Korea at least as support material.
Finally, It is hard to make any conclusion about the cause of the outbreak based on the only six sites after two years of investigation.
Other comments and suggestions are given in the attached file.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Thank you for your valuable comments. We attempted to answer for each comment, and revised the manuscript as best as we can. Please, see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors addressed most of the concerns of the reviewer However, there still remain some grammatical and spelling issues at the following lines:
Line 15 “occurred in part of South Korea in 2020”
In Fig 2, “precipation” should be precipitation. Also the vertical and horizontal scales should be labeled.
Line 195 “alphabets” should be “letters”
Line 197 “In previous studies, the times of spongy moth outbreaks have been studied in relation to different environmental factors, of which climate has been shown to be dominant (27). Consequently, spatiotemporal analyses of field surveys and weather factors between 2019 and 2021 were conducted in this study to consider weather factors preceding the outbreak in 2020 that were different from those preceding the non-outbreak years of 2019 and 2021. Global and domestic climate factors were not found to significantly favor the outbreak in 2020. However, ”
Author Response
Thank you for your comments. We answered all of your comments in the attached file.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors definitely improved the manuscript carefully following the suggestions concerning both major and minor issues. They provided important explanations to the major concerns that were indicated about methodological approaches and other contents and they fixed formal aspects and misprints. The manuscript results are now more readable and ordered and return information and results in a more clear and correct way.
Author Response
Thank you for your comments. Please, see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
