Silica and Selenium Nanoparticles Attract or Repel Scale Insects by Altering Physicochemical Leaf Traits

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The reviewer noticed some minor typo in the manuscript. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment for our answers to your comments. Thank you.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I find the manuscript interesting but unfortunately not suitable for publication in this form. Manuscritp requires major reconstruction and repetition of the experiment with improved method. 

1. SiO2 as authors called it "bulk-size silica" is not soluble in water. It is also unavailable in that form for plants. Adding Si to water does not result in SiO2 [Method]. Experiment need to be repeated. 

2. Abstract: It refers to the title of the manuscript but from Key words and later from the text the reader finds out that authors where measuring morpholgical features of the insects. This information, as well as results, should be included in the abstract.

3. Too many key words, some irrelevant such as: "preference"

4. Introduction

Lines 58-63: very general knowledge and still no citation. This short paragraph about Si may justify the authors little understanding in Si availability to plants.

Lines 71 -77: Too many hypothessi. The 3rd hypothessi is incorrect. 

5. Results:

This section lacks consistency. Structure has not been preserved - please check comments in the attached pdf. file. 

Figure 2 and 4 : the authors measured different control for each treatment - in reality the expermient lacks the control (sample with no treatment).

6. Materials and methods: 

It is impossible to perform this experminet basing on the provided methods, very basic information are missing, among others:

-  age of trees

- lenght of the expermient, season in the year, light intensity

- how many times trees were sprayed, 

- what amount of the liquid was applied to the leaves?

- how come each treatment has different control?

- if authors preapred "bulk Si" why there is no " bulk Se" for better comparison?

- how did authors prepared bulk SiO2? Again, adding Si to water does not result in SiO2. 

The sample is very small; three trees per treatment - statistically  insignificant.

Line 341: The calculation is incorrect.

Please, rethink the concept of this experiment, with proper method and wisely chosen factors it has great potential to become significant scientific work. 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

English must be improved. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment for our answers to your comments. Thank you.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The revised manuscript is improved and the research design is more clearly presented. 

Minor point

The outliers, as mentioned in the cover letter, has not been updated in the figure legends of Figures 1 and 3. 

Author Response

The outliers, as mentioned in the cover letter, has not been updated in the figure legends of Figures 1 and 3.

Thanks for the reminder, we've updated the description of this outlier.

 

Additional corrections:

While proofreading, we found errors in the df values in Table 1. At the same time, we found that some data points of toughness for leaves treated with SiO2NPs and SeNPs were erroneously input (Table 3, Fig. 3). These careless mistakes were caused during data input (the second author confirmed the hand-written lab notebook of the first author and corrected them for multivariate correlation analyses but not for paired t test on toughness). These mistakes were corrected, which did not change statistical significance.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for your reply. I appreciate your effort and some corrections in the manuscript, however, it still needs improvement. Please find my comments in the pdf. file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

needs small corrections

Author Response

The abstract should contain 200 words max., please rewrite it and folow the Instrution for Authors.

We have reduced the words of the abstract.

 

This paragph should be placed between Fig. 1 and Tab. 1.

Thanks for your suggestion, we have replaced the paragraph.

 

It is unnecessary information, volume only would be enough.

We removed the unnecessary information accordingly.

 

This part is still unclear. I presume that the "bulk SiO2" was in form of pawder/cristals. SiO2 does not disolve in water in that form. Si available for plants occures in form of acids, salts, or nanonparticles. Please expalin, what were you trying to achieve by adding SiO2 into water?

 The “bulk SiO2” we used was actually porous silica gel (32.8 μm, range: 3-93 μm, 99% purity), which forms silicic acid (soluble in water) when in contact with water. We added this explanation. (L.363-367)

 

 It is a very small sample, 10 to 20 leaves per tree would be more reliable.

We agree but, unfortunately, the two-year old trees are small and the current-year leaves we used were chosen so that they do not interact with each other, leading to sampling only one pair from each branch.

 

 

Additional corrections:

While proofreading, we found errors in the df values in Table 1. At the same time, we found that some data points of toughness for leaves treated with SiO2NPs and SeNPs were erroneously input (Table 3, Fig. 3). These careless mistakes were caused during data input (the second author confirmed the hand-written lab notebook of the first author and corrected them for multivariate correlation analyses but not for paired t test on toughness). These mistakes were corrected, which did not change statistical significance.

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for your reply and the explanation. All the correction you made improved the manuscript, but I still have reservation about the size of samples. Please next time make sure it will be correct.

There is one more thing you need to change. Key words - there is 12 instead of  max. 10, and additionally you included there a phrase. Please change that.

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

None

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf