PCLM-D-24-00193

Recent climate change strongly impacted the population dynamic of a North American insect pest species

PLOS Climate

Dear Dr. Boulanger,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS Climate. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

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We invited a total of 19 expert reviewers in the subject matter over the last three months, only one of whom responded positively, which explains our unusual delay in reaching an editorial decision.

The Editor has therefore taken the decision to also read the article even though not being an expert in this field.

Our decision is justified on PLOS Climate’s publication criteria  and not, for example, on novelty or perceived impact.

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Please submit your revised manuscript by Jan 31 2025 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at climate@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pclm/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

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• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Kevin Tougeron

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

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Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

The introduction is very complete and detailed. I would still advise the authors to try to reduce its length a little, by trimming the text of certain paragraphs if possible.

The methods and results are clear and well presented. Please make sure to provide full open dataset used in this article.

In the discussion:

L431: Should it read ‘allowed us’?

L448: Wrong citation format.

L471-476: What about adaptive capacity via the insect's phenotypic plasticity, or via the rapid evolution of its thermal tolerance ranges?

L553-561: Although it has not been studied in this article, how could you envisage integrating the parameter of natural enemies into future predictive models? What do we lack in terms of knowledge to use this parameter, which seems important to me, because natural enemies also react strongly to environmental changes, while mismatches with lower trophic levels can occur.

Please also consider the comments by the expert reviewer below.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Does this manuscript meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria ? Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe methodologically and ethically rigorous research with conclusions that are appropriately drawn based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available (please refer to the Data Availability Statement at the start of the manuscript PDF file)?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception. The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: No

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS Climate does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: In this manuscript, the authors use a process-based model to examine how climate change has altered spruce budworm range through changes in phenology, reproduction and winter survival. Their model is quite robust and I commend their use of so much laboratory data. However, I do find that what they have presented has some significant gaps.

In particular, they seem to be ignoring the potential impact of reduction of cold stress. They do not model the winter months, and their “winter survival” model seems to only include mortality at high temperatures. However, spruce budworm, like any other insect, cannot survive to very low temperatures (Butterson et al. 2021 Comp. Physiol. Biochem. A.).

Data availability: they describe that the data is available at Copernicus and the Government of Quebec websites, but based on the limited information that they provide, I would not be able to find this data nor replicate their findings. It would be preferable if they provided a link where the data is available.

Minor comments:

Line 62: I don’t follow how increases in temperature can be more or less important

Line 71: is development dependent on temperature variation specifically, or just temperature generally?

Line 95: What evidence is there that the poleward range edge is set by growing season length? The cited reference doesn’t examine cold mortality—could this be an important factor?

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Reviewer #1: No

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Recent climate change strongly impacted the population dynamic of a North American insect pest species

PCLM-D-24-00193R1

Dear Dr Boulanger,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript 'Recent climate change strongly impacted the population dynamic of a North American insect pest species' has been provisionally accepted for publication in PLOS Climate.

Before your manuscript can be formally accepted you will need to complete some formatting changes, which you will receive in a follow-up email from a member of our team. 

Please note that your manuscript will not be scheduled for publication until you have made the required changes, so a swift response is appreciated.

IMPORTANT: The editorial review process is now complete. PLOS will only permit corrections to spelling, formatting or significant scientific errors from this point onwards. Requests for major changes, or any which affect the scientific understanding of your work, will cause delays to the publication date of your manuscript.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact climate@plos.org.

Thank you again for supporting Open Access publishing; we are looking forward to publishing your work in PLOS Climate.

Best regards,

Kevin Tougeron

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

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Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

After reading the new version of the article, as well as the reasoned responses to the reviewers, I consider that the authors have made sufficient clarifications and modifications. Missing elements have been added and the discussion is clearer and more nuanced.

Reviewer Comments (if any, and for reference):