Dear Dr. Morrison,

Thank you very much for submitting your manuscript "Evaluation of "Caserotek" a low cost and effective artificial blood-feeding device for mosquitoes." for consideration at PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases. As with all papers reviewed by the journal, your manuscript was reviewed by members of the editorial board and by several independent reviewers. The reviewers appreciated the attention to an important topic. Based on the reviews, we are likely to accept this manuscript for publication, providing that you modify the manuscript according to the review recommendations.

Please prepare and submit your revised manuscript within 30 days. If you anticipate any delay, please let us know the expected resubmission date by replying to this email.

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[1] A letter containing a detailed list of your responses to all review comments, and a description of the changes you have made in the manuscript.

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[2] Two versions of the revised manuscript: one with either highlights or tracked changes denoting where the text has been changed; the other a clean version (uploaded as the manuscript file).

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Thank you again for your submission to our journal. We hope that our editorial process has been constructive so far, and we welcome your feedback at any time. Please don't hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or comments.

Sincerely,

Roberto Barrera, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases

Audrey Lenhart

Section Editor

PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases

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Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Key Review Criteria Required for Acceptance?

As you describe the new analyses required for acceptance, please consider the following:

Methods

-Are the objectives of the study clearly articulated with a clear testable hypothesis stated?

-Is the study design appropriate to address the stated objectives?

-Is the population clearly described and appropriate for the hypothesis being tested?

-Is the sample size sufficient to ensure adequate power to address the hypothesis being tested?

-Were correct statistical analysis used to support conclusions?

-Are there concerns about ethical or regulatory requirements being met?

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: See general comments below.

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Results

-Does the analysis presented match the analysis plan?

-Are the results clearly and completely presented?

-Are the figures (Tables, Images) of sufficient quality for clarity?

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: See general comments below.

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Conclusions

-Are the conclusions supported by the data presented?

-Are the limitations of analysis clearly described?

-Do the authors discuss how these data can be helpful to advance our understanding of the topic under study?

-Is public health relevance addressed?

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: See general comments below.

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Editorial and Data Presentation Modifications?

Use this section for editorial suggestions as well as relatively minor modifications of existing data that would enhance clarity. If the only modifications needed are minor and/or editorial, you may wish to recommend “Minor Revision” or “Accept”.

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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Summary and General Comments

Use this section to provide overall comments, discuss strengths/weaknesses of the study, novelty, significance, general execution and scholarship. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. If requesting major revision, please articulate the new experiments that are needed.

Reviewer #1: In this submission, the authors describe and evaluate a low-tech, affordable blood-feeding device that they developed and have been using in an operational setting for several years already. The device, Caserotek, is constructed of common off-the-shelf products and can be run with minimal infrastructure requirements making the device desirable for low-resource settings. The authors conducted a series of experiments to benchmark the Caserotek against two current gold-standard blood-feeding devices. Overall, the Caserotek performed very well providing evidence that this device could provide a robust alternative to the more resource intensive existing options. The experiments are simple and robust, the analysis is appropriate, and the paper is well written.

Minor comments:

Spanish spelling of ‘mosquitoes’ in a number of locations. Need to check and use English spelling for this journal.

The small sample sizes per replicate resulting from removal of unfed females in earlier feedings makes it difficult to interpret later feedings in exp 1. I appreciate that the authors reveal and acknowledge this issue in the results description. Since the analysis is based on rates and percentages, small sample sizes limit resolution of the variability. I suggest removing any data points based on less than 10 females.

Figure 3: Please make the points larger and consider removing the black border for points and lines. As is, it is very difficult to see the colors for the points, and the color of the lines is obscured by the border.

The authors make reference to availability of the full model results, but I could not find the model output in the main doc or supplementary files.

Reviewer #2: Authors are suggested to provide information on how much blood (or the minimum amount of blood to be used) to be filled into their device for each feeding, and how long blood can be maintained at 37 °C during the feeding. It would also be helpful to provide a standard operation protocol which can result in over 70% blood feeding rate when using their new device, including the information on mosquito age and feeding time et al. It is unclear how this device can be scaled up to large production facilities, which needs to be discussed.

Line 287, Survival curves should be provided, with an appropriate statistical analysis, to support their conclusion.

Line 196, The manufacture and dimension of glass membrane feeders should be provided.

Line 212, when oviposition sites are provided to mosquitoes?

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Figure Files:

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email us at figures@plos.org.

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To enhance the reproducibility of your results, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io, where a protocol can be assigned its own identifier (DOI) such that it can be cited independently in the future. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option to publish peer-reviewed clinical study protocols. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols

References

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article's retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

Dear Dr. Morrison,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript 'Evaluation of "Caserotek" a low cost and effective artificial blood-feeding device for mosquitoes.' has been provisionally accepted for publication in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

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

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.

Should you, your institution's press office or the journal office choose to press release your paper, you will automatically be opted out of early publication. We ask that you notify us now if you or your institution is planning to press release the article. All press must be co-ordinated with PLOS.

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

Best regards,

Roberto Barrera, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases

Audrey Lenhart

Section Editor

PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases

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