PONE-D-21-06677

Factors driving the compositional diversity of Bee Venom from a Corymbia calophylla (Marri) ecosystem, southwestern Australia

PLOS ONE

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PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

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Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: I Don't Know

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: The manuscript is interesting and the integration of different approaches is appreciable. I have no major remarks but some minor issues.

- First of all the authors must revise the whole manuscript in terms of grammar and readability. Some sentences are quite odd or very hard to follow as they stand now. Please also check the typos in the presented figures

- Figures are really too much and most of them could be grouped in composite boxes ore moved to the supplementary information. Figure 3 is completely awkward and impossibile to read, whereas the PCA graphs seem quite unnecessary since no clear groups are visible.

ABSTRACT

line 19: please, provide a brief context to the applicative relevance of BV

Line 31-32: the sentence seems truncated. Please check.

Lines 36-37: Unclear sentence. Please rewrite.

Line 37: please, be clearer concerning the investigated behaviour.

INTRODUCTION:

line 112: which is the relevance of this plant in the context of the study?

METHODS:

lines 135-136: this sentence should be placed in the introduction

line 140: use the comma to delimit thousands.

line 144 fig.1: unclear sentence. Please rewrite

DISCUSSION:

line 370: please be clear about the issue of "certification". Is certification currently adopted for BV commercialization? Which kind of certification procedure are currently required for this product? Is there any international standard for certification of BV?

lines 373-377: this part seems an abstract/introduction. I would suggest to remove it from this chapter.

line 387: Did you measure the differences among colonies at the same site? Could this factor influence the site-specificity of BV yield and features?

CONCLUSION:

Apart from the future perspectives, this chapter looks like more as an abstract rather than a conclusion section. I would suggest to rewrite it.

Line 480: remove the word "fresh". It is not appropriate.

Reviewer #2: In this manuscipt the authors studied the influence of several ecological, management and behavioural factors in bee venom weight and protein composition. Bee venom (BV) is produced by honeybees and has been widely studied and increasingly sought for its therapeutic features and pharmaceutical applications. Several studies have explored the biological factors influencing bee venom protein nature and amount, but little research have analyzed the role of ecological factors. For this reason I think that this article is original, as based on an advanced proteomics technique combined with both ecological and biological information for data interpretation and prediction of causes behind BV variance. Authors provide an useful tool based on an extensive proteins’ assemblage of aid for establishing BV certification programs. This tool would also address the growing demand for BV in clinical and therapeutic fields, with substantial benefit to both human health and the beekeeping industry/primary producers.

The experimental plan is well organized, statistical analysis are appropriate and results are well argued. However, I believe that merging the results and discussion into a single section (Results and Discussion) would improve the quality of the article.

Moreover, I suggest the following minor revision:

- Figure 3 is not legible: use acronyms instead of whole names of the proteins, so as to avoid overlapping writings; moreover change the color of the bubbles to make writings visible;

- In figure 4 the legend is not necessary as the locations are shown in the base of the graph;

- Add the degree of significance in the boxplots in figures 4,7,9;

- In figures 5,6,8 check the percentages in axis 1 and 2 carefully. They are different from those reported in the main text;

- Lines 102-103: add the reference number for Ferreira et al (2010);

- Line 269: the authors writes “three target proteins”, but four proteins are listed between parentheses;

- Line 445: replace (Fig1) with (Fig 1).

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Factors driving the compositional diversity of Apis mellifera Bee Venom from a Corymbia calophylla (marri) ecosystem, Southwestern Australia

PONE-D-21-06677R1

Dear Dr. Scaccabarozzi,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

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Kind regards,

Prof. Lorenzo Pecoraro

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

All issues raised by the reviewers have been addressed in the revised manuscript, which is now suitable for publication. Congratulations!

Reviewers' comments: