PONE-D-21-28806Development of Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) to control the dengue vector, Aedes aegypti (Linnaeus) in Sri LankaPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Hapugoda,

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PLOS ONE

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3. The statement 'The Ae. aegypti strain used in this experiment originated from eggs collected from the Ragama Public Health Inspector (PHI) division, located within the District of Gampaha, Sri Lanka in 2018' is not sufficient to determine the source of mosquitos in this study. In your Methods section, please provide additional details regarding the source of the mosquito eggs used in your study (if Ragama Public Health Inspector (PHI) division provided the eggs for free or as a donation please provide more information detailing this e.g. if the eggs are part of a insectary colony at the Ragama Public Health Inspector (PHI) division that were donated to this project, or e.g. the eggs are donated from Ragama Public Health Inspector (PHI) division in routine season surveillance of [provide name of area where surveillance occurs]) . If these was collected by members of this study please include geographic coordinates of your field collection site if available and provide the permits you obtained for the work. Please ensure you have included the full name of the authority that approved the field site access and, if no permits were required, a brief statement explaining why. If this was purchased then please include the names of the purchasing sources (e.g., stores, markets, suppliers), if available, as well as any further details about the purchased items (e.g., lot number, source origin, description of appearance) to ensure reproducibility of the analyses. For more information regarding PLOS' policy on materials sharing and reporting, see https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/materials-and-software-sharing#loc-sharing-materials.

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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: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: This is a technical report about “Development of Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) to control the dengue vector, Aedes aegypti (Linnaeus) in Sri Lanka”.

The paper is clear and very well written, and gives insight into the effects of radiation on survival, flight ability and reproductive capacity of Ae. aegypti under laboratory conditions and the sterile male performance in field cage conditions for a better implementation of the future SIT programmes in Sri Lanka. The materials and methods are clearly indicated and the results reflect this. The results are also adequately discussed.

It is recommended that the manuscript be accepted for publication.

You may find some comments/suggestions below minor.

Authors affiliations:

4"Insect Pest Control Laboratory" instead "Insect Pest Control Subprogramme"

Abstract

Delete the space before the full-stop at the end of the 1st sentence ‘after Ae. Aegypti’.

Materials and methods

Effects of irradiation on flight ability

Remove the “.” after “9 cm diameter” in the sentence “…..150 pupae of one sex were placed in a 9 cm diameter. Petri dish into which a transparent tube…”

Statistical analysis

1. Why “the egg hatch rates were arcsinsqrt-transformed prior to analysis”?

This means that the data was not normally distributed? If the case please precise.

2. To assess the effects of irradiation on the different parameters (mortality, productivity), the author limits the number of replications to three, however is such studies more replicates are needed to have solid results.

Flies were not available in large number?

3. Mosquitoes -like many insects used for the mass-rearing for SIT- need to be checked for their quality control before using it for SIT. There are several quality control indicators that normally use for this purpose i.e. Mortality/survival, productivity, emergence rate, flight ability, mating competitiveness and insemination rate. In this study, to assess the sterile male mating performance in semi field cage, the author ignore some indicators as the propensity of mating, relative mating index and relative mating performance and limit the study to the competitiveness index.

Or with mosquitoes, is it difficult to evaluate these performance indicators?

4. What means “Hn” and “Hs” in the Friend formula “(Hn-Ho) / (Ho-Hs))*(N/S)”? Please define.

5. The author needs to submit the data analysis details in Rmarkdown file to make the follow up of the data is clear and simple.

Results

1. The figure 2 must be announced in the “Effects of irradiation on flight ability”

2. In the section “Effects of irradiation on adult survival”, please cheek the figure numbers

3. Section “Competitiveness index (C) of sterile male mosquitoes”:

- The tables 1 and 2 are announced but the tables are missing in the document.

- The author took about 5:1:1 ratio in the result section but is not mentioned in the methodology section

Reviewer #2: The manuscript shows a very encouraging beginning of SIT development for Sri Lanka. Great job of the IAEA supporting with technical expertise for this country scientific group. Overall, each of every section in the manuscript accomplishes with academic rules of experimental design; i.e, sample size, repetitions, lab rearing conditions, etc. Field research of mark-release-recapture should be started as soon as possible in order to settle preliminary releases of sterile males in Sri Lanka.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Development of the Sterile Insect Technique to control the dengue vector Aedes aegypti (Linnaeus) in Sri Lanka

PONE-D-21-28806R1

Dear Dr. Hapugoda,

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,

Ahmed Ibrahim Hasaballah

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE