PONE-D-21-35090Spatiotemporal Trends in Bed Bug Metrics: New York CityPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Hacker,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’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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ACADEMIC EDITOR: 

• Correct the references according to the recommended format of the Journal
• Add latest references as pointed out in the reviewer’s comments
• Check the supplementary data according to the reviewer's comments
• Improve the conclusive remarks

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Please submit your revised manuscript by Jan 30 2022 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 plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Javaid Iqbal, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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[We thank the other participants in the workshop “Socio-Spatial Ecology of the Bed Bug and its Control”—Claudia Arevalo, Dawn Biehler, Stephen Billings, Warren Booth, Ludovica Gazze, Loren Henderson, Sara McLafferty, Shannon Sked, and Chris Sutherland—for discussions that helped shape this paper. This work was supported by the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center under funding received from National Science Foundation Grant DBI-1639145. KPH was supported by the University of Pennsylvania Diversity Postdoc Fellowship and National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number K12GM081259.]

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 [This work was supported by the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center under funding received from National Science Foundation Grant DBI-1639145. KPH was supported by the University of Pennsylvania Diversity Postdoc Fellowship and National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number K12GM081259.]

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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: The New York City area has thousands of licensed pest management professionals and hundreds of pest control companies. Could these results been explained by a mere shift from the public to the private sector?

Minor Comments

Reference 3 looks incomplete (year of publication).

References 1-4: more recent references could be added.

Could one single bedbug complaint be registered in more than one database?

Why was the year 2020 not included? It could have been interesting to study the effect of confinement.

Reviewer #2: Dear Authors

After going through the MS, "Spatiotemporal Trends in Bed Bug Metrics: New York City", I can conclude that it contains very useful information for readers especially the involved in Vectors of Disease Control. Research explained in the MS is well designed and the well constructed. I don't see any problem with data presentation and the description of results and discussion.

In suppl. material file, Suppl. Table 5 is repeated with titles "Modeling framework used to assess potential space-time interactions of bed bug complaints per NTA area" and "Results of the nonparametric spatiotemporal model (model 1) without space-time interaction effects". These might be Tables 5 and 6. I suggest that Tables 5 and 6 may be included in the results of main MS along with Suppl. Figs 1 and 3. However, it depends if the authors agree.

Reviewer #3: Overall, the authors’ approach to analyze the bed bug trend in NYC is appropriate. My only concern is about the main conclusion: the number of bed bugs complains decreased, while cockroach complaints increased from 2014 based on data period of 2010-2019. The decrease in bed bug complaints is not surprising. Increased awareness, better methods and materials and control strategies, regulations, fatigue in reporting bed bugs might have contributed to the decline of bed bug complaints. The conclusion about increasing cockroach complaints is surprising. There is no evidence from pest control industry that shows cockroach infestations are increasing in the last 5-7 years. There are no revolutionary novel products appeared for cockroach control since 2014. I do not see a reason why cockroach infestations increased after 2014. Authors need to re-investigate the data and interpret the results more cautiously.

Other minor comments:

Line 90-96. Need to describe the 5 boroughs being studied.

Line 165. What does the relative risk scale mean? Need to explain.

Line 192. Supplemental table 4 does not show seasonal data.

Line 200. Supplemental Fig. 1 does not show the names of these boroughs.

Line 227. "R2" The number 2 should be in upper case

Line 245-246. Delete the discussion about canine. It is not an effective bed bug detection method.

References. Need to check the styles.

Fig. 4 legend. Need to be more descriptive. Please indicate this is for NYC. Explain the scales. This figure has lower resolution than the supplementary Figure.

Supplemental Table 2. Need to add more details so readers know this is about NYC and only during 2020-2019. This Table shows 46886 bed bug complaints from residents to HPD during 2020-2019. If divided by 10, the number is still very large. Why supplemental figure shows very low number of complaints in 2018?

Supplemental Table 3. “Cockroach complaints” need to be moved further to the left.

Supplemental Fig. 1. Use smaller font for x-axis legend. The “standard incidence ratio” legend needs to match with that for Fig. 4.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Rashad Rasool Khan

Reviewer #3: No

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PONE-D-21-35090R1Spatiotemporal Trends in Bed Bug Metrics: New York CityPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Hacker,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’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.

Please submit your revised manuscript by May 22 2022 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 plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic 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'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Javaid Iqbal, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

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.

Additional Editor Comments:

Minor revision (See reviewer's comments)

Reviewers' comments:

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)

Line 273. Add a space before =.

Reference section: The scientific names (Cimex lectularius) need to be in italic font.

Line 426-428. Two references with same number. One of them should be 7

Line 525. Missing page number.

Line 538. May need to delete "Jul-Aug". Also delete "(1)".

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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. Registration is free. 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 PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Spatiotemporal Trends in Bed Bug Metrics: New York City

PONE-D-21-35090R2

Dear Dr. Hacker,

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Kind regards,

Javaid Iqbal, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: