Effect of environmental variables on the abundance of Amblyomma ticks, potential vectors of Rickettsia parkeri in central Brazil

Isadora R. C. Gomes; Rodrigo Gurgel-Gonçalves; Gilberto S. Gazeta; Ana B. P. Borsoi; Karla Bitencourth; Letícia F. Leite; Nathália G. S. S. Coelho; Ricardo Dislich; Helga C. Wiederhecker; Eduardo G. Santos; Melina Guimarães

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0301685

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJanuary 16, 2024
14 Feb 2024 Decision Letter - Shawky M Aboelhadid, Editor PONE-D-24-02067Effect of environmental variables on the abundance of Amblyomma ticks, potential vectors of Rickettsia parkeri in central BrazilPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Rodrigo Gurgel-Goncalves, 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. ============================== ACADEMIC EDITOR: The manuscript needs some revisions depending on the reviewers comments ============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by Mar 30 2024 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. 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If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references.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 If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). 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: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE 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 Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 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 paper is well written. The methods were sufficient to answer the questions and the discussion is in accordance with the results obtained. I have just one comment: Lines. 283-284. “...Surprisingly, the presence or vestige of capybaras showed no effect on the number of ticks of all life stages...” The authors completely ignored the fact that Lake Paranoá (in Brasília) is surrounded by a highly urbanized matrix. Anyone who reads the manuscript and doesn't know Brasília might even think that the study was carried out on the edge of a peri-urban lake, which is definitely not the case. The lack of relationship between the number of capybaras and the abundance of ticks in the sampled region is most likely related to urbanization. Most likely, the number of ticks may be related more to the number of domestic animals (especially dogs and cats) than specifically to capybaras. It is true that capybaras are the primary hosts of A. dubitatum, however, the same cannot be said for A. sculptum. It has been demonstrated that A. sculptum also parasitizes dogs and cats, including ticks infected with Rickettsia (see: Mendes et al. 2019 and Campos et al. 2020). Lake Paranoá, in addition to being surrounded by luxurious mansions and farms, whose owners raise many dogs and cats, residents from other regions of Brasília take their pets to the place for leisurely walks. The presence of these domestic animals in the research region, in my opinion, should not have been ignored in the experimental design. As it is not possible to return to the data collection phase, I suggest that the authors discuss whether urbanization and the presence of dogs and cats in the sampled area would have any impact on the results achieved. It is also necessary to improve the quality of the figures. References: Campos SDE, Cunha NC, Machado CSC, Nadal NV, Seabra Junior ES, Telleria EL, et al. Spotted fever group rickettsial infection in dogs and their ticks from domestic–wildlife interface areas in southeastern Brazil. Braz J Vet Parasitol 2020; 29(1): e020219. http://doi.org/10.1590/S1984-29612020012. Mendes JCR, Kmetiuk LB, Martins CM, Canavessi AMO, Jimenez T, Pellizzaro M, Martins TF, Morikawa VM, Santos APD, Labruna MB, Biondo AW. 2019. Serosurvey of Rickettsia spp. in cats from a Brazilian spotted fever-endemic area. Rev Bras Parasitol Vet 28:713–721. Reviewer #2: - IT IS A DETAILED STUDY INCLUDING INFORMATION ABOUT ABIOTIC AND BIOTIC FACTORS. BUT SOME ISSUES ARE NOT CLEAR, FOR EXAMPLE, HOW MANY DAYS A MONTH WAS THE SAMPLING EFFORT? WAS IT A MONTHLY SAMPLING? OTHER QUESTIONS ARE MARKED DIRECTLY IN THE TEXT. ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. 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Revision 1
12 Mar 2024 Author Response ACADEMIC EDITOR 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf Authors: Formatting changes in the manuscript file have been highlighted in yellow 2. In your Methods section, please provide additional information regarding 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. Authors: Access to the research site was authorized by the Department of the Environment of the Federal District. Authorization to collect ticks was granted by the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio) through the Biodiversity Authorization and Information System (SISBIO), request number 77851, authentication code 0778510320220711. (Lines 206-210) 3. Submissions in which author-generated code underpins the findings in the manuscript. In these cases, all author-generated code must be made available without restrictions upon publication of the work. Please review our guidelines at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/materials-and-software-sharing#loc-sharing-code and ensure that your code is shared in a way that follows best practice and facilitates reproducibility and reuse. Authors: The script code used in R has been made available as supplementary data. (line 202) 4. We note that Figures 1 & 4 in your submission contain [map/satellite] images which may be copyrighted. All PLOS content is published under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which means that the manuscript, images, and Supporting Information files will be freely available online, and any third party is permitted to access, download, copy, distribute, and use these materials in any way, even commercially, with proper attribution. For these reasons, we cannot publish previously copyrighted maps or satellite images created using proprietary data, such as Google software (Google Maps, Street View, and Earth). For more information, see our copyright guidelines: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/licenses-and-copyright. Authors: Figure 4 was generated using our data, and the raster file was obtained from MapBiomas Brasil, which is available free of charge. We re-generated Figure 1 because it was taken from Google's My Maps and is protected by copyright. The figure was created using QGIS version 3.28.13 software. The shapefiles were obtained from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) and the Institute of Research and Statistics of the Federal District (IPEDF). The raster with land use categorization was obtained from MapBiomas. All files used are now in the public domain. (line 277) 5. 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. Authors: Done. Reviewer #1: The paper is well written. The methods were sufficient to answer the questions and the discussion is in accordance with the results obtained. I have just one comment: Lines. 283-284. “...Surprisingly, the presence or vestige of capybaras showed no effect on the number of ticks of all life stages...” The authors completely ignored the fact that Lake Paranoá (in Brasília) is surrounded by a highly urbanized matrix. Anyone who reads the manuscript and doesn't know Brasília might even think that the study was carried out on the edge of a peri-urban lake, which is definitely not the case. The lack of relationship between the number of capybaras and the abundance of ticks in the sampled region is most likely related to urbanization. Most likely, the number of ticks may be related more to the number of domestic animals (especially dogs and cats) than specifically to capybaras. It is true that capybaras are the primary hosts of A. dubitatum, however, the same cannot be said for A. sculptum. It has been demonstrated that A. sculptum also parasitizes dogs and cats, including ticks infected with Rickettsia (see: Mendes et al. 2019 and Campos et al. 2020). Lake Paranoá, in addition to being surrounded by luxurious mansions and farms, whose owners raise many dogs and cats, residents from other regions of Brasília take their pets to the place for leisurely walks. The presence of these domestic animals in the research region, in my opinion, should not have been ignored in the experimental design. As it is not possible to return to the data collection phase, I suggest that the authors discuss whether urbanization and the presence of dogs and cats in the sampled area would have any impact on the results achieved. Authors: We appreciate the reviewer's comment. We have detailed the study area in lines 88-90 by clarifying that Lake Paranoá is an urban lake. However, we have not discussed the influence of domestic animals in more detail as this metric was not measured. To make the points raised by the reviewer clearer, we have modified figure 1 and added the land use around the study area, leaving no doubt about the urbanization of the region studied. However, in the discussion (lines 381-384), we emphasized that the number of A. sculptum ticks may be related to the number of domestic animals, particularly dogs and cats (Mendes et al. 2019, Campos et al. 2020), rather than specifically to capybaras due to urbanization. It is worth noting that residents of luxurious houses often take their pets for leisurely walks, which may expose them to ticks. It is also necessary to improve the quality of the figures. Authors: Done. References: Campos SDE, Cunha NC, Machado CSC, Nadal NV, Seabra Junior ES, Telleria EL, et al. Spotted fever group rickettsial infection in dogs and their ticks from domestic–wildlife interface areas in southeastern Brazil. Braz J Vet Parasitol 2020; 29(1): e020219. http://doi.org/10.1590/S1984-29612020012. Mendes JCR, Kmetiuk LB, Martins CM, Canavessi AMO, Jimenez T, Pellizzaro M, Martins TF, Morikawa VM, Santos APD, Labruna MB, Biondo AW. 2019. Serosurvey of Rickettsia spp. in cats from a Brazilian spotted fever-endemic area. Rev Bras Parasitol Vet 28:713–721. Authors: Thanks, we included these references Reviewer #2: - IT IS A DETAILED STUDY INCLUDING INFORMATION ABOUT ABIOTIC AND BIOTIC FACTORS. Authors: Thanks. BUT SOME ISSUES ARE NOT CLEAR, FOR EXAMPLE, HOW MANY DAYS A MONTH WAS THE SAMPLING EFFORT? WAS IT A MONTHLY SAMPLING? Authors: Our sampling effort was 5 - 6 days: Set/21: 5 days, Nov/21: 5 days, Feb/22: 5 days, Apr/22: 6 days, Jun/22: 5 days, Sep/22: 5 days. (Line 105) OTHER QUESTIONS ARE MARKED DIRECTLY IN THE TEXT. Authors: Formatting changes in the manuscript file have been highlighted in yellow Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Rebuttal letter_Ticks final 3.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0301685.r002
20 Mar 2024 Decision Letter - Shawky M Aboelhadid, Editor Effect of environmental variables on the abundance of Amblyomma ticks, potential vectors of Rickettsia parkeri in central Brazil PONE-D-24-02067R1 Dear Dr. Gurgel-Goncalves, 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. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice will be generated when your article is formally accepted. Please note, if your institution has a publishing partnership with PLOS and your article meets the relevant criteria, all or part of your publication costs will be covered. Please make sure your user information is up-to-date by logging into Editorial Manager at Editorial Manager® and clicking the ‘Update My Information' link at the top of the page. If you have any questions relating to publication charges, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. 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 onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Shawky M Aboelhadid, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed ******** 2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). 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: Yes ****** 5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE 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 ****** 6. 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: I am satisfied with the responses and additions made to the text by the authors. I consider that the paper should be accepted for publication. ****** 7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No ******** https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0301685.r003
Formally Accepted
3 May 2024 Acceptance Letter - Shawky M Aboelhadid, Editor PONE-D-24-02067R1 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Gurgel-Gonçalves, I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now being handed over to our production team. At this stage, our production department will prepare your paper for publication. This includes ensuring the following: * All references, tables, and figures are properly cited * All relevant supporting information is included in the manuscript submission, * There are no issues that prevent the paper from being properly typeset If revisions are needed, the production department will contact you directly to resolve them. If no revisions are needed, you will receive an email when the publication date has been set. At this time, we do not offer pre-publication proofs to authors during production of the accepted work. Please keep in mind that we are working through a large volume of accepted articles, so please give us a few weeks to review your paper and let you know the next and final steps. Lastly, if your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at customercare@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Professor Shawky M Aboelhadid Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0301685.r004

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