PONE-D-24-10887EVALUATION OF SYNERGISTIC EFFECT OF ENTOMOPATHOGENIC FUNGI BEAUVERIA BASSIANA AND LECANICILLIUM LECANII ON THE MOSQUITO CULEX QUINQUEFASCIATUSPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Kataki,

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Dear AuthorThere is 2 differents reviewers decisions one as a major and the 2nd reject the work. Please give a special attention to your next revision, and submit a carefull responses to reviewers (especially reviewer 2).Good luck

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 [FB was supported by the Academy Medical Science Springboard Award (ref: SBF007\\100094)].  

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Reviewers' comments:

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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: No

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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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: This study explored the effect of applying a mixture of two entomopathogenic fungi to Culex quinquefasciatus larvae. Overall, I think the study was well-performed, analyzed, and presented. The writing would benefit from additional proofreading, as there were a number of typos and sentences in need of corrections. Additionally, it would be beneficial to closely look at the references cited for various claims, as not all of them appeared to be appropropriate at first glance. For instance the mosquito keys referred to for larval IDs specifies a paper looking at adult morphology. On Line 51 statements regarding health effects of pesticides are supported only with another paper reporting on fungi - given that these topics can be quite controversial, one should really cite the original supporting literature.

My other concern relates to the details of the applications. How exactly were the spores formulated, just dry or in oil, or something else? And how were they applied to the larval pans, to the surface of the water or mixed in? Finally, I’m a bit confused regarding the timing - 24 hours seems like a very short time to see such strong effects on survival, I would have expected this to take several days. What was the reason for keeping the assay for one day only? This is something that should be explored in the discussion and the results here compared to that in other similar studies.

Reviewer #2: Comments to the authors

The manuscript titled “EVALUATION OF SYNERGISTIC EFFECT OF ENTOMOPATHOGENIC FUNGI BEAUVERIA BASSIANA AND LECANICILLIUM LECANII ON THE MOSQUITO CULEX QUINQUEFASCIATUS”. The present study describing to evaluate 1) the synergistic effect of the two entomopathogenic fungi Beauveria bassiana and Lecanicillium lecanii and compare them with individual effect; 2) to evaluate the lethal concentration (LC50) of the combined effect of the two fungi regarding the mortality of Culex quinquefasciatus and 3) to examine the post- mortem effects and morphological deformities on fungal infected larvae under Scanning 108 Electron Microscope (SEM) and compare them with the control untreated larvae. After carefully reviewing this manuscript, I can not see some merit in this research. The current form contains several fundamental, technical, grammatical and typographical errors so please carefully revise the entire manuscript.

Major errors

1.In the abstract the objective and methodology are not clear and hard to understand so revise it carefully.

2.Line 22: cite reference.

3.The introduction is poorly written, the current form does not meet scientific standards. Also, only 14 references have been provided, most of the sentence the citation is missing.

Write introduction with following information;

a. Mosquitoes and their health and economic burden

b. Current control methods and their drawbacks

c. Biological control agent and entomopathogenic fungi mediated mosquito control and your objectives

4.The current form of the introduction of several scientific information is missing so carefully revise it.

5.Line 122: typo error

6.Line 131: dog biscuit? dog biscuit WHO recommended one? Why have you used this diet? Is there any special reason?

7.Line 144-145: how did you prepare for test concentration?

8.Line 175: Toxicity or pathogenicity? Confirm it.

9.The methodological part is poorly written and contains several pieces of information.

10.The results are poorly written and data interpretation hard to follow so carefully re-edit it.

11.For discussion two paragraphs sufficient for a scientific paper? Did you use any new reference added in the discussion part apart from introduction and methodology? The discussion part is poorly discussed.

12.The conclusion needs more clear information; the current form is not sufficient.

13.The reference part contains several formation and typographical errors so carefully revise it.

14.Figure 1 does not provide clear and high quality of images.

15.Figure 2: I can not see any damages and any information from this figure so provide clear images.

16.In the SEM analysis I can not see any entomopathogenic fungi spores and conidia but does the author see any spores?

17.Throughout the manuscript I can see several grammatical and typographical errors so carefully fix it.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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EVALUATION OF SYNERGISTIC EFFECT OF ENTOMOPATHOGENIC FUNGI BEAUVERIA BASSIANA AND LECANICILLIUM LECANII ON THE MOSQUITO CULEX QUINQUEFASCIATUS

PONE-D-24-10887R1

Dear Dr. Kataki,

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,

Rachid Bouharroud

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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