PONE-D-24-07519Landscape and meteorological determinants of malaria vectors’ presence and abundance in the rural health district of Korhogo, Côte d’Ivoire, 2016- 2018, and comparison with the less anthropized area of Diébougou, Burkina FasoPLOS ONE

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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

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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: No

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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

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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 paper is on the comparative study of environmental factors that determine the presence and abundance of malaria vectors in 2 areas with different degrees of anthropic activities.

The work was well carried out, and the data analyzed adequately with models. However there are certain aspects of “theoretical” data generated eg length of river, surface temperature etc which would benefit if some ground truthing or actual recording with data logger were done to confirm the data.

There is inherent risk in doing HLC, perhaps future work should not use HLC. Research in Malaysia now uses mosquito traps only.

Another point is the mosquitoes were not tested if they contain malaria parasites, and whether those caught indoors are more likely to have parasites. Perhaps some published papers would have this information. This information would be useful to be included.

Below are some queries:

144 … mosquitoes were collected one night, from 17:00 to 09:00, both indoors and outdoors, at four sites

Were there any differences between the catch (species, abundance and time of catch) between indoors and outdoors?

145 ... per village using the Human Landing Catch (HLC) sampling method

Was only one catcher stationed per site?, was there any analysis of variation of catch between catchers? Between indoors and outdoors?

153 for the first four survey, one individual of the Gambiae Complex randomly selected per hour per collection site (indoors/outdoors) in six randomly selected villages (over 28) was selected and ..

Presumably the mosquitoes were kept separately for each hour? Maybe this could be explained in the text.

175 We generated the theoretical stream network in the study 175 area using a Digital Elevation Model (29).

Some ground truthing would be useful here.

Multivate analysis. We first selected a set of environmental variables to introduce in the

State what were the variables selected for testing.

178 Over the 922 An. gambiae s.l. individuals (7% of the total)

I think it should be “Over the 3922 …..

319 The presence of An. funestus was positively correlated with the length of the rivers.

The river length was generated theoretically, and the correlation may be correct. However the quality of river water is more important for the life cycle of the mosquitoes. Unfortunately, the quality of the river water cannot be calculated by satellite images.

455 temperatures between 0 and 2-3 weeks before collection (negative relationship), and nocturnal temperatures (between 5 and 6 weeks and between 0 and 1 week before collection for the presence and abundance models, respectively) (positive relationship).

I am not sure if explanation was given.

569 The % of surface occupied by rice paddies

The % should be spelled out.

Reviewer #2: The presented study by Taconet et al examines the meteorological and landscape determinants of the spatiotemporal distribution of the major malaria vectors in the rural region of Korhogo and the differences in vector probability of presence, abundance, and diversity observed between that area and another rural West African.

I am impressed by the wealth of entomological data the authors have collected to carry out their study. I enjoyed reading the manuscript as the writing style is overall accessible and concise.

I’d recommend this manuscript for publication after the revision suggested below have been implemented:

Abstract

It is not advisable to use the personal pronouns ‘I’ and ‘we’ in a scientific document. It has been used throughout the document; the document should be reviewed and corrected.

Introduction

Include in the introduction section the current state of malaria in Côte d'Ivoire (incidence and mortality).

Results

I understand that the focus of this study is on malaria vectors. However, i suppose that, you collected extremely many Culex and Aedes mosquitoes. Their potential role in disease transmission, habitat competition is very important. I suggest that this be taken into account in the results.

Figures 2, 4, 5 and 6: Figures legend and axis are not clear.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE-D-24-07519_review.docx

Landscape and meteorological determinants of malaria vectors’ presence and abundance in the rural health district of Korhogo, Côte d’Ivoire, 2016- 2018, and comparison with the less anthropized area of Diébougou, Burkina Faso

PONE-D-24-07519R1

Dear Dr. Taconet,

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,

James Colborn

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

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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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

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: 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

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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

Reviewer #2: 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: The authors have addressed adequately the questions or comments raised in the first review. However I would still like to see the words spelt out completely (b/w in lines 384,3855, 387 and elsewhere; and % in lines 265,336,339,343,346,351 and elsewhere when used as a noun).

Reviewer #2: The authors have taken into account all the observations made. We recommend this article for publication

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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: Yes: Tock Chua

Reviewer #2: No

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