I like your updated sentence, but I would probably remove this word "broad" here to simplify it. I think I understand what you're getting at by saying "broad patterns" and agree with the sentiment, but it could be construed as contradictory with the first part of the sentence that highlights the need to look at finer scales.

I added a few additional suggestions in the main text in these places to highlight the "behavior" aspect of this work :)

you could say "behavioral foraging choice" here to make this ultra clear

from

could say: "...allowed us to record the nutritional redressing behavior of individuals"

could say: "...affected the nutritional status and foraging behavior of the locusts"

Since the reviewer wasn't connecting foraging as a behavior, another way of wording this to make that even more clear could be: "...locusts to behaviorally select carbohydrate-biased foods if such options are available"

I'd probably switch the order of these since the prediction for the physiology bit comes before the prediction for behavior

This paper has also been officially published so the reference can be updated

This reference can be updated as it’s been officially published on eLife: https://elifesciences.org/articles/88933

Another one

Probably also not ‘in press’ :)

Delete the in press part

In the earlier version of this figure, you only had the x axis go up to about 0.25% soil nitrogen and you also included the observation ticks along the x axis so readers could quickly see where most of the data points were distributed (if I understood those ticks correctly). Here, you almost double the N scale (up to 0.4% N) and don’t include the ticks.

I agree with the reviewers that it looks a bit odd to have the tail come up above 0.3% N and it’s important to address this in the main text. In your response to the reviewer’s comment on this, you mentioned that you felt the model was not super reliable at these higher N levels because there were few observations there. I think it would be helpful to make this more clear in the figure.

1 - Do you think it would be more accurate to stop the display around 0.3% N if there is little confidence above that point? Why was it stopped at 0.25% in previous iterations, but modeled out to 0.4% here?

2 - If the extended N range is included, would it be possible to add the ticks back to the x axis to better highlight where the model is most reliable?

Be sure to double check the format of all the references

These ** should be deleted ?

We made more explicit the connection between individual herbivore nutrition and population- and landscape-level patterns and integrated more studies throughout the introduction.

We expanded the discussion of ecological stoichiometry and the geometric framework for nutrition in several paragraphs in the introduction.

Good question! It looks like the tables all have figure representations in the main text, so technically, I think the tables could all go into supplemental. That being said, if they get switched to supplemental, then I think we'd need to report more stats in the results section, which becomes cumbersome. How about a response like this?

With the exception of Table 1, which is a journal requirement, the tables include all of the primary stats that relate to the figures. We feel that it's more transparent to include these statistical results in the main text to make it easily accessible, and opted for tables rather than writing the stats into the results text to make it more streamlined for readers. However, we are open to moving the tables to the supplement if the editors would suggest that approach.

extra s here

I think the line reference can be removed here

flagging this because I think I understand the reviewer's confusion and I'll look to tweak the main text

This is a good point! We should add a note about this in the main text if it's not already there

If you go with the short response above, you can put this text here:

Instead of predicting specific instances of outbreaks (which are indeed highly influenced by a given rainfall event), we are predicting the number of outbreaks likely to occur in a 1x1 km^2 grid across decades. Using this approach means that the effects of stochastic variables (e.g. precipitation) are not well captured, but the overall impacts of more static variables (e.g. soil nutrients) are. This is illustrated in Supplementary Figure 8 and Figure 5 that show that the relationship between outbreaks summed up to the grid and mean annual precipitation is weak and very different from the more static environmental variable models. Because the mean annual precipitation-outbreak and soil N-outbreak relationships are different, and the relationship between soil N and MAP is not 1:1, we can conclude that the effect of soil N on the likelihood of outbreaks shown by the model is not well-explained by mean annual precipitation alone.

sounds like a good transition!

Making a note that I'll probably edit this passage a bit in the main text so we can be sure to update it here as well

example

Suggest: "Because the mean annual precipitation-outbreak and soil N-outbreak relationships are different, and the relationship between soil N and MAP is not 1:1, we are likely seeing an effect of soil N on the likelihood of outbreaks that is not explained by mean annual precipitation alone.

After reading through this a few times, I think a more simple response is sufficient. The reviewer has just requested to be shown how MAP and soil N are related. Here's a potential response:

We included additional correlation analyses in the supplemental material. There is a positive relationship between mean annual precipitation and soil nitrogen, though it is not 1:1 (Supplementary Figure 5C).

"...models, including outbreaks and soil nitrogen..."

suggest add to the end of this sentence: "across many years"

suggest: "...annual precipitation are not well-captured here because there can be substantial year-to-year rainfall variation; the effects of more static..."

add: "...outbreaks across X years to spatial grids..." (But fill in the X with how many years this study covered)

integrated

suggest: "...target, suggesting that the deficiency was redressed at the time."

cover

I would add another sentence here that summarizes these visual comparisons. This sentence could be lifted directly from the main text (e.g., the visual comparisons indicate that soil N is independently affecting locust outbreaks and is not simply a direct correlate of other factors such as woody tree cover)

included

Should this be "across a spatial grid" instead? the wording "up to" sounds funny, but perhaps it's standard in spatial modeling

I generally avoid putting specific line numbers because it's always a challenge to find exactly which lines the revisions fall on in the end. Instead, I would say something like this: "...between concepts in the second and third paragraphs of the introduction." (Assuming the updates went into those paragraphs). Sometimes, I will say even more generally something like "We added discussion of these points in the introduction and discussion."

In addition, I'll often paste in the lines that were added or changed into the response to reviewers letter, if I think that's needed or helps enhance the response.

When I submit revisions, I submit a version with tracked changes (or with changes highlighted in red text or otherwise marked) along with a clean version. In this way, it's quick for reviewers to skim and see what changed.

...globally, particularly migratory species, highlighting...

field cages over fertilized grasslands, and...

Suggest re-write this opening: Nitrogen and phosphorus are generally assumed to be limiting for herbivores, leading to the prediction that herbivore population dynamics should generally be positively correlated with environmental N and P. However, to our knowledge this relationship has not been tested from local to continental scales. In contrast, to nutrient limitation hypotheses, our study reveals that high environmental N suppresses population growth of a dominant insect herbivore - the Australian Plague Locust. Moreover, phosphorus shows a non-linear...

Figure legend should read: "...number of outbreak (4) and nil (0) observations..." or similar such that the numbers are in parentheses and the descriptor words are not, for consistency

The table should have the unit (percent ground cover)

The table should specify units

Just in case this is meant to be the final link, it's broken

To make this sentence clearer: “..intake targets; large lines and points represent estimated margina means.”

I would add “Colors represent fertilizer treatment” in this sentence and add “fertilizer treatment” in the legend on the figure.

I think the time steps can be better explained here. Perhaps something like this sentence just before the last sentence: “Points along each line represent sampling time, including day 1, 2, 4, 6, and 9”

It would be good to indicate what the box plots represent in panels C and D too

I think this should be panel B-D

I think this should just be panel A

Minor detail, but good to be consistent with capitalizing the axis labels. For panel A, you might consider expanding it to be “Plant carbohydrate… and Plant protein” so readers can quickly distinguish it from the locust data.

It looks like panels C and D still have their coding title with the underscore

To be consistent with the earlier titles, I would label this “Field cage experiments”

Would be good to add the units for specific growth rate

“both” can be removed here