Referee 2's Review (Eric Warrant):

**********
N.B. These are the comments made by the referee when reviewing an earlier version of this paper. Prior to publication, the manuscript has been revised in light of these comments and to address other editorial requirements.
*********

The authors present, in a detailed manner, the transfer characteristics of locust photoreceptors at different light levels and temperatures. The paper is well written, the methods and results are clearly presented, and the discussion is adequate. The main strength of the story is that both white noise and naturalistic stimuli have been used to assess the same problem, providing a substantial addition to our knowledge of photoreceptor physiology. There are however some issues that need to be considered before publication.

Major comments:

The paper is extremely long. Any cutting would be beneficial. I think that the results section in particular can be made far less wordy. The manuscript, together with supplementary material, constitutes nearly 110 pages, and if published in its entirety, may be daunting.

Methods section:
Were the recordings made during the animal's day or night states, according to their circadian rhythm? This is an important point since locusts are well known for dramatic changes in receptor morphology and physiology from day to night (e.g. D.S. Williams 1981, 1983).

Results section:
The results section contains data from one cell only. The validity of the results and the discussion would be considerably strengthened from the inclusion of data from further cells. Strangely, such data exist in Supplemental Table 1. I believe that moving this table (and associated descriptions and discussion) to the actual manuscript would strengthen the story markedly.

Supplementary material:
The supplementary material should not contain primary data that is necessary for the discussion and conclusions of the paper. This should be incorporated into the main manuscript.

Minor comments:

P4 line 10: remove "other physical factors" and use just ambient temperature since that is what you investigate.

P5 line 3: "regardless of any possible cell-to-cell variability" is confusing. Cell-to-cell variability should not affect the ability to draw robust conclusions. Rewrite sentence.

P7 line 13: Define Q10 the first time it is used.

P13 line 9: I think you should have a reference [66] since you are actually naming the Shannon formula.

P19 line 6: Most compound eyes are not limited by diffraction (although many do approach this limit). Instead, most are limited by the rhabdom diameter and the focal length. See Stavenga's papers from 2004.

P20 line 14: Should Fig 5F be 2F?