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Dear Dr. Hsu,
I am pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been formally accepted for publication in PeerJ.
Sincerely,
Daniel Silva
[# PeerJ Staff Note - this decision was reviewed and approved by Jennifer Vonk, a PeerJ Section Editor covering this Section #]
No comment
No comment
No comment
Dear Dr. Hsu,
After this first review round, all three reviewers believe your MS may be published in PeerJ after some review. Two of the reviewers decided on a minor review, while another one indicated the need for a Major Review. As soon as you can perform the changes proposed by the reviewers (pay special attention to the issues raised by reviewer #3), please do not forget to prepare a rebuttal letter to answer all issues raised by the reviewers.
Sincerely,
Daniel Silva
**PeerJ Staff Note:** Please ensure that all review, editorial, and staff comments are addressed in a response letter and that any edits or clarifications mentioned in the letter are also inserted into the revised manuscript where appropriate.
This paper includes interesting aspect of biogeography in Hainan, and I recommend its publication in PeerJ.
I have given some corrections in attached Word (PDF) file, and main comments are as follows:
1. I think there is no problem with the content, including the taxonomic treatment.
2. But, you have to add some references that appeared only in the text, and some papers listed in the References are not appeared in the text. Please check them again carefully.
3. The format of the References is not match the Author Guidelines. So I made a rough correction, but please check it again.
The paper meets the required standards.
The paper meets the required standards.
No comment.
No comment.
No comment.
This paper is particularly fascinating as it highlights the existence of two subspecies in a lycaenid butterfly distributed on a small island. Moreover, it underscores the distinctiveness in the processes leading to the formation of each subspecies. Due to these findings, I strongly recommend that this paper be published in this journal. However, I have some suggestions for improvement before publication:
Line 48
Shirozu should be replaced by Shirôzu.
Lines 105¬–106
(Lanfear, Frandsen, Wright, Senfeld, &Calcott, 2017) should be replaced by (Lanfear et al., 2017).
Lines 106–107
It appears that you conducted phylogenetic analyses employing both maximum likelihood (ML) with RAxML and Bayesian inference (BI) with MrBayes on CIPRES. However, the presented results seem to exclusively represent the outcome of the BI analysis (Fig. 2). If the analyses were also carried out using the ML method, it is recommended to either incorporate the bootstrap values derived from the ML method onto the nodes of the phylogenetic tree obtained from the BI analysis or provide a concise summary of the ML tree result in the text, although the topology is probably almost the same as the BI analysis.
Line 114
(Rambaut, Drummond, Xie, Baele, &Suchard, 2018) should be replaced by (Rambaut et al., 2018).
Line 126
Nijhout (1991) is not included in the References.
Line 159
Hebert et al. (2004) is not listed in the References.
Line 163
Igarashi (1997) and Uchida (1999) are not included in the References.
Line 164
Lu & Chen (2014) is not included in the References.
Lines 309–310
Drummond & Rambaut (2007) is listed in the References but not cited in the text.
Lines 333–335
Pons et al. (2006) is listed in the References but not cited in the text.
Lines 336–338
Puillandre et al. (2021) is included in the References but not cited in the text.
Lines 339–340
R Core Team (2022) is included in the References but not cited in the text.
Lines 360–362
Zhang et al. (2013) is listed in the References but not cited in the text.
Figure 2
Could you include subspecies names of the ingroup and species names of the outgroups in the phylogenetic tree, excluding the new subspecies name? This would be more helpful to many readers.
Figures 6 and 8
The “howarthi Koiwaya” is shown in the captions, but it is probably an error for howarthi Saigusa.
Table S1
YF180029 has an unintelligible “a” in the scientific name column, and the “a” should be removed.
The other corrections required are shown directly in the pdf.
Overall, I enjoyed the manuscript which is nicely written and the taxonomic part thorough. I also commend the authors for their effort to present high quality photographs and well-designed figures. My main and possibly only concern is the justification for such a nomenclatural change. The morphology appears very similar to other subspecies and the molecular evidence is more than thin. Looking at the phylogeny presented in figure 2, the vertical bars supposedly representing subspecies are largely unsupported within a vast polytomy. For instance, the blue grouping is not monophyletic and the yellow grouping, the one of interest, is placed with uncertainty within the polytomy. The haplotype networks suggest a similar view, where the green lineage is indeed quite distant from the rest of the populations and the latter are very close genetically (The Yinggeling population being very surprisingly closer to a population almost 2000km away than to one co-occurring in Hainan). I am not an expert in this group, and I do not have a strong opinion with respect to taxonomically describing this lineage as a new subspecies, however I find the evidence unconvincing. I suspect that the main criterion (genetic segregation) is based on an unresolved phylogeny and an indecisive network. Additional genetic data (even a single nuclear gene might suffice) is needed here to make an informed decision. As the authors repeatedly mention, the concept of subspecies itself is highly debated and because genetic differentiation is not a prerequisite for the description of such an entity, I am unable to reject this proposal in its entirety.
I hope that this review will nevertheless help to make an informed decision on this manuscript. I am unsure of whether this type of study falls within the scope of a generalist journal such as this one.
Minor comments:
- Please add a high-resolution geographic map to illustrate known ranges of each subspecies and collection locality
- In the discussion I find the last sentence inaccurate (lines 269-272). Populations do not need to be named to be of significant importance for our understanding of biodiversity patterns and processes.
- In the conclusions Ravenna nivea is not italicized
See above
See above
See above
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