PONE-D-20-39875

Molecular phylogeny and species delimitation of the genus Tonkinacris (Orthoptera, Acrididae, Melanoplinae) from China

PLOS ONE

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Feng ZHANG, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

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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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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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5. Review Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: Wang et al. performed a molecular phylogeny and species delimitation of the genus Tonkinacris (Orthoptera, Acrididae, Melanoplinae) from China. I do think it’s an interesting study and is acceptable for publication in PLOS ONE. I just list below a few tiny stuffs which are needed to be double checking by the authors.

1. For the study of molecular phylogeny with the genus Tonkinacris, the sample from another suborder/family is totally superfluous.

2. Line 56: “phylogenetic relationship within the genus has never been explored until now.” change to “phylogenetic relationship within the genus Tonkinacris has never been explored until now.”

3. Line 57: “As for species identification of the genus,…”change to “For morphological species identification, …”

4. Line 82-83: “The two Japanese Tonkinacris species were excluded from this study…”change to “The two Japanese Tonkinacris species were not included in this study…”

5. Line 152: “with 10 million MCMC generations” change to “with 1×107 MCMC generations”

6. Line 153: “a burn-in of one million generations” change to “a burn-in of the first 10% generations”

7. Line 177: “Phylogeny revealed by BI analysis was similar to that by ML analysis.” change to “Phylogeny revealed by BI analyses was similar to that by ML analyses.”

8. Line 203: “less or slightly more than 1%” change to “less or slightly above 1%”

9. Line 327: “Although the two species of the genus Tonkinacris distributed in Japan…” change to “Although T. ruficerus and T. yaeyamaensis distributed in Japan…”

Reviewer #2: Although Tonkinaccris is a small genus with six species in the world, while only 4 species in China, this manuscript provides a detailed discussion of the genus in terms of morphological and molecular information. Therefore, I think this manuscript may be considered for publication. However, there are the following problems.

1) On the page 4,lines 162-165, “However, the monophyly for the genus Tonkinacris as well as the sepcies T. sinensis, T. meridionalis, Longgenacris maculacarina, Paratonkinacris vittifemoralis and Emeiacris maculata was not supported in the ML tree from ITS1 sequences”, I cannot understand. Since the sepcies T. sinensis and T. meridionalis belong to the genus Tonkinacris, why to use “as well as” ?

2) On the page 8, lines 343-346, the linguistic expression is problematic, because morphological character and molecular evidence are two distinct concepts. They can say that the differences in morphological character are not supported by molecular differences.

3) All figures are not clear. Low photo resolution.

4) Chinglish is more prominent in this manuscript. English speakers are requested to polish this draft.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Molecular phylogeny and species delimitation of the genus Tonkinacris (Orthoptera, Acrididae, Melanoplinae) from China

PONE-D-20-39875R1

Dear Dr. Huang,

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,

Feng ZHANG, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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