Confirmation of the local establishment of alien invasive turtle, Pseudemys peninsularis, in South Korea, using eggshell DNA

Seung-Ju Cheon; Md. Mizanur Rahman; Ji-A Lee; Seung-Min Park; Jae-Hong Park; Dong-Hyun Lee; Ha-Cheol Sung

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0281808

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionNovember 29, 2022
19 Dec 2022 Decision Letter - Tzen-Yuh Chiang, Editor PONE-D-22-32805Confirmation of the local establishment of alien invasive turtle, Pseudemys peninsularis, in South Korea using eggshell DNAPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Sung, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Please submit your revised manuscript by Feb 02 2023 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. 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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: Dear Authors, I read the MS titled "Confirmation of the local establishment of alien invasive turtle, Pseudemys peninsularis, in South Korea using eggshell DNA" with interest. Congratulations on a catchy article. I see the merit of the given study for further monitoring and research activities and it is obvious that the goal of the paper should be overlapped to future practice widely. The text is clearly written, and the analyses and outputs are well-presented and described. Just a few mine minor comments are highlighted directly in the PDF copy attached. Check the format of the listed references carefully. The comments and suggestions are not plenty and easy to follow. After incorporating the suggestions in the text, it is my great pleasure to recommend this MS for publication in PLOS ONE. ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. 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: No ******** [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: PONE-D-22-32805_reviewer.pdf https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0281808.r001
Revision 1
19 Jan 2023 Author Response Point-by-point response to academic editor and reviewer’s comments Response to comments from the academic editor Comment 1: Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf Response: Thanks for your comment. We have revised the manuscript accordingly. We have modified the symbols of the author’s affiliation, font sizes of headings and subheadings, spacing of the first lines of all paragraphs, formatted tables, etc., following the guidelines. Comment 2: Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments Section of your manuscript: "This work was supported by Korea Environment Industry & Technology Institute (KEITI) through the Project for the Development of Biological Diversity Threats Outbreak Management Technology (RE201807039), funded by the Korea Ministry of Environment (MOE). " We note that you have provided funding information that is not currently declared in your Funding Statement. However, funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form. Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows: "H-CS: RE201807039; Korea Environment Industry & Technology Institute. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript." Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. Response: We appreciate your suggestion. We have deleted the ‘Acknowledgements’ section and omitted funding information in the revised manuscript. We have included the amended 'Funding Statement' in the cover letter. Comment 3: In your Data Availability statement, you have not specified where the minimal data set underlying the results described in your manuscript can be found. PLOS defines a study's minimal data set as the underlying data used to reach the conclusions drawn in the manuscript and any additional data required to replicate the reported study findings in their entirety. All PLOS journals require that the minimal data set be made fully available. For more information about our data policy, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability. "Upon re-submitting your revised manuscript, please upload your study’s minimal underlying data set as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and include the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers within your revised cover letter. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. Any potentially identifying patient information must be fully anonymized. Important: If there are ethical or legal restrictions to sharing your data publicly, please explain these restrictions in detail. Please see our guidelines for more information on what we consider unacceptable restrictions to publicly sharing data: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. Note that it is not acceptable for the authors to be the sole named individuals responsible for ensuring data access. We will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide in your cover letter. Response: We highly appreciate your comment. We have modified the ‘Data Availability Statement’ accordingly. All relevant data are within the manuscript. Please, check line 287. Comment 4: We note that Figures 1a,1b and 1d in your submission contain [map/satellite] images which may be copyrighted. All PLOS content is published under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which means that the manuscript, images, and Supporting Information files will be freely available online, and any third party is permitted to access, download, copy, distribute, and use these materials in any way, even commercially, with proper attribution. For these reasons, we cannot publish previously copyrighted maps or satellite images created using proprietary data, such as Google software (Google Maps, Street View, and Earth). For more information, see our copyright guidelines: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/licenses-and-copyright. We require you to either (1) present written permission from the copyright holder to publish these figures specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license, or (2) remove the figures from your submission: a. You may seek permission from the original copyright holder of Figures 1a,1b and 1d to publish the content specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license. We recommend that you contact the original copyright holder with the Content Permission Form (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=7c09/content-permission-form.pdf) and the following text: “I request permission for the open-access journal PLOS ONE to publish XXX under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CCAL) CC BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Please be aware that this license allows unrestricted use and distribution, even commercially, by third parties. Please reply and provide explicit written permission to publish XXX under a CC BY license and complete the attached form.” Please upload the completed Content Permission Form or other proof of granted permissions as an "Other" file with your submission. In the figure caption of the copyrighted figure, please include the following text: “Reprinted from [ref] under a CC BY license, with permission from [name of publisher], original copyright [original copyright year].” b. If you are unable to obtain permission from the original copyright holder to publish these figures under the CC BY 4.0 license or if the copyright holder’s requirements are incompatible with the CC BY 4.0 license, please either i) remove the figure or ii) supply a replacement figure that complies with the CC BY 4.0 license. Please check copyright information on all replacement figures and update the figure caption with source information. If applicable, please specify in the figure caption text when a figure is similar but not identical to the original image and is therefore for illustrative purposes only. The following resources for replacing copyrighted map figures may be helpful: USGS National Map Viewer (public domain): http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer/ The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth (public domain): http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/sseop/clickmap/ Maps at the CIA (public domain): https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html and https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/cia-maps-publications/index.html NASA Earth Observatory (public domain): http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/ Landsat: http://landsat.visibleearth.nasa.gov/ USGS EROS (Earth Resources Observatory and Science (EROS) Center) (public domain): http://eros.usgs.gov/# Natural Earth (public domain): http://www.naturalearthdata.com/ Response: We appreciate your concern. The maps and satellite images were generated using Arcmap 10.8.1 (ESRI, USA; https://support.esri.com/en/products/desktop/arcgis-desktop/arcmap/10-8-1), which is free to use and we referred the source in the figure caption. Please, check lines 108 – 113 of the revised manuscript. Comment 5: We note that you have referenced Unpublished in page 6 which has currently not yet been accepted for publication. Please remove this from your References and amend this to state in the body of your manuscript: (ie “Bewick et al. [Unpublished]”) as detailed online in our guide for authors http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-reference-style Response: Thanks for your advice. We have changed the reference following your suggestion. Please, check Table 1 of the revised manuscript. Comment 6: Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. Response: We appreciate your suggestion. We have checked the references and confirmed their complete and correctness. Besides, we have added one additional reference suggested by the reviewer. Please, check lines 314 – 316. We have mentioned that in the response of reviewer’s comments too. Response to comments from the Reviewer: Comment 1: I read the MS titled "Confirmation of the local establishment of alien invasive turtle, Pseudemys peninsularis, in South Korea using eggshell DNA" with interest. Congratulations on a catchy article. I see the merit of the given study for further monitoring and research activities and it is obvious that the goal of the paper should be overlapped to future practice widely. The text is clearly written, and the analyses and outputs are well-presented and described. Just a few mine minor comments are highlighted directly in the PDF copy attached. Check the format of the listed references carefully. The comments and suggestions are not plenty and easy to follow. After incorporating the suggestions in the text, it is my great pleasure to recommend this MS for publication in PLOS ONE. Response: We highly appreciate your reviewing efforts and positive comments. We have modified the manuscript as per your instructions and tried to resolve all issues you mentioned. Herein, we are responding to each of your concerns point by point. Comment 2: ‘Not only, un wanted and undesired pets are also released’ Response: Thanks for your comment. We have added the information in our revised manuscript. Please, check line 27 – 28. Comment 3: ‘I suggest to add a brief note on the focused legislative regulations which are unfortunately ineffective in many cases. See: Patoka, J., Magalhães, A. L. B., Kouba, A., Faulkes, Z., Jerikho, R., & Vitule, J. R. S. (2018). Invasive aquatic pets: failed policies increase risks of harmful invasions. Biodiversity and Conservation, 27(11), 3037-3046.’ Response: We highly appreciate your advice. We have added the suggested brief note in the updated manuscript. Please, check lines 50 – 54. Comment 4: ‘Do you know how many turtle species are pet-trade in the country?’ Response: Thanks for your question. There are 110 turtle species are pet-trade in the country. We also have included the information in the manuscript. Please, check line 57 of the revised manuscript. Comment 5: ‘This info has to be moved to the results section.’ Response: We appreciate your suggestion. We have transferred it to the results section as per your suggestion. Please, check line 194 of the manuscript. Comment 6: ‘Since the captions have to be self-explaining, the full name is required in each caption where is the first mentioned.’ Response: Thanks for your valuable comment. We have modified the scientific name accordingly. Please, check lines 155 – 156. Comment 7: ‘Full name in this cell’ Response: Thanks for your advice. We have modified it accordingly. Please, check Table 1. Comment 8: ‘Unpublished’ Response: We highly appreciate your comment. We have corrected the word accordingly. Please, check Table 1. Comment 9: ‘The full name here’ Response: Thanks for the suggestion. We have modified the scientific name. Please, check line 190 – 191 of the revised manuscript. Comment 10: ‘Italicized’ Response: Thanks for the advice. We have modified the scientific name. Please, check line 191 of the revised manuscript. Comment 11: ‘Italicized’ Response: Thanks for the suggestion. We have modified the scientific name. Please, check line 205 of the revised manuscript. Comment 12: ‘abbreviated Graptemys’ Response: We appreciate your suggestion. We have abbreviated the scientific name. Please, check line 206 of the revised manuscript. Comment 13: ‘Here, P. concinna is adequate’ Response: Thanks for the advice. We have modified the scientific name. Please, check line 211 of the revised manuscript. Comment 14: ‘abbreviated Graptemys’ Response: Thanks for the suggestion. We have modified the scientific name. Please, check line 211 – 212 of the revised manuscript. Comment 15: ‘Italicized’ Response: We appreciate your advice. We have italicized the scientific name. Please, check line 254 of the revised manuscript. Comment 16: ‘Check all these species if cited above or not. If yes, use the genus abbreviation.’ Response: Thanks for the advice. We have checked and modified the scientific names accordingly. Please, check lines 257 – 258 of the revised manuscript. Comment 17: ‘Change i to y.’ Response: Thanks for the comment. We have rechecked the whole manuscript and corrected the scientific names if needed. Herein, we have abbreviated the genus name following your previous suggestion. Please, check line 257 of the revised manuscript. Comment 18: ‘including alien and also invasive species.’ Response: We appreciate your suggestion. We have modified the sentence accordingly. Please, check lines 280 – 281 of the revised manuscript. Comment 19: ‘Change m to M.’ Response: We highly appreciate your comment. We have modified the name accordingly. Please, check line 292 of the manuscript. Comment 20: ‘Change y to Y.’ Response: Thanks for the advice. We have corrected it accordingly. Please, check line 302of the revised manuscript. Comment 21: ‘Italicized.’ Response: We appreciate your suggestion. We have corrected the scientific name and turned it into italicized. Please, check line 308 of the revised manuscript. Comment 22: ‘Family, thus regular and not italicized.’ Response: Thanks for the comment. We have turned it in to non-italicized regular font. Please, check line 308 of the revised manuscript. Comment 23: ‘Just article No. 12:13143.’ Response: We appreciate your comment. We have corrected accordingly. Please, check line 315 of the revised manuscript. Comment 24: ‘- or –?’ Response: We highly appreciate your comment. We have corrected accordingly. Please, check line 319 of the revised manuscript. Comment 25: ‘dtto.’ Response: Thanks for your comment. We have corrected accordingly. Please, check line 327 of the revised manuscript. Comment 26: ‘Change c to C and b to B.’ Response: We appreciate your advice. We have corrected accordingly. Please, check line 349 of the revised manuscript. Comment 27: ‘Why abbreviated.’ Response: We highly appreciate your comment. We have corrected accordingly. Please, check lines 410 – 411 of the revised manuscript. Comment 28: ‘Just article No. 410:2.’ Response: Thanks for your suggestion. We have corrected accordingly. Please, check line 435 of the revised manuscript. Comment 29: ‘Aquatic Organisms.’ Response: We appreciate your advice. We have corrected accordingly. Please, check line 453 of the revised manuscript. Comment 30: ‘Italicized.’ Response: We appreciate your comment. We have corrected accordingly. Please, check line 460 of the revised manuscript. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to editor and reviewers comments_MMR.doc https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0281808.r002
2 Feb 2023 Decision Letter - Tzen-Yuh Chiang, Editor Confirmation of the local establishment of alien invasive turtle, Pseudemys peninsularis, in South Korea, using eggshell DNA PONE-D-22-32805R1 Dear Dr. Sung, 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. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Tzen-Yuh Chiang 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 ******** 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 ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: N/A ****** 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 ****** 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 ****** 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: Dear Authors, I am satisfied with the revised version of your manuscript. The text was improved and all my comments and suggestions were incorporated into the text. Just correct the name of P. nelsoni in the Table 1. I have no further comments and congratulations to the catchy study. Sincerely ****** 7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. 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: Jiří Patoka ******** https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0281808.r003
Formally Accepted
7 Feb 2023 Acceptance Letter - Tzen-Yuh Chiang, Editor PONE-D-22-32805R1 Confirmation of the local establishment of alien invasive turtle, Pseudemys peninsularis, in South Korea, using eggshell DNA Dear Dr. Sung: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Tzen-Yuh Chiang Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0281808.r004

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