Lost Collections: Preserving Historical Biodiversity Memory—The Case of Peiroleri’s Manuscript Catalogue
Ivan Löbl
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The present work points to the fundamental role of natural history museums as archives of life that reveal also information about the past and present taxa and their and, in addition, provide base for unambiguous nomenclature needed for transfer of information. The author highlights also the usefulness of documents preserved in museum as source of historical information. He uses data from un unpublished catalogue credited to Peiroleri to exhibit the origin of numerous records on Coleoptera published in the 19th century.
Thus, the publication of Giachino’s work is recommended. However, I see a linguistic problem: in my opinion the English is not adequate and text has to be re-written, possibly with assistance of an individual who masters English.
Author Response
The paper has been entirely revised with assistance of an individual who masters English.
Reviewer 2 Report
General comments
This paper touches on a significant issue regarding the importance of historical collections preserved in natural history museums. It presented a case of the Peiroleri insects collection, an example of how reputedly lost collections might have survived inside other collections. Such a problem seems very important, mainly when collections include descriptive types. Therefore, I suggest publishing this paper in the “Diversity” journal.
However, I have some reservations about the English text of this MS. Though the manuscript is reasonably well-written, many sentences are too long and hard to read. I have corrected only some language mistakes (directly in the text).
Detailed comments
Two papers in which the species of the genus Platypus (i.e., P. erythrocephalus, P. peirolerii, and P. depressus) were described should be cited in the adequate sentence of the text (lines: 43-45) and mentioned in the “References”.
Other detailed comments were put directly into the text.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
The paper has been entirely revised with assistance of an individual who masters English.
The citations requested have been added (lines 43-44).
The references requested have been added.
