Integrative Taxonomic Reappraisal and Evolutionary Biogeography of the Most Diverse Freshwater Mussel Clade from Southeast Asia (Pseudodontini)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In this paper, Bolotov et al. review the taxonomic status of the species belonging to one of the most diverse Unionidae clades in Southeastern Asia, the tribe Pseudodontini by integrating morphological, biogeographical and molecular information. First of all, I must recognize that I am not an expert in using molecular tools with taxonomic aims. However, I am currently conducting a research project on ecosystem services provided by freshwater mussels, so I expect to provide some valuable comments which can improve the final quality of the manuscript.

GENERAL COMMENTS

The manuscript is overall well written and by compiling a commendable dataset sheds light on exciting and interesting questions using data from a remote region which can be considered an aquatic biodiversity hotspot. Therefore, I consider it deserves to be published after some clarifications/editing. In general, the mansucript looks too extensive and dense. It is true it provides a lot of information but I think it should be shortened to get a more attractive reading. I wonder if Table 1 could be transferred to supporting information or at least partially and present in Table 1 a synthesis of the current one. And the same with the section 3.4 of the results.

MINOR COMMENTS

Given that authors provide conchological evaluations and that it is well known that shell characteristics vary a lot at intraspecies level among individuals from different populations (because of substrate characteristics, flow, suspended solids, erosion, etc.) and even among individuals within the same population but differing in age, I consider necessary that authors explain these limitations when applying approaches based on conchological information in the introduction.

Also, given that Mann-Whitney test has been applied to look for significance differences in the shell dimensions, the method should be explained in the Materials and Methods section. Why this test and not any other? Please, explain the suitability of employing parametric or non-parametric tests according to the evaluated data.

I do not reach to fully understand what authors mean in the sentece "Several narrowly endemic species were not rediscovered recently on the Thai-Malay Peninsula and Borneo," (lines 52 and 53). Please, reword or explain the sense of the sentence.

Also, I consider that the two first paragraphs of the introduction are quite complex and tedious. For instance, I think that the third paragraph would constitue a best start for the introduction. Then, the data provided by the two first paragraphs can be added later.

Figures 3 to 8. I think that the figure inset letters should be placed in all cases at the left of the corresponding image.

Overall, the english writing is good, although there is a need to revise and edit some minor issues. For instance, in the abstract (line 22) the word "whose" should be replaced by "which".

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We are very grateful for your comments and suggestions regarding the manuscript. We emended the text and tried to answer all your comments. Answers on your comments are given in the attached file.

With kind regards,

Ivan Bolotov and Ekaterina Konopleva

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

I congratulation s for your work.

 

Please find below some suggestions:

1

I will include in the keywords the word proposal and elements..

Like: Integrative taxonomic reappraisal proposal and evolutionary biogeography elements of the most diverse freshwater mussel clade from South- 3 east Asia (Pseudodontini)

2

2.4.  We assigned two possible ancestral areas: Sunda Plate (A) and Burma Terrane (B) 179 [32].  PLEASE EXPLAIN BASED ON WHAT

 

3

The amplitude of such a work is normal. In this context of a long text a synthetic conclusions final text at the end of the paper highlighting the main new information, discoveries and proposals can help the readers to focus.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your comments and suggestions regarding the manuscript. We tried to answer to all of them. The answers on your comments are given in the attached file.

With kind regards,

Ivan Bolotov and Ekaterina Konopleva

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf