Species Separation within, and Preliminary Phylogeny for, the Leafhopper Genus Anoscopus with Particular Reference to the Putative British Endemic Anoscopus duffieldi (Hemiptera: Cicadellidae)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

No other comments.

Author Response

The reviewer has no further points to raise and is offering to sign his/her response.

Reviewer 2 Report

I regret to inform that without the addition of the requested information, the manuscript is not acceptable and I suggest rejecting considering requested changes will not be made. Some information was provided was in reference to other works, however, any study should be stand-alone, where all the info needed within the text to accurately understand the question and assess the results.  One shouldn't have to obtain multiple other studies to interpret your work.  They are there as references, not part of the dataset.

Again, the data presented is good and I don't doubt the findings, but how the paper is presented is not acceptable as an independent work.  I suggest taking my previous comments into consideration and submitting a new manuscript.

Author Response

We have already responded to the points referred to by this reviewer in the first round. We understand his/her point of view but he/she is thinking about a much wider study, beyond the scope of our paper. Our intentions are clearly stated in the Abstract. Nevertheless, we provided guidance in the first review round, regarding where the information requested by this reviewer could be found in already published sources. Data needed for our analyses was contained within our manuscript.

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you very much for updates and revisions. Nice work and important contribution to knowledge, congratulations.

Check the text again, for misspellings, missing commas, etc.

Check again the references, e.g., correct authorship:
Lis, J.A. & Lis, B. & Ziaja, D. (2016). In BOLD we trust? A commentary on the reliability of specimen identification for DNA barcoding: A case study on burrower bugs (Hemiptera: Heteroptera: Cydnidae). Zootaxa. 4114. 83-86. 10.11646/zootaxa.4114.1.6.

Author Response

We were very please to receive the highly supportive comments made about the importance of our paper by this reviewer.

We were asked to look again at the reference by Lis et al. in the reference list. We incorrectly assumed that the form in which it is written in the Web of Science would be correct, but that was not so. We have corrected the reference by recognising which is the surname and which the first name of the third author (Ziaja, D.). We would advise the reviewer to get this changed by the Web of Science.

We have been through the paper in detail to track down a few further minor typos and corrected them.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

General comments:

1. Taking into account all my comments to the MS, I suggest to change the title as follows: “Preliminary studies on species separation within the leafhopper genus Anoscopus with particular reference to the putative British endemic A. duffieldi (Hemiptera: Cicadellidae)”.
2. Each Latin name of the taxon (at generic and species level) should be, at least once, accompanied by the name of its author and the date of description.
3. Several sentences should be accompanied by proper citations (see remarks to the text).
4. The authors should explain why the COI sequences of two specimens of A. assimilis available at GenBank (MK188564, MK816310) have not been utilized in their analyses (see: Albre J., Gibernau M. 2019. Diversity and temporal variations of the Hemiptera Auchenorrhyncha fauna in the Ajaccio region (France, Corsica). Annales de la Société entomologique de France (N.S), 55 )6): 497–508; doi.org/10.1080/00379271.2019.1688189).
5. Authors should provide the GenBank accession numbers for all newly obtained sequences (it’s standard in such kind of studies to deposite the newly sequenced genes in the GenBank); the MS without such data shouldn’t be published.
6. The alignment matrix should be deposited in a public repository what will make verification of the analysis results possible.
7. Because no taxonomic decisions were proposed (i.e., species synonymization) the authors should explicitly explain why?

Other detailed comments were put directly to the text.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Overall this is a well done study with convincing data.  However, there are some things that I feel should be added to both clarify certain aspects and also strengthen others.

1) Need to clearly state what the difference between Aphrodes and Anoscopus is.  This should be articulated in the introduction

2) I think a table will be helpful listing all the described species from both Aphrodes and Anoscopus, with an asterisk perhaps, next to species moved from Aphrodes to Anoscopus.  This will help clarify the text.

3) Photographs of all the species analyzed is needed along with photographs of the aedeagus of each species.

4) Members of the genus Aphrodes need to be included for comparison.  This will help establish what the morphological differences are.  Outgroups (representatives of Stroggyloccephalus and Planaphrodes) are needed to help establish what level of variability is expected among genera in the subfamily so that the relationship of Aphrodes and Anoscopus can be properly assessed.

5) 28S would be valuable to include, especially if the other genera are included.

Overall, good study and you have very strong evidence that A. duffieldi, albifrons and limicola are the same species.  The variability you are observing is consistent with intraspecific variability for many different organisms for the region you have analyzed for COI.  With some photos/morphological additions, I think you can confidently make the case for synonymizing the three species.  The other species you analyzed appear to be valid species.  Because of this you should consider removing the discussion on hybridization.  It is a moot point considering you have evidence they are the same species.  Two true species cant hybridize and produce viable offspring anyway.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Very important and highly welcome contribution to the knowledge of highly variable and difficult for determination taxa of Aphrodinae leafhoppers. From this attempt not only a new knowledge of Anoscopus but some ideas and directions of future research are resulting. Please check the text against the typos.

One important point - the comma separating the name of author and year of taxon description is obligatory. Please follow the rules of nomenclature, not the bad, but more and more common style, which results in a lot of mess in nomenclature.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx