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As all of the reviewers' concerns have been addressed, the manuscript is now acceptable for publication.
[# PeerJ Staff Note - this decision was reviewed and approved by Michael Wink, a PeerJ Section Editor covering this Section #]
Overall a thorough article and worthy of publication. More detail is needed in methods about settings and parameters used in the various software packages used for molecular analyses. The article needs some attention to English language editing. Reviewers have provided some editing suggestions in their marked-up PDF files so please incorporate these edits.
[# PeerJ Staff Note: Please ensure that all review and editorial comments are addressed in a response letter and any edits or clarifications mentioned in the letter are also inserted into the revised manuscript where appropriate. #]
[# PeerJ Staff Note: The Academic Editor has identified that the English language must be improved. PeerJ can provide language editing services - please contact us at copyediting@peerj.com for pricing (be sure to provide your manuscript number and title) #]
The manuscript language is clear; literature references are cited according to the current knowledge in the field, and figures are well-organized and prepared. The presented results are based on a sufficient amount of data.
Methods are described in detail, the knowledge gaps are clearly stated, and the research has been performed according to the standards in the field.
All data on the collected species are provided along with the genomic results. The authors describe a new species and provide the first mitogenome for the Pselaphinae tribe. Data are publicly available.
The manuscript will be a valuable addition to our knowledge, and I strongly recommend it for publication. There are only some minor comments/corrections that I marked directly in the file (attached).
The manuscript describes a new species of Pselaphine rove beetles and provides 3 mitogenomes of this species, which are the first to be produced for the tribe (Metopiasini). The paper is generally well written with a couple of minor unambiguous parts that I have highlighted. The reference, figures and tables are good and appropriate. The raw data is shared and deposited in open access online repository.
Firstly the paper goes on to describe the new species, which is nicely done except for some minor comments added in the pdf. After it explains how 3 mitogenomes were produced, which again is good. My only comment here is to better report the library preparation steps, so that it is clear whether the three samples were indexed and pooled at the sequences stage. Lastly it goes on to perform a phylogenetic analysis with the available mitogenome for the whole family. I don't really see the use of this analysis, as it only places the genus in Pselaphinae, which is already pretty clear. Instead I would have looked at COI or other markers found within mitogenomes, where more data is present. Perhaps such approach could be added to shed more light on the placement of the species/genus.
Species and their description is still lacklustre in many parts of the world, especially in species rich tropical region. Therefore it is always nice to see additional species being well described. An issue in these regions is the little reference genetic data available. This is also clear here, where nothing was matching the mitogenomes of the newly described species. With the open access publication of the data it opens for the possibility of others getting a match in the future, so a clear step in the right direction.
* There are a few issues with the language, I have tried to comment/edit where this is happens.
* Please add a little more details about the library preparation steps. Especially whether samples were sequenced together through indexing.
* Geoereferencing is given in UTM coordinates. I would suggest to also add decimal degrees, as this makes it much easier to enter into various mapping sources.
* In the diagnosis it is not quite clear how the new species is distinguished from other Metopiellus species that are not M. crypticus.
* In the diagnosis it is also not quite clear how this species is clearly part of the genus Metopiellus, this is discussed in the discussion, but a short explanation could be added to diagnosis as well.
* It looks like not much genetic data is matching these newly generated mitogenomes. I would add some such on COI barcodes or other relevant marker in GenBank BLAST (https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi) and BOLD ID engine (https://www.boldsystems.org/index.php/IDS_OpenIdEngine) , to see if you could get better matches that could be used . It may not be that you get matches, but this is interesting as well, as it may represent very unique genetic data, such result should be highlighted.
The structure of the article is correct. The language is understandable. The figures are informative, but one is not quoted in the text.
In addition, I suggest adding molecular alignment as supplement material.
All my comments are added in pdf.
For better repeatability of analyses, please attach a script with all steps.
No comment
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