All reviews of published articles are made public. This includes manuscript files, peer review comments, author rebuttals and revised materials. Note: This was optional for articles submitted before 13 February 2023.
Peer reviewers are encouraged (but not required) to provide their names to the authors when submitting their peer review. If they agree to provide their name, then their personal profile page will reflect a public acknowledgment that they performed a review (even if the article is rejected). If the article is accepted, then reviewers who provided their name will be associated with the article itself.
Thank you for accepting the suggested edits and clarifying the few remaining queries.
[# PeerJ Staff Note - this decision was reviewed and approved by Nigel Andrew, a PeerJ Section Editor covering this Section #]
I have made many minor edits in the Word document which PeerJ editorial staff will send to you shortly. Attached is a PDF version of that file. These are mostly edits for grammar but there are also a few comments where I seek clarification about what meaning you intended and whether the edited text still conveys the message you wanted to give.
Please accept all changes or make further edits if necessary, and resubmit both the changes tracked version and a cleaned version with all comments removed and formatting changes accepted. At that point the manuscript should be acceptable.
As reviewer 1 points out, the manuscript is now of an acceptable scientific standard, but there is still some copy editing work to be done. Please read through the manuscript thoroughly and correct grammatical errors, including those pointed out by reviewer 1.
Dear authors,
The last version of your text looks like applicable, but there are some problems with construction of sentences, especially in the context. For instance, lines 71-74. Besides, in some cases, you use capital letters in very strange places (e.g., line 18 - Sequenced). Please, check your manuscript carefully again and again.
No comments
No comments
I proposed to check some points as well:
lines 61–62 — Gomphocerinae was designated as the subfamily Jacobson in 1905 and as the taxon of the family rank by Fieber, 1853. This means that the priority belongs to Fieber.
lines 68 — estridulatory > stridulatory
line 86 — bio-net > food chains (?)
lines 278–279 — In 1921, in description of this genus and its type species, B.P. Uvarov included it in the subfamily Locustidae (now orthopterists usually call this taxon Oedipodinae = Locustinae) and noted that it resembles the genus Sphingonotus. In 1951, Bey-Bienko and Mistshenko placed Orinhippus in the subfamily Oedipodinae as well. This means your results support an old idea.
The authors have determined the mitochondrial genomes of three grasshopper species and conducted a comprehensive phylogenetic analysis focusing on the morphological characters of antennae. Detailed analysis of the mitochondrial genome structure and the divergence time analysis are also conducted. Although some minor corrections are needed, the paper as a whole is worthwhile.
The phylogenetic analysis I pointed out in the previous review has been appropriately revised.
Many corrections and improvements have been made to the manuscript, especially in other reviewers' comments.
Reviewer 1 is concerned about over-interpreting the data with reference to the evolution of clubbed antennae, and they point out concerns about the distribution of this character state within Acridoidea and over-reliance on a discredited classification of this taxon. Reviewer 2 makes valid points about conducting more robust multi-partition analyses using IQ-TREE.
**PeerJ Staff Note:** Please ensure that all review, editorial, and staff 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.
No comments
Dear authors,
The main impression of your manuscript is ambivalent. The molecular part is fine, and there are no significant problems. However, your attempts to discuss the so-called clubbed antennae evolution produce a lot of issues.
The main issues are associated with the role of clubbed antennae in acridid life and their significance for acridid taxonomy, evolution and ecology.
1. If we check the general diversity of Acridoidea, we find that there are quite different taxa with clubbed antennae, e.g.:
— Tristridae (e.g. Atacamacris)
— Ommexechidae (e.g. Illapelia)
— Acrididae: at least Egnatiinae, Eremogryllinae, Locustinae (= Oedipodinae), and Gomphocerinae (in the conventional sense)
plus some genera of Gomphomastacinae (Eumastacoidea).
1.1. Across Gomphocerinae (in the conventional sense) the species with the clubbed antennae are in the tribes:
— Eritettigini
— Amblytropidini
— Chrysochraontini
— Gomphocerini s.str.
— Chorthippini
— Stenobothrini
— Arcypterini
— Scyllinini
— Cybolacrini
etc.
1.2. Jago (1971) listed members of at least 19 gomphocerine genera (in the conventional sense) with more or less clubbed antennae.
1.3. Several gomphocerinae genera include species with either filiform or clubbed antennae (e.g. Eritettix, Syrbula, Stenobothrus, Omocestus, Mesasippus). In some genera (e.g. Stenobothrus), males and females may have different antennae.
1.4. That means significance of antennae form in grasshopper taxonomy may be overestimated. Commonly the form of antennae may be used to differ some genera and some species inside a genus (see Uvarov, 1966; Jago, 1971; Vickery, 1997, etc.). Not more.
1.5. That also means that clubbed antennae are resulted from convergent evolution. I am sure that almost all orthopterists are confident in this idea. And there are no needs to prove it.
2. The next problem is resulted from some misinterpretation of volume of the subfamily Gomphocerinae:
2.1. The subfamily Gomphocerinae was erected by Jacobson in 1905. He noted that its members can have quite different antennae, from filiform to ensiform or clubbed. Later the main part of orthopterists usually followed and follow the original definition of the subfamily (sometimes with some clarification) (Uvarov, 1966; Jago, 1971; Otte, 1981; Dirsh, 1975; Vickery, 1997; Sergeev, Storozhenko, Benediktov, 2019, 2020, etc.).
2.2. In the 1979–1980th, Yin tried to re-arrange taxonomic systems of grasshoppers. However, in many cases, the only trait was used to differ taxa. These ideas were criticized by many orthopterists (Mistshenko, Storozhenko, 1990; Storozhenko, 1991; Sergeev, 1995; Vickery, 1997, etc.). As a result, many Yin's suggestions were not supported by the international community (see, for instance, the Orthoptera Species File). For example, Yin tried to limit the volume of Gomphocerinae (or Gomphoceridae in several publications) by presence of clubbed antennae. As a consequence, "Fauna Sinica" (Yin, Xia et al.) includes the family Gomphoceridae:
— Egnatinae (Egnatioides and Egnatius)
— Gomphocerinae (Gomphocerus, Gomphoceroides, Aeropus, Dasyhippus, Myrmeleotettix, Aeropedelloides, Aeropedellus, Mesasippus)
— Orinhippinae (Orinhippus).
However, morphology (including organization of genital structures), karyology and comparative analysis of molecular data on both nuclear and mitochondrial genomes show that Egnatiinae is the part of the so-called catantopine group (the former subfamily Catantopinae) (Johnston, 1956; Shumakov, 1963; Sergeev, Bugrov, 1988). The genus Orinhippus is the evident member of the tribe Sphingonotini (Bey-Bienko, 1951; Sergeev, 1995; Sukhikh et al.,2019) (and your data support its position — see Figure 7).
2.3. Morphological, karyological and molecular data show that Gomphocerinae includes grasshoppers with quite different antennae — from filiform to clubbed or ensiform (e.g., Sukhikh et al., 2019; Hawlitschek et al., 2022, etc.). Commonly species with clubbed antennae are inside groups with filiform antennae. And again this means that clubbed antennae evolved separately in different taxa.
Generally speaking, one of the main theses of authors — convergent evolution of clubbed antennae — is well known. The second one — opportunity to use the forms of antennae in taxonomy — is disputable, especially relative to higher taxonomy of grasshoppers.
The goals of the text should be described in more explicit manner, because there are no evident relationships between mitochondrial genomes and antennae forms.
I suggest to re-arrange your text according these comments, to describe goals of your studies in more explicit manner, to remove (where possible) some discussion concerning relationships between clubbed antennae and mitochondrial genomes, and to describe (true) new results.
Less significant notes:
— In the first and second paragraph, authors try to discuss significance of antennae, but, first, diversity of antennae is not limited by filiform, ensiform and clubbed antennae, because they may be very long or very short, they may have some additional parts and so on, and the sensilla may be distributed differently, and second — in the main text, authors discuss only clubbed antennae, not sensilla distribution. Generally speaking, adaptive significance of clubbed antennae of grasshoppers is not evident. These paragraphs should be shortened or removed.
— In the second paragraph, you should follow only one taxonomic system, because the Gomphocerinae systems in conventional sense and according Yin are quite different.
— There is the problem of accuracy of values. There are some estimations that look like too exact. For instance, (lines 170–171 and so on) there are no sense in time estimation (e.g. 114.9712 Mya = 114 971 200 years ago — nobody can estimate separating time with such accuracy, "115 Mya" will be enough). The same is true for percentages — all values should be checked (e.g. if you have 50 samples, accuracy more than 2% has no sence).
— line 300–301 — the genus Aeropedellus is widely distributed over the north parts of Eurasia and North America (sometimes Aeropedellus variegatus (in Eurasia) or Ae. arcticus (in N America) is the only specie in the tundras) and in some mountains as well
— you should check alphabetic orders of all references.
The authors have determined the mitochondrial genomes of three grasshopper species and conducted a comprehensive phylogenetic analysis focusing on the morphological characters of antennae.
Detailed analysis of the mitochondrial genome structure and the divergence time analysis are also conducted.
Although some minor corrections are needed, the paper as a whole is worthwhile.
From what I can see, the analysis is well done, and the description is adequate. However, the molecular phylogenetic analysis part needs to be revised. The phylogenetic analysis is based on mitochondrial 13 PCGs, but they are treated as a single partition. Each gene should be treated separately. IQ-Tree and its software suite, which is also used in this paper, can also estimate the best partition and substitution model. Both software used for ML and BA tree reconstruction can treat multiple partitions and independent substitution models in each partition.
no comment
All text and materials provided via this peer-review history page are made available under a Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.