Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Four species of the genus the genus Odontotermes (Termitidae: Isoptera) of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan are valuable with the DNA sequences, but the morphometrics part is poor. "distribution" and "mapping" are exactly the same, please not use separate word in the title.

The following problems should be considered in the MS:

1. Page 5, lines 173-175:

COII sequences of O. obesus, O. horai, O. parvidens and O. assmuthi are submitted to GenBank for accession numbers (XXXXX-XXXXX).

 

Please make italic for Latin names; Please add the GenBank codes for the CoII sequences.

2. Latin names should be Italic. These include the following sub-topics:

 

3.2.1. Odontotermes parvidens Holmgren & Holmgren 1917 (Fig. 2)

3.2.2. Odontotermes obesus (Rambur, 1842) (Fig. 3)

3.2.3. Odontotermes horai Roonwal & Chhotani, 1962 (Fig. 4)

3.2.4. Odontotermes assmuthi Holmgren, 1913 (Fig. 5)

 

4. Table 1 should be reformatted. Otherwise it can display the content clearly.
5. Page 9 line 287: "Supplementary data" may not a sentence in the paragraph.
6. Please check page 13, line 383

      6. Please make italic for lines 385,392, 400,407

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 01, 

Please see the attachment. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Apart from some typing errors (highlighted), in this paper, there is some conceptual problem to be solved.

The authors consider termites within the order Isoptera, even if they cite Inward et al. (2007) who transferred them into the order Blattodea, considering them eusocial cockroaches.

The database Cockroach Species file already reports as valid the four species listed by the authors; thus the validity of them is not a novelty.

Further, Figures 7 and 8 with the phylogeny of Odontotermes found by the authors show that O. obesus probably belongs to more than one species.

There is a mismatch between Figures 3, 4, 5 and the species represented. Please, modify them.

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Likely the editorial platform mixed some figures and one of them is duplicated.

Author Response

Comment: Likely the editorial platform mixed some figures and one of them is duplicated.

Response: We have checked the figures and there is no duplication. All figures are its designated places. The possible reason for mixed figures could be error with document format. In our case it worked properly at third download. 

Thank you.