Comparison of Chemosensory Receptor Genes in the Antennae Transcriptomes of Sirex noctilio and Sirex nitobei (Hymenoptera: Siricidae)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The work presented by Wu et al., identified a full repertoire of chemosensory receptors in Sirex noctilio and Sirex nitobei. In total, 41 ORs, 13 IRs, and 8 GRs of S. noctilio and 43 ORs, 16 IRs, and 10 GRs of S. nitobei were identified and their expression patterns were intensively studied. The identification of the chemosensory receptors paves the way for further functional analysis of the chemosensory coding basis of these two insects. The writing is overall good, but I implore the authors to go through the ms meticulously before the resubmission. I have no concerns with experimental data, and only give some minor suggestions on some overt mistakes. Congrats to the authors.

In abstract: Line 35: A total of 62 and 69 chemosensory receptors…

Line 38-Line 40: Obscure expression. Please reword.

Line 103-105: Lack of references

Line 129: Italicize D.melanogaster

Line 250: clustered

Figure 7. The resolution of this figure appears not enough as when I zoom in on the graphs, they became blurred. Moreover, the words in this figure are way smaller so it could pose some confusion. I suggest a rearrangement of the panels to make the words bigger.

Line 410-414. Please use past tense.

Line 434. Delete “for” in this sentence.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your review, we have responded in detail in file Revise 1.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The content of the manuscript is relatively substantial, and RT-PCR and qPCR have been carried out, which is very complete. This MS provides a foundation for further exploration of the functions of two wood wasps’ olfactory receptors. However, I still have a few questions for the authors:

1. Were collected S.noctilio adults mated or unmated? This is critical for the insect reaction.

2. Is there an internal reference gene when performing qPCR experiments? The screening process of internal reference genes?

3. Were the RNA extraction experiments performed in triplicate biological replicates?

4. I noticed the character "f" in Figure 7, but the legend doesn't explain it. Similarly, there is "N/A".

5. Now most of the analysis of transcriptome expression is through TPM expression. Why do the authors still use FPKM value to display the expression?

6. The GenBank accession number of the amino acid sequence referenced by the phylogenetic tree should be listed.

7. Why are the forefoot, middle foot, and hind foot of the woodwasps in the same sample? Why are the front, middle and back of the woodwasp in the same sample? "Biology of a putative male aggregation-sex pheromone in Sirex noctilio (Hymenoptera: Siricidae) https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0244943" describes the hind legs as the main site for releasing pheromones. Should the legs be refined?

Author Response

Thank you very much for your review, we have responded in detail in file Revise 2.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you very much for your review, we have responded in detail in file Revise 3.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx