A New Species of the Genus Scincella Mittleman, 1950 (Squamata: Scincidae) from the Hengduan Mountains, Sichuan Province, Western China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The discovery and description of a new species undoubtedly merits publication. However, the submitted manuscript requires significant revision. Firstly, the authors need to proofread the introduction and materials and methods sections, as these contain numerous typos and errors in the spelling of taxa. They also need to check that the data in the text and Figure 2 are consistent. Additionally, it would be advisable to indicate genetic distances based on the COI molecular marker, as this marker is widely recognised as a barcode for species delimitation. I have noted the remaining comments in the file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

There are many spelling errors in the first two sections.

Author Response

Comments 1：Additionally, it would be advisable to indicate genetic distances based on the COI molecular marker, as this marker is widely recognised as a barcode for species delimitation.

Response：We would like to thank the reviewers for their valuable comments. Having noted that several recent taxonomic studies on the genus Scincella have employed 16S rRNA to indicate genetic divergence, we initially used this marker in our manuscript. In response to the reviewers' suggestion, we have now incorporated the genetic distance data represented by the COI molecular marker.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Report on animals-4032096: Liu et al., Scincella heishuiensis sp. nov.

 

 

Liu et al. describe a new species of Scincella from Sichuan, China. That’s certainly worth reporting, but there are a number of issues that need to be addressed before the paper can be accepted.

 

There are a number of minor things, easy to fix, and a few rather major issue that may need some work (see below).

 

First, there is still a large number of typos in the text, primarily many words separated by hypens, e.g. just on page 2 there are at least 4: charac-terized, sev-eral, ar-ea, de-scribed etc. Other typos include “calipe” (instead of caliper, line 157, “um-ber” instead of “number” (line 177), “CO1” instead of “COI” (line 240), “gemming”instead of gemmingeri ?? (line 254) – although it is mysterious to my why this is mentioned, as gemmingeri is a Central American species, “badenens” instead of “badenensis” (Fig. 2), “reviations” (??) and “paratypes” instead of “paratype” (Table 3 legend and headers), etc.

 

Second, page numbers are messed up: until page 5 they seem to be ok, but after that, there is no page number, then 2-5 again etc.

 

Third, genus and species names are sometimes in italics, often they are not. Please convert all to italics.

 

Fourth, there are a number of superfluous and unnecessary duplications, e.g. in the Simple summary, Liu et al. say (lines 2-21) “its species diversity being underestimated”, then repeating the same thing in lines 34-35, “species diversity of Scincella in the Hengduan Mountains is underestimated”. There are other such examples (highlighted in my annotated copy of the paper).

 

Fifth, Liu et al. mention “morphological differences” in the abstract without mentioning them. Just add a few sentences on how the species in the same region are different.

 

Table 1 should mention that these IDs are from Genbank (it’s mentioned in the text, but needs to be in the table legend too). Also, it may be better to include the coordinates instead of just place names.

 

Table 2 can be substantially compressed by leaving out the genus name (Scincella); in fact, it’s unclear what they values mean if only the genus is listed in a row.

 

In the taxonomic account, sometimes characters are spelled out, then they are not and only acronyms are used (e.g. F4L). I strongly suggest to spell out the characters on the first use as not all of them are in common use.

Regarding oviparity, there has been a discussion whether the term ovoviviparity should be used at all, although I do not want to make a decision, but the authors may want to revisit this issue (see Blackburn, D.G. 1994 Discrepant Usage of the Term Ovoviviparity in the Herpetological Literature. The Herpetological Journal 4 (3): 65-72).

 

Among the more major issues to be addressed are the following:

 

Figure 1. The map should show localities of other Scincella species in the region, not just type localities. I see that GBIF has more than 1000 occurrences for Scincella in China, so it would be important to check which ones are in this area. 

 

Figure 5. The scales are hard to see, may be that’s because it’s a low-resolution image; make sure to use high-resolution images, or probably better, please also provide drawings, either separately or in as a combination with the photo. Point out that this is the holotype.

 

Figure 6. Specimen number needs to be added.

 

Comparisons (lines 358 ff). Please summarize the diagnostic characters in a table, include at least all the species in the region. Given that Liu et al. only use a few mitochondrial sequences, 2 specimens is likely not enough to diagnose a new species, hence comparisons and localities (shown in the map, see above) need to be presented more clearly. On line 412 authors say that “no stable morphological diagnostic features [are] observed between them”, so this is even more important.

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

see comments to the authors

Author Response

Comments 1：First, there is still a large number of typos in the text, primarily many words separated by hypens, e.g. just on page 2 there are at least 4: charac-terized, sev-eral, ar-ea, de-scribed etc. Other typos include “calipe” (instead of caliper, line 157, “um-ber” instead of “number” (line 177), “CO1” instead of “COI” (line 240), “gemming”instead of gemmingeri ?? (line 254) – although it is mysterious to my why this is mentioned, as gemmingeri is a Central American species, “badenens” instead of “badenensis” (Fig. 2), “reviations” (??) and “paratypes” instead of “paratype” (Table 3 legend and headers), etc.

Response：We made a careful check and corrected any spelling and type mistakes across the entire text.

Comments 2：Second, page numbers are messed up: until page 5 they seem to be ok, but after that, there is no page number, then 2-5 again etc.

Response：It has been revised.

Comments 3：Third, genus and species names are sometimes in italics, often they are not. Please convert all to italics.

Response：It has been revised.

Comments 4：Fourth, there are a number of superfluous and unnecessary duplications, e.g. in the Simple summary, Liu et al. say (lines 2-21) “its species diversity being underestimated”, then repeating the same thing in lines 34-35, “species diversity of Scincella in the Hengduan Mountains is underestimated”. There are other such examples (highlighted in my annotated copy of the paper).

Response：It has been checked and corrected.

Comments 5：Fifth, Liu et al. mention “morphological differences” in the abstract without mentioning them. Just add a few sentences on how the species in the same region are different.

Table 1 should mention that these IDs are from Genbank (it’s mentioned in the text but needs to be in the table legend too). Also, it may be better to include the coordinates instead of just place names.

Table 2 can be substantially compressed by leaving out the genus name (Scincella); in fact, it’s unclear what their values mean if only the genus is listed in a row.

In the taxonomic account, sometimes characters are spelled out, then they are not and only acronyms are used (e.g. F4L). I strongly suggest spelling out the characters on first use as not all of them are in common use.

Regarding oviparity, there has been a discussion whether the term ovoviviparity should be used at all, although I do not want to make a decision, but the authors may want to revisit this issue (see Blackburn, D.G. 1994 Discrepant Usage of the Term Ovoviviparity in the Herpetological Literature. The Herpetological Journal 4 (3): 65-72).

Response：I have added some sentences to compare morphological differences between the new species and its congeners in the region.

In the table 1, we have added a note to indicate the sequence IDs which are sourced from GenBank. However, because most specimens were not collected by us, their detail collection localities are unavailable. The geographic coordinates and altitude for the type specimens are provided in the main text.

Full genus names are used in the description to prevent confusion with other genera that have similar abbreviations.

I used standard abbreviations for the morphological measurements in the descriptions.

The use of "ovoviviparity" was not precise. In light of recent studies, specifically Gao et al. (2019), I have adopted the term " lecithotrophic viviparity " to accurately describe one of the reproductive strategies in Scincella, as it is deemed more appropriate based on current understanding.

Among the major issues to be addressed are the following:

Figure 1. The map should show localities of other Scincella species in the region, not just type localities. I see that GBIF has more than 1000 occurrences for Scincella in China, so it would be important to check which ones are in this area. 

Figure 5. The scales are hard to see, may be that’s because it’s a low-resolution image; make sure to use high-resolution images, or probably better, please also provide drawings, either separately or in as a combination with the photo. Point out that this is the holotype.

Figure 6. Specimen number needs to be added.

Comparisons (lines 358 ff). Please summarize the diagnostic characters in a table, include at least all the species in the region. Given that Liu et al. only use a few mitochondrial sequences, 2 specimens is likely not enough to diagnose a new species, hence comparisons and localities (shown in the map, see above) need to be presented more clearly. On line 412 authors say that “no stable morphological diagnostic features [are] observed between them”, so this is even more important.

Response： On distribution ranges in Figure 1:

We try to do this, but on a small map, too many points make it look too cluttered. So, we did not add the occurrences for all species in this region.

• Limited Data: Except for Scincella potanini, all other Scincella species in the region are currently documented only from their type localities (single points).
• Geographic Scope: S. potanini's known range is confined and distant; Furthermore, S. tsinlingensis is geographically isolated from the Hengduan Mountains by extensive grasslands, and its type locality in Zhouzhi County, Shaanxi Province, lies at a considerable distance, further supporting its exclusion from the regional distribution map.
• Conclusion: As the distributions are precisely known and exceedingly narrow, depicting speculative range polygons is not supported by data. The point map accurately reflects the current, limited knowledge of their occurrences.

On figure 5: I have replaced the specimen photographs with higher-resolution images. However, due to the long-term preservation of the specimen in alcohol, the delineation between scales has become less distinct.

Thanks for the reviewer’s advice. First, relevant comparative data has been added to the table. Second, I have revised the ambiguous statement regarding diagnostic features.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Please provide specific latitude, longitude, and elevation information for the sampling sites at appropriate positions in the text.

L40-42: Morphology is not based on three mitochondrial gene fragments (12S, 16S, COI).

L93-196: Please list the specific sequences of these primers in 5'-3' format.

L225-226: "The uncorrected p-distance for 16S sequences was calculated using p-distance in MEGA v11.0[22]." Please add the main parameter settings.

L246, L257, L354: What does "(0)" mean?

L288-292: TaL or TAL? Please check throughout the entire manuscript. Additionally, abbreviations for other morphological indices need to be consistent as well.

L289-291: In the table notes of Table 3, please provide the full names for the abbreviations, or alternatively, list the full names directly in the table.

Author Response

Comments 1：Please provide specific latitude, longitude, and elevation information for the sampling sites at appropriate positions in the text.

Response：It has been done.

Comments 2：L40-42: Morphology is not based on three mitochondrial gene fragments (12S, 16S, COI).

Response：It has been reivsed.

Comments 3: L93-196: Please list the specific sequences of these primers in 5'-3' format.

Response：Detailed information on the primers have now been added in the main text.

Comments 4: L225-226: "The uncorrected p-distance for 16S sequences was calculated using p-distance in MEGA v11.0[22]." Please add the main parameter settings.

L246, L257, L354: What does "(0)" mean?

L288-292: TaL or TAL? Please check throughout the entire manuscript. Additionally, abbreviations for other morphological indices need to be consistent as well.

L289-291: In the table notes of Table 3, please provide the full names for the abbreviations, or alternatively, list the full names directly in the table

Response： 1. Detailed parameters for calculating genetic distances in MEGA11 have been added to the manuscript.

1. The formatting issue with the figure citation labels (marked as “(0)”), which was caused by file conversion, has been corrected.
2. I have decided to use “TAL” consistently throughout the text.

In Table 3, all abbreviated names have been updated to their full names.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

no comment