Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Lines 17-18
Authors wrote: "However, data on the occurrence and distribution of members of the genus Lichtheimia are scarce in Korea".

Please, describe the knowledge about the distribution of genus Lichtemia in Asia or at a global scale. I deduce, there is no reason to suspect a significant difference between Korea and other countries. Mucorales species are well-known as a species with a wide range of distribution across the continents. For example, the same Lichtheimia species were isolated and identified at the species level in Asia, Europe, and South America.

I suppose the data on distribution collected from only one country could not be sufficient to draw conclusions. Thus I suggest the authors involve data on distribution of Lichtheimia species in other continents (e.g. Europe, South America). Such comparative studies would be far more interesting and valuable.

Well-prepared studies compared with a limited amount of published data can easily lead to inadequate conclusions. However, if the authors prepare the same study design but on the samples taken from different countries (in Asia) and different continents, then the results will be conclusive.

Moreover, the Authors compared DNA sequences for several taxa represented by only a few samples/sequences for single species. I am not sure, that it is sufficient for taxonomic studies. Does the data presented in table 1 include all available sequence data Lichtheimia species, regardless of the country of origin? If yes, there are only 2-4 representatives for each species, in addition to the data presented by this study itself. 

This is an additional argument for preparing the studies at a large scale than a single country.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors

The paper is well-prepared. The morphological and phylogenetic data are presented very well. I recommended some minor comments which shown in the PDF file.

Kind regards

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you for your valuable comments and suggestions. We have made some corrections and clarifications according to the comments. The changes were presented in red color in the revised manuscript.

With kind regards,

Hyang Burm Lee PhD

Dept. of Agricultural Biological Chemistry,

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences,
Chonnam National University, Gwangju 61186, South Korea

+82-062-530-2136 (TEL); +82-062-530-2139 (FAX); E-mail: hblee@jnu.ac.kr