Forgotten for Decades: Revalidation and Redescription of Raiamas harmandi (Sauvage, 1880) (Cypriniformes: Danionidae) from the Mekong River Basin
, Thaung Naing Oo 6 and Xiao-Yong Chen 1,2,3,*Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear Authors,
I had the opportunity to review the manuscript, and I found it very interesting. It has the potential to be considered for publication. However, there are a few issues that need to be addressed, which are outlined in the attached PDF. I suggest you implement these revisions.
Best regards,
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Minor corrections are needed.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear Authors,
I have carefully reviewed your manuscript, which presents an integrative study combining morphological and molecular data to robustly support the validity of R. harmandi as a valid species.
The study is well-conceived, clearly written, and methodologically sound.
I extend my sincere congratulations to all authors for the quality of the work and the clarity of its presentation.
Kind regards,
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe paper is very well presented and the data are very important for a better knownledge of the group. I only suggest, if possible, to add a brief description of the genus to explain why fishes from Africa and Asia are in the same genus.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Reviewer 4 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThis paper is in good shape and the species is well-described. My main issue is that the diagnosis should serve as a guide to discriminate the species. A lot of the information is in the discussion, but would be better in the diagnosis. The species description should contain all of the information to successfully identify the species by itself. Other than that, I just have a few minor issues:
L44 large better than elongate
L49. occuring
L52. Better as: The evidence reveals...Adrican taxa, perhaps representing a separate genus.
L97. In constructions like these, "dorsal fin" and "anal fin" become complex adjectives and need to be hyphenated. So it is 'dorsal-fin rays'. Check throughout.
L100. articulate
L166. Fig. 2. These colors don't show up well in black and white. The dark orange and dark green are also not discernible in some forms of color blindness. I recommend using a color blindness simulator to check colors and/or using a color-blind safe color palatte. Black and white is important because many people print out papers in black and white. The general rule is to use two things to discriminate groups - color and something else. You can include the tissue numbers in the legend for example. The map colors were good.
https://www.color-blindness.com/coblis-color-blindness-simulator/
L192. Should give coordinates for localities.
L231 and elsewhere. Should they be axial scales instead of lobes?
L241. Should be Dorso-laterally (British English) or dorsolaterally (American English).
Table 3. You may wish to check the 1.9 in distance between nostril and eye. Seems like an outlier.
L255. There seems to be a mix of British and American English in the paper. You might want to check to make sure it is all one style. For example, it is color in AE and colour in BE. AE doesn't use a lot of hyphens while BE does (dorsoventrally vs dorso-ventrally).
L258. Gray is more common in AE and grey in BE, but both are correct. Just be consistent. I see you use 'grey' later.
L268. Remove 'time'.
L293. Remove 's' from 'literatures'.
L309. Should include page number of quotes.
L348. should be 'extends'.
L350. I would not call this cryptic diversity. It is that no one looked at them to see if they were different and these are clearly not cryptic differences that you have found. I think of cryptic diversity as being genetically divergent but not morphologically divergent. You can remove 'cryptic' and the sentence will be fine.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 5 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsI praise the authors for revalidating this neglected species. I think their findings can have positive impacts for conservation and/ or sustainable harvesting plans for these species. I think that the sampling design, collected data, analyses, and results are in alignment with the objective of the authors. Also, I found that the main text provides sufficient information for readers to easily understand the work of the authors. I just have some comments to clarify about the sequenced specimens, the title of the table 3, and the treatment of the body proportion data.
Lines 85–86: “In addition, two specimens of R. harmandi and two specimens of R. guttatus were recently collected in Yunnan Province for this study.”
Lines 110–111: “In the present study, eight tissue samples of Raiamas spp. from three river basins in three countries were selected for DNA extraction (Figure 1; Table 1).”
Comment: To me, these lines and Figure 1 conveyed the message that sequenced individuals were not examined. It may be necessary to add some footnote on Table 1 to indicate which individuals were both morphologically and genetically analyzed.
Table 3: “Morphometric measurements and counts of Raiamas harmandi and R. guttatus.”
Comment: I suggest changing the title to “Body proportions and counts …”. Additionally, I wonder whether upper-jaw length could be an additional character to discriminate R. guttatus and R. harmandi. Also, although the ranges of body proportions suggested that the two species cannot be easily discriminated based on these characters. What about a multivariate analyses of body proportions? Do the two species overlap in their scores?
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
