Ilex danxiaensis (Aquifoliaceae), a Distinct New Tree Species Endemic to Danxia Mountain in Guangdong Province, China, Based on Molecular and Morphological Evidence
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)
The article is familiar to me; I reviewed its previous version. I am satisfied that the authors listened to most of my suggestions. However, I have a few comments about the manuscript.
Line 62 – Perhaps it would be better to move the map to the "discussion" chapter to compare the ranges of closely related species.
Lines 92-104 – It would make more sense to move this part after getting the sequences.
Lines 95-98 – Partial repetition with 63-67.
Lines 102-104 – I don't understand about the addition of the new ETS marker. The authors added it to the dataset, although according to the table, they didn't get it for the new species. Why?
Line 111 – Is this a commercial PCR kit? You need to specify the manufacturer.
Line 127 – repli-cates.
Lines 174-192 – The clades are described in too much detail. It may be shortened or deleted.
Line 201 and others – Please check “hirsuta” and “hirsute”.
Lines 227, 346 – Not 3 genes – ETS is spacer. ITS consist of 2 spacers and one gene.
Author Response
Reviewer 1:
The article is familiar to me; I reviewed its previous version. I am satisfied that the authors listened to most of my suggestions. However, I have a few comments about the manuscript.
Thanks for your patient review and help us to improve our MS. We have carefully revised our MS based on your comments.
Line 62 – Perhaps it would be better to move the map to the "discussion" chapter to compare the ranges of closely related species.
Thanks for your suggestions. We prefer to keep the map in current place to indicate the type location of the new species. However, we added a part in the "discussion" chapter to compare the ranges of closely related species based on your suggestion.
Lines 92-104 – It would make more sense to move this part after getting the sequences.
Revised as your suggestions.
Lines 95-98 – Partial repetition with 63-67.
Repetitive part in Lines 95-98 has been deleted.
Lines 102-104 – I don't understand about the addition of the new ETS marker. The authors added it to the dataset, although according to the table, they didn't get it for the new species. Why?
In our last version, we reconstructed the Ilex tree using two markers and the support values of the backbone clades were really poor. In order to improve our Ilex tree, we add the new ETS marker based on Yang et al. (2022). All the ETS sequences were downloaded from NCBI. Therefore we treat ETS for the new species as missing data in our analyses.
Line 111 – Is this a commercial PCR kit? You need to specify the manufacturer.
The manufacturer was added.
Line 127 – repli-cates.
Revised.
Lines 174-192 – The clades are described in too much detail. It may be shortened or deleted.
Most of them were deleted.
Line 201 and others – Please check “hirsuta” and “hirsute”.
Revised.
Lines 227, 346 – Not 3 genes – ETS is spacer. ITS consist of 2 spacers and one gene.
All of them were revised in our new version.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)
Over all the MS is looking very interesting. the author did a good work and presented very well. but still I have few suggestions...
1) the author should mention source of identification. How the author claim that this is new species to be reported from China. because he/she did mention the specimen identification source.
2) The author should add one or more key characters of the genus Ilex.
3) References should be cross checked
4) Few citations are found very old so need to revise with recent one.
5) Discussion section should be placed after phylogenetic analyses to avoid reading confusion.
Author Response
Reviewer 2:
Over all the MS is looking very interesting. the author did a good work and presented very well. but still I have few suggestions...
Thank you very much for your comments. We have carefully revised our MS based on your comments. Please see our responses to your comments.
1) the author should mention source of identification. How the author claim that this is new species to be reported from China. because he/she did mention the specimen identification source.
The new species was discovered in a field investigation from Guangdong, China. We further confirmed it using molecular and morphological data. The type specimens of the new species were deposited in SYS.
2) The author should add one or more key characters of the genus Ilex.
A sentence “Ilex is characterized by unisexual flowers, axillary cymose inflorescences (sometimes reduced to one flower), and fruits containing 1–6(–23) pyrenes” was added to reflect the key characters of the genus Ilex.
3) References should be cross checked
Thanks. All of the authors have checked the references again.
4) Few citations are found very old so need to revise with recent one.
Some old citations were deleted or instead with the new one.
5) Discussion section should be placed after phylogenetic analyses to avoid reading confusion.
The phylogenetic tree was moved to results section before Discussion section.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This study presented the new species Ilex danxiaensis (Aquifoliaceae). The abstract presented in the article characterizes the subject, reflects the purpose of the study, the main content and novelty of the article. The introduction contains historical and theoretical data according to modern literary sources. The authors used current research methods. The article is provided with good quality color pictures, which makes it visually the most attractive.
I have several comments on the manuscript:
1) Line 24. In keywords “New taxon” to “New Species”
2) Lines 60–62. All internet links should be contain accession date.
3) Line 81. TIM1 1 G = TIM1+I+G
4) Line 75-76. What about sequence divergence in ITS sequences? Sometimes ITS secondary structure helps to align divergent sequences of genus members (ITS1 and ITS2 parts).
5) Authors deal with full ITS1+5.8S+ITS2 region or partial sequence? Not clear.
6) Line 76. What “independent” means in this case?
7) Figure 1. Letter “A” on the plate can be placed in circle like “B”.
8) Figure 3. The same problem with “A”.
9) Only terminal branches have support on the tree. Did you analyze datasets independently? Maybe these molecular markers have different phylogenetic signal? Please, compare your phylogeny results with the literature data (in 4.2 Phylogenetic analyses).
10) Figure 4 is not clear and very large. No groupings (sections / subsections / groups) are marked. Perhaps it's better to split it to 2 parts? Full figure you can move to supplementary materials.
11) There is a new work, which also includes a large data set. I think that it can be added in the manuscript and compare your phylogenetic results with those.
Yi Yang, Lei Jiang, En-De Liu, Wei-Li Liu, Li Chen, Yi-Xuan Kou, Deng-Mei Fan, Shan-Mei Cheng, Zhi-Yong Zhang, Hua Peng - Time to update the sectional classification of Ilex (Aquifoliaceae): new insights from Ilex phylogeny, morphology, and distribution - https://doi.org/10.1111/jse.12935
12) Can you provide distribution map for new and close related sequences? How ranges overlap?
13) Please, add GenBank accession numbers and information about the collection site of the new species to the “Supplementary Materials” table. Replace / by – for missing data.
14) Please, complete the list of references according to the MDPI examples.
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors,
considering that the journal Forests is a highly categorised international journal publishing papers in the field of forestry (and all related fields), the paper you have submitted does not thematically correspond to this journal
the description of new species, which includes the research you have carried out, is the subject of other journals
for this reason alone, I am of the opinion that the submitted Manuscript is not suitable for publication in this journal
