Downloaded from http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/ on June 17, 2017 Two species of Southeast Asian cats in the genus Catopuma with diverging histories: an island endemic forest specialist and a widespread habitat generalist Riddhi P. Patel, Daniel W. Förster, Andrew C. Kitchener, Mark D. Rayan, Shariff W. Mohamed, Laura Werner, Dorina Lenz, Hans Pfestorf, Stephanie Kramer-Schadt, Viktoriia Radchuk, Jörns Fickel and Andreas Wilting Article citation details R. Soc. open sci. 3: 160350. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.160350 Review timeline Original submission: Revised submission: Final acceptance: 24 May 2016 12 September 2016 13 September 2016 Note: Reports are unedited and appear as submitted by the referee. The review history appears in chronological order. Review History RSOS-160350.R0 (Original submission) Review form: Reviewer 1 Is the manuscript scientifically sound in its present form? Yes Are the interpretations and conclusions justified by the results? Yes Is the language acceptable? Yes Is it clear how to access all supporting data? Accession numbers for some mtDNA genome sequences are still required (Bay cat). © 2016 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited Downloaded from http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/ on June 17, 2017 2 Do you have any ethical concerns with this paper? No Have you any concerns about statistical analyses in this paper? No Recommendation? Accept with minor revision (please list in comments) Comments to the Author(s) Review: This paper combines extensive molecular and morphological datasets for the Asian golden cat with smaller but comparative datasets for the Bornean bay cat in order to review the evolutionary history of these taxa at both inter- and intra-specific levels. The analyses conducted are appropriate and comprehensive, resulting in a convincing pattern of molecular and morphological variation throughout the Asian golden cat distribution, as well as insights into the variation of bay cats. The molecular data in particular represents a significant amount of work in the generation and analysis of whole mtDNA genomes form multiple archived samples. The paper is very well constructed, easy to understand and the standard of English is high throughout, although some grammatical/usage errors are present. The paper will be of interest to a broad range of scientists working on felids, Southeast Asian biogeography and evolutionary reconstruction. It is also a potentially important contribution to the conservation management of the focal species. I would therefore be happy to recommend the paper for submission once the authors have had the opportunity to consider and address my remarks below. Major comment The pelage results for the bay cat are interesting as, following the authors’ argument for the Asian golden cat, the results do seem to suggest that the bay cat was exposed to / adapted to multiple environmental conditions. However the authors’ state throughout that the bay cat is an evergreen forest specialist and hence was less able to adapt to environmental change. If pelage variation does imply selection for different habitat types, then the implication is that the bay cat may not have been restricted to the tropical evergreen habitat postulated in the distribution analysis. Which in turn has implications for the hypothesized speciation event and the overall narrative regarding restricted bay cat distribution during the LGM. Can the authors please provide some comment or explanation to this point as there appears to be some contradiction between the data and its interpretation in the two species. Minors comments Abstract Line 23 ‘…between the two species of ~3.16 M…’ Introduction It would be useful to define what constitutes the ‘Sunda Shelf’ Downloaded from http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/ on June 17, 2017 3 P3L15 delete ‘Here,’ P4 L24 Is there a reference for the size difference observations? P4 L37 ‘In the current study…’ P6 L44 P6 L46 P6 L51 haplotype (singular) patterns (plural) ‘…as these are poorly…’ P8 L33 multi-co-linearity P9 L31 What percentage of bases were replaced with N’s due to depth < 5X? P9 L47 The results of a haplotype network are discussed but the method is not described in the earlier section. Please add a brief description to the Methods. Figure 3 Please explain branch colouration in legend. P12 L46 ‘…likely took…’ P13 L2 …these ‘potential early arriving’ Asian… P13 L51 …’colonizations’… P14 L4 …’relative to their Sundaic…’ P14 L1-6 The statement regarding selection as the definite reason for less pelage variation in the southern range is probably a little strong. Founder effects could also account for some of this pattern. I would suggest “…may be the result of selection…”, particularly given the results for the bay cat pelage (many morphs, one habitat type – see above) P15 L56 ‘habitats were confined…’ Review form: Reviewer 2 (Thomas von Rintelen) Is the manuscript scientifically sound in its present form? Yes Are the interpretations and conclusions justified by the results? Yes Is the language acceptable? Yes Is it clear how to access all supporting data? Supplementary material adequate and clear. Do you have any ethical concerns with this paper? No Downloaded from http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/ on June 17, 2017 4 Have you any concerns about statistical analyses in this paper? No Recommendation? Accept with minor revision (please list in comments) Comments to the Author(s) The conclusions of the paper seem generally well justified. I cannot follow the argumentation of the authors regarding "multiple colonization events on Sumatra". There are two clear-cut clades, one containing all Sumatran samples plus the one from Peninsular Malaysia, and I fail to see how this can provide evidence for multiple colonization events of Sumatra since the Toba eruption. The evidence of the "tree-like pattern of Sumatran samples in the haplotype network" is at best circumstantial. In a similar vein, "the sample from Peninsular Malaysia, which is genetically positioned between samples from Mainland Indochina and those from Sumatra", is the basalmost branch in the Sumatra clade, which is consistent with a colonization of Sumatra from the North, but in the absence of more samples from Malaysia this is all that can be said about this, I believe. I would urge the authors to rephrase these two section of the discussion and back down a bit on the "multiple colonization" scenario. One minor issue here: I do not see the point of midpoint rooting - please root the tree in Fig 3 using the bay cat as outgroup. And how can a single tree be reconstructed using both ML and BI, as the caption implies? Finally, one last minor point: when referring to museum samples (Fig. S2), please cite them using the full museum accession numbers including the institutional acronym, not just part of the number calling it "specimen ID" - this should read, e.g., ZMB Mam. 91060... Decision letter (RSOS-160350) 02-Sep-2016 Dear Mrs Patel On behalf of the Editors, I am pleased to inform you that your Manuscript RSOS-160350 entitled "Two species of the genus Catopuma with diverging histories: An island endemic forest specialist and a wide-spread habitat generalist." has been accepted for publication in Royal Society Open Science subject to minor revision in accordance with the referee suggestions. Please find the referees' comments at the end of this email. The reviewers and handling editors have recommended publication, but also suggest some minor revisions to your manuscript. Therefore, I invite you to respond to the comments and revise your manuscript. • Ethics statement If your study uses humans or animals please include details of the ethical approval received, including the name of the committee that granted approval. For human studies please also detail whether informed consent was obtained. 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When submitting your revised manuscript, you will be able to respond to the comments made by the referees and upload a file "Response to Referees" in "Section 6 - File Upload". You can use this to document any changes you make to the original manuscript. In order to expedite the Downloaded from http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/ on June 17, 2017 6 processing of the revised manuscript, please be as specific as possible in your response to the referees. When uploading your revised files please make sure that you have: 1) A text file of the manuscript (tex, txt, rtf, docx or doc), references, tables (including captions) and figure captions. Do not upload a PDF as your "Main Document". 2) A separate electronic file of each figure (EPS or print-quality PDF preferred (either format should be produced directly from original creation package), or original software format) 3) Included a 100 word media summary of your paper when requested at submission. Please ensure you have entered correct contact details (email, institution and telephone) in your user account 4) Included the raw data to support the claims made in your paper. You can either include your data as electronic supplementary material or upload to a repository and include the relevant doi within your manuscript 5) Included your supplementary files in a format you are happy with (no line numbers, vancouver referencing, track changes removed etc) as these files will NOT be edited in production Once again, thank you for submitting your manuscript to Royal Society Open Science and I look forward to receiving your revision. If you have any questions at all, please do not hesitate to get in touch. Kind regards, Alice Power Editorial Coordinator, Royal Society Open Science [email protected] on behalf of Kevin Padian Subject Editor, Royal Society Open Science [email protected] Associate Editor Comments to Author: Associate Editor: 1 Comments to the Author: Two reviewers have examined your paper and although they find it interesting and the conclusions are generally justified there are some fairly substantial 'minors' that you will need to address in your revision for it to be accepted. Please outline your responses in detail. Reviewer comments to Author: Reviewer: 1 Comments to the Author(s) Review: This paper combines extensive molecular and morphological datasets for the Asian golden cat with smaller but comparative datasets for the Bornean bay cat in order to review the evolutionary history of these taxa at both inter- and intra-specific levels. Downloaded from http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/ on June 17, 2017 7 The analyses conducted are appropriate and comprehensive, resulting in a convincing pattern of molecular and morphological variation throughout the Asian golden cat distribution, as well as insights into the variation of bay cats. The molecular data in particular represents a significant amount of work in the generation and analysis of whole mtDNA genomes form multiple archived samples. The paper is very well constructed, easy to understand and the standard of English is high throughout, although some grammatical/usage errors are present. The paper will be of interest to a broad range of scientists working on felids, Southeast Asian biogeography and evolutionary reconstruction. It is also a potentially important contribution to the conservation management of the focal species. I would therefore be happy to recommend the paper for submission once the authors have had the opportunity to consider and address my remarks below. Major comment The pelage results for the bay cat are interesting as, following the authors’ argument for the Asian golden cat, the results do seem to suggest that the bay cat was exposed to / adapted to multiple environmental conditions. However the authors’ state throughout that the bay cat is an evergreen forest specialist and hence was less able to adapt to environmental change. If pelage variation does imply selection for different habitat types, then the implication is that the bay cat may not have been restricted to the tropical evergreen habitat postulated in the distribution analysis. Which in turn has implications for the hypothesized speciation event and the overall narrative regarding restricted bay cat distribution during the LGM. Can the authors please provide some comment or explanation to this point as there appears to be some contradiction between the data and its interpretation in the two species. Minors comments Abstract Line 23 ‘…between the two species of ~3.16 M…’ Introduction It would be useful to define what constitutes the ‘Sunda Shelf’ P3L15 delete ‘Here,’ P4 L24 Is there a reference for the size difference observations? P4 L37 ‘In the current study…’ P6 L44 P6 L46 P6 L51 haplotype (singular) patterns (plural) ‘…as these are poorly…’ P8 L33 multi-co-linearity P9 L31 What percentage of bases were replaced with N’s due to depth < 5X? Downloaded from http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/ on June 17, 2017 8 P9 L47 The results of a haplotype network are discussed but the method is not described in the earlier section. Please add a brief description to the Methods. Figure 3 Please explain branch colouration in legend. P12 L46 ‘…likely took…’ P13 L2 …these ‘potential early arriving’ Asian… P13 L51 …’colonizations’… P14 L4 …’relative to their Sundaic…’ P14 L1-6 The statement regarding selection as the definite reason for less pelage variation in the southern range is probably a little strong. Founder effects could also account for some of this pattern. I would suggest “…may be the result of selection…”, particularly given the results for the bay cat pelage (many morphs, one habitat type – see above) P15 L56 ‘habitats were confined…’ Reviewer: 2 Comments to the Author(s) The conclusions of the paper seem generally well justified. I cannot follow the argumentation of the authors regarding "multiple colonization events on Sumatra". There are two clear-cut clades, one containing all Sumatran samples plus the one from Peninsular Malaysia, and I fail to see how this can provide evidence for multiple colonization events of Sumatra since the Toba eruption. The evidence of the "tree-like pattern of Sumatran samples in the haplotype network" is at best circumstantial. In a similar vein, "the sample from Peninsular Malaysia, which is genetically positioned between samples from Mainland Indochina and those from Sumatra", is the basalmost branch in the Sumatra clade, which is consistent with a colonization of Sumatra from the North, but in the absence of more samples from Malaysia this is all that can be said about this, I believe. I would urge the authors to rephrase these two section of the discussion and back down a bit on the "multiple colonization" scenario. One minor issue here: I do not see the point of midpoint rooting - please root the tree in Fig 3 using the bay cat as outgroup. And how can a single tree be reconstructed using both ML and BI, as the caption implies? Finally, one last minor point: when referring to museum samples (Fig. S2), please cite them using the full museum accession numbers including the institutional acronym, not just part of the number calling it "specimen ID" - this should read, e.g., ZMB Mam. 91060... Author's Response to Decision Letter for (RSOS-160350) See Appendix A. AppendixDownloaded A from http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/ on June 17, 2017 Responses to reviewer’s comments: Reviewer: 1 Major comment The pelage results for the bay cat are interesting as, following the authors’ argument for the Asian golden cat, the results do seem to suggest that the bay cat was exposed to / adapted to multiple environmental conditions. However the authors’ state throughout that the bay cat is an evergreen forest specialist and hence was less able to adapt to environmental change. If pelage variation does imply selection for different habitat types, then the implication is that the bay cat may not have been restricted to the tropical evergreen habitat postulated in the distribution analysis. Which in turn has implications for the hypothesized speciation event and the overall narrative regarding restricted bay cat distribution during the LGM. *** We agree that our phrasing has been misleading. In contrast to the Asiatic golden cat the colour morphs of the Bay cat are less distinctive and represent more a gradient from reddish to greyish. We also think that all three colour variants of the bay cat are actually associated with closed evergreen forests and red, brown and greyish black are all colourations which provide in a darker shaded environment a better camouflage. In contrast the much brighter reddish and spotted Asiatic golden cat morph are clearly adaptations to more open forest conditions. We have therefore rephrased the discussion about the bay cat to avoid and confusion here. This section reads now: L384-391: “For the bay cat, three different coat colours (red, brown and greyish black) have been recorded intermixed from different regions of Borneo. In contrast to the Asiatic golden cat’s coat colour morphs, which are highly contrasting and distinctive, the bay cat’s polymorphism is tonally neutral. Close examination of the pelage of the greyish black morphs show an underlying reddish coloration (e.g., FMNH 8378) and we suspect that some individuals may change coloration during their lives as has been recorded for the polymorphic African golden cat, Caracal aurata (Pocock, 1907). Given that most of the bay cat’s likely mammalian predators and prey have dichromatic vision, this means that these colour variants are not visually distinct from each other, especially in the low light levels of closed-canopy forests. Therefore, this observation supports the species distribution projections, which suggested that the bay cat has likely been restricted to more homogenous evergreen rainforests during the Plio- and Pleistocene. In contrast the brighter Asiatic golden cat morphs could be seen as an adaptation to open deciduous forests.” Downloaded from http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/ on June 17, 2017 FMNH 8378 – photos above show full colour and mixture of red and greyish black coloration. Photos below show same imags with colour removed so that red and greyish black appear tonally similar. Minor comments Abstract Line 40 ‘…between the two species of ~3.16 M…’ *** L40 we added ‘the’ in Abstract Introduction It would be useful to define what constitutes the ‘Sunda Shelf’ ***L 59-62 we added this information and the sentence reads now: In particular the Sunda Shelf which comprises Peninsular, Sumatra, Borneo, Java, Bali and other smaller islands is of great interest to evolutionary biologists [1], as alternating glacial and interglacial periods resulted in the emergence and submergence of land bridges between the larger landmasses [2–4]. L58 delete ‘Here,’ *** L58 we deleted ‘Here,’ Downloaded from http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/ on June 17, 2017 L91 Is there a reference for the size difference observations? The size differences were observed by JH Mazák and AC Kitchener (see graph below). The data used for this graph will be used for another study and are so far not fully analysed. Therefore these data cannot be integrated in this manuscript. We added however the reference to the unpublished data in the manuscript (JH Mazák and ACK unpublished data). L99 ‘In the current study…’ *** L99, we change the phrase to ‘In the current study…’ L165 haplotype (singular) *** L165, We change it to haplotype L166 patterns (plural) *** L166, We change it to patterns L169 ‘…as these are poorly…’ *** L169, we changed it to ‘these’ L217 multi-co-linearity Downloaded from http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/ on June 17, 2017 *** L217 We did not change this, because we think the term multicollinearity is a common term in regression analysis. L243 what percentages of bases were replaced with N’s due to depth < 5X? *** L243 now we added this number, each sample has 1-2% of N’s due to a sequencing depth < 5x The results of a haplotype network are discussed but the method is not described in the earlier section. Please add a brief description to the Methods. *** L162-163 we added NETWORK method description in method section. Figure 3 Please explain branch colouration in legend. ***We have explained branch colouration in figure legend. L334 ‘…likely took…’ *** L334 we changed the order of the words to ‘…likely took…’ L341 …these ‘potential early arriving’ Asian… *** L341 we changed the phrase to ‘potential early arriving’ L363 …’colonizations’… *** L363 we corrected the word to ’colonizations’ L373 …’relative to their Sundaic…’ *** L373 we changed the phrase to ’relative to their Sundaic’ in L372-374 The statement regarding selection as the definite reason for less pelage variation in the southern range is probably a little strong. Founder effects could also account for some of this pattern. I would suggest “…may be the result of selection…”, particularly given the results for the bay cat pelage (many morphs, one habitat type – see above) *** L372-374 we edited the sentence as suggested. It reads now: “The pronounced morphological diversity of Asian golden cats on the mainland relative to their Sundaic conspecifics may be the result of selection over a long time and can be interpreted as local adaptation to the more diverse habitats [53]” L435 ‘habitats were confined…’ *** L435 we corrected the word to ‘were’ Downloaded from http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/ on June 17, 2017 Reviewer: 2 Major comment The conclusions of the paper seem generally well justified. I cannot follow the argumentation of the authors regarding "multiple colonization events on Sumatra". There are two clear-cut clades, one containing all Sumatran samples plus the one from Peninsular Malaysia, and I fail to see how this can provide evidence for multiple colonization events of Sumatra since the Toba eruption. The evidence of the "tree-like pattern of Sumatran samples in the haplotype network" is at best circumstantial. In a similar vein, "the sample from Peninsular Malaysia, which is genetically positioned between samples from Mainland Indochina and those from Sumatra", is the basal-most branch in the Sumatra clade, which is consistent with a colonization of Sumatra from the North, but in the absence of more samples from Malaysia this is all that can be said about this, I believe. I would urge the authors to rephrase these two section of the discussion and back down a bit on the "multiple colonization" scenario. ***The position of the Malaysian sample changed, depending on the rooting and the network. The new tree rooted with the bay cat show that this sample is positioned between samples from Mainland Indochina and Sumatra. This does not contradict that it is the basalmost branch to all Sumatran samples. We have clarified this by referring to the network and figure 3. This sentence reads now: L349-353 “A probable post-Toba expansion of Asian golden cats from southern China and northern Indochina, areas which were less or not affected by Toba, is also supported by the sample from Peninsular Malaysia, which is the basal-most branch of the Sundaic clade and based on the network (Figure S1) and phylogenetic tree (Figure 3) genetically positioned between samples from Mainland Indochina and those from Sumatra.” We also agree that in the absence of additional samples from Peninsular Malaysia it is difficult to conclude the “multiple colonizations”. We still think that a single colonisation event would likely have resulted in a much more star-like pattern of the Sumatran samples, however we agree that the found pattern could have also been explained by a directional e.g. north-to-south expansion of golden cats in Sumatra. Therefore we have rephrased this section and it reads now: L361-367 “The tree-like pattern of the Sumatran samples in the haplotype network (Fig. S1) indicated either a directional north-to-south expansion of golden cats after a single colonization. However, multiple colonizations events on Sumatra from the Peninsular Malaysia cannot be excluded. To test these scenarios additional samples from Peninsular Malaysia and from Sumatra with precise locality information would be needed. A haplotype radiation from a few founders in Central Sumatra would have resulted in a star-like pattern [51] and is thus rather unlikely.” Minor comment I do not see the point of mid-point rooting - please root the tree in Fig 3 using the bay cat as outgroup. Downloaded from http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/ on June 17, 2017 ***We changed the rooting of the phylogenetic tree in Figure 3 and used the Bay cat as an outgroup How can a single tree be reconstructed using both ML and BI, as the caption implies? *** L638 RaXML and MrBayes had identical topologies. The shown phylogenetic tree is based on RaXML. We have edited the Figure 3 caption and it reads now: “Maximum Likelihood phylogenetic tree derived from Asian golden cat mitogenomes using the Bay cat (Catopuma badia) as outgroup. The Bayesian phylogenetic tree provided identical topologies. Support values for nodes were obtained from ML analysis (RaXML) and Bayesian inference (MrBayes). Only values > 80% (RaXML) and > 0.9 (posterior probability values for Bayesian trees) are shown. Smaller values are denoted with *. Haplotypes and their origins is listed separately (additional file 1).” Finally, one last minor point: when referring to museum samples (Fig. S2), please cite them using the full museum accession numbers including the institutional acronym, not just part of the number calling it "specimen ID" - this should read, e.g., ZMB Mam. 91060... ***L 670 Figure S2, We added full museum accession numbers including the institutional acronyms. It now reads as “Different coat colour morph of Asian golden cat; four different coat colours with two different geographic locations each: spotted morph a) Sikkim-India, specimen ID: ZMB Mam. 91060 b) Tibet, specimen ID: ZMB Mam. 57913; black morph c) Yunnan- China, specimen ID: ZMB Mam. 43467 d) Sikkim- India, specimen ID: ZMB Mam. 91059; red morph e) Sumatra, specimen ID: NMNL Mam. 1732 f) Siam-Indochina, specimen ID: ZRC Mam. .4.1067; brown morph g) Tibet, specimen ID: AMNH Mam. 28250 h) Fujian-China, specimen ID: AMNH Mam. 84393”
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