Mitochondrial Genomes of two Lycosa spiders (Araneae, Lycosidae): Genome Description and Phylogenetic Implications

Abstract

We sequenced the complete mitochondrial genomes of Lycosa shansia, and Lycosa singoriensis by combining Sanger and next-generation sequencing methods and analyzed the sequenced genomes in order to explore the phylogenetic placement and the mitogenome composition and evolution of these species. The mitochondrial genome of L. shansia was 14,638 bp, whereas that of L. singoriensis was 13,686 bp. The type of genes and direction of the coding strand present in the mitogenomes were the same as those in other species of Lycosoidea, including two ribosomal RNA genes (rRNAs), 22 transfer RNA genes (tRNAs), and 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs). The mitogenomes of the two species exhibited negative AT and positive GC skews. This indicated that the nucleotide compositions of the mitogenomes of L. singoriensis and L. shansia tended to be T and G. Both the mean and median values of Ka/Ks of ATP8 were the highest among the 13 protein-coding genes, indicating that it might have evolved more rapidly than the other protein-coding genes in both species. ATP8 may have undergone more relaxed selection constraints and accumulated more mutations. In addition, many tRNAs lacked T and D stem loops; a few had no acceptor stems. The assessed species were recovered nested within Lycosidae with high support. The present findings will be useful for future studies on the mitogenome evolution of spiders.