Phylogenetic position of the genera

Abstract

Many taxa in the Acrididae have controversial phylogenetic positions. A typical example of such controversies is the phylogenetic positions of the genera Caryandoides, Paratoacris, Fer and Longchuanacris, as well as some other related taxa, which were placed in Oxyinae by some authors, but were considered members of the subfamily Catantopinae by others. In this study, the complete mitogenomes of nine species were sequenced using next-generation sequencing, the characteristics of the newly sequenced mitogenomes are presented briefly, and the phylogeny of the Oxyinae and Catantopinae are reconstructed using a selected dataset of mitogenome sequences under maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference frameworks. The results show that the four controversial genera were consistently assigned to the subfamily Oxyinae rather than Catantopinae in all phylogenetic trees deduced from different datasets under different frameworks, and this finding is entirely consistent with their morphological characters. Therefore, it is more appropriate to place them in Oxyinae rather than Catantopinae. In addition, the results from our analysis also confirm the membership of the genus Apalacris in Coptacrinae rather than Catantopinae, and indicate the uncertainty in the phylogenetic position of the genus Traulia, and a more in-depth study is necessary to resolve the relationship of Traulia with other catantopine groups or Coptacrinae.