Abstract
The order Archaeognatha was an ancient group of Hexapoda and was considered as the most primitive of living insects. Two extant families (Meinertellidae and Machilidae) consisted of approximately 500 species. This study determined 3 complete mitochondrial genomes and 2 nearly complete mitochondrial genome sequences of the bristletail. The size of the 5 mitochondrial genome sequences of bristletail were relatively modest, containing 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 2 ribosomal RNA (rRNA) genes, 22 transfer RNA (tRNA) genes and one control region. The gene orders were identical to that of Drosophila yakuba and most bristletail species suggesting a conserved genome evolution within the Archaeognatha. In order to estimate archaeognathan evolutionary relationships, phylogenetic analyses were conducted using concatenated nucleotide sequences of 13 protein-coding genes, with four different computational algorithms (NJ, MP, ML and BI). Based on the results, the monophyly of the family Machilidae was challenged by both datasets (W12 and G12 datasets). The relationships among archaeognathan subfamilies seemed to be tangled and the subfamily Machilinae was also believed to be a paraphyletic group in our study.
Highlights
Bristletails (Insecta: Archaeognatha) were primarily wingless insects inhabiting seashore or inland habitats all around the world, and they typically lived under rocks, logs, and the loose bark of standing trees
We described the complete mitochondrial genomes of 3 bristletails, Petrobiellus bannaensis, Allopsontus halawuensis, Allopsontus helanensis, and 2 nearly complete mitochondrial genome sequences, Pedetontinus luanchuanensis and Petrobiellus puerensis, all of which belonged to the family Machilidae
The complete mitochondrial genomes of P. bannaensis, A. halawuensis, and A. helanensis were obtained with the size of 15843 bp, 15532 bp, and 15538 bp, respectively (Table 2)
Summary
Bristletails (Insecta: Archaeognatha) were primarily wingless insects inhabiting seashore or inland habitats all around the world, and they typically lived under rocks, logs, and the loose bark of standing trees. The mitochondrial genome sequences were compared with those of other bristletails available in the GenBank database (Pedetontus silvestrii, Petrobius brevistylis, Trigoniophthalmus alternatus, Songmachilis xinxiangensis and Nesomachilis australica).The protein-coding gene sequences were used to construct datasets for phylogenetic analysis of Archaeognatha. To elucidate the phylogenetic relationships among basal Hexapoda, 35 sequences of the complete mitochondrial genomes were obtained from GenBank database (Table 1).
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