Gene characteristics of the complete mitochondrial genomes of Paratoxodera polyacantha and Toxodera hauseri (Mantodea: Toxoderidae)

Le-Ping Zhang; Yin-Yin Cai; Dan-Na Yu; Kenneth B Storey; Jia-Yong Zhang

doi:10.7717/peerj.4595

Gene characteristics of the complete mitochondrial genomes of Paratoxodera polyacantha and Toxodera hauseri (Mantodea: Toxoderidae)

PeerJ. 2018 Apr 19:6:e4595. doi: 10.7717/peerj.4595. eCollection 2018.

Authors

Le-Ping Zhang¹, Yin-Yin Cai¹, Dan-Na Yu^{1

2}, Kenneth B Storey³, Jia-Yong Zhang^{1

2

3}

Affiliations

¹ College of Chemistry and Life Science, Zhejiang Normal University, Zhejiang, China.
² Key lab of Wildlife Biotechnology, Conservation and Utilization of Zhejiang Province, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, Zhejiang, China.
³ Department of Biology, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

Abstract

The family Toxoderidae (Mantodea) contains an ecologically diverse group of praying mantis species that have in common greatly elongated bodies. In this study, we sequenced and compared the complete mitochondrial genomes of two Toxoderidae species, Paratoxodera polyacantha and Toxodera hauseri, and compared their mitochondrial genome characteristics with another member of the Toxoderidae, Stenotoxodera porioni (KY689118). The lengths of the mitogenomes of T. hauseri and P. polyacantha were 15,616 bp and 15,999 bp, respectively, which is similar to that of S. porioni (15,846 bp). The size of each gene as well as the A+T-rich region and the A+T content of the whole genome were also very similar among the three species as were the protein-coding genes, the A+T content and the codon usages. The mitogenome of T. hauseri had the typical 22 tRNAs, whereas that of P. polyacantha had 26 tRNAs including an extra two copies of trnA-trnR. Intergenic regions of 67 bp and 76 bp were found in T. hauseri and P. polyacantha, respectively, between COX2 and trnK; these can be explained as residues of a tandem duplication/random loss of trnK and trnD. This non-coding region may be synapomorphic for Toxoderidae. In BI and ML analyses, the monophyly of Toxoderidae was supported and P. polyacantha was the sister clade to T. hauseri and S. porioni.

Keywords: Extra trnA and trnR; Intergenic regions; Mitochondrial genome; Phylogenetic relationship; Toxoderidae.

Grants and funding

This research was supported by Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation grant Y18C040006, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China grants 31370042 and 31000966 to JY Zhang. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.