Characterization of the morphology and complete mitochondrial genomes of Eupteryx minusula and Eupteryx gracilirama (Hemiptera: Cicadellidae: Typhlocybinae) from Karst area, Southwest China

Zhouwei Yuan; Kangning Xiong; Ni Zhang; Can Li; Yuehua Song

doi:10.7717/peerj.12501

Characterization of the morphology and complete mitochondrial genomes of Eupteryx minusula and Eupteryx gracilirama (Hemiptera: Cicadellidae: Typhlocybinae) from Karst area, Southwest China

PeerJ. 2021 Nov 24:9:e12501. doi: 10.7717/peerj.12501. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Zhouwei Yuan¹, Kangning Xiong¹, Ni Zhang¹, Can Li², Yuehua Song¹

Affiliations

¹ Guizhou Normal University, School of Karst Science, Guiyang, Guizhou, The People's Republic of China.
² Guiyang University, Guizhou Provincial Key Laboratory for Rare Animal and Economic Insect of the Mountainous Region, Guiyang, Guizhou, The People's Republic of China.

Abstract

Background: The hemipteran insect family Cicadellidae (leafhoppers) includes >2,600 valid genera and >22,000 valid species worldwide, including >2,000 species in China. Typhlocybinae, second largest subfamilies of Cicadellidae, is widely distributed in the six major zoogeographic regions of the world, including >4,000 species worldwide and >1,000 species in China. Previously, morphological analysis are often effective to the way of taxonomy, but it did not combine with molecular biology. Therefore, morphology and mitochondrial genomes (mitogenomes) of two leafhopper species, Eupteryx (Eupteryx) minuscula Lindberg, 1929 and Eupteryx (Stacla) gracilirama Hou, Zhang & Huang, 2016 were studied and analyzed. This study analyzed the morphological and molecular characteristics of the two leafhoppers, and showed whether the results of the two identifications were consistent.

Methods: Based on the method of comparison, mitogenomes and morphology were analyzed to prove the relationship between the two leafhoppers.

Results: Although two focal species are classified in two different subgenera of the same genus, they still share many morphological features, such as the moderately produced crown fore margin; the milky yellow apical part of scutellum; the pronotum, basal triangles of scutellum, and forewing are dark with several colorless patches on the surface; the light yellow face, without any spots or stripes, and so on. The circular mitogenomes are 16,944 bp long in E. minuscula (GenBank: MN910279) and 17,173 bp long in E. gracilirama (GenBank: MT594485). All of the protein-coding genes are starting with ATN, except for some in mitogenome, which has a single T or TAN as a stop codon. All tRNAs have the typical cloverleaf-shaped structure except for trnS1 (AGN) (E. minuscula) which has a reduced DHU arm. Moreover, these two mitogenomes have trnR with an unpaired base in the acceptor stem. The phylogenetic relationships between E. minuscula and E. gracilirama in respect to related lineages were reconstructed using Maximum likelihood and Maximum parsimony analyses.

Discussion: The result showed that the tribe Typhlocybini is a sister to the tribes Erythroneurini and Empoascini, and five genera, Bolanusoides, Typhlocyba, Eupteryx, Zyginella and Limassolla are forming a single clade. E. minuscula and E. gracilirama are clustered together, supporting the monophyly of the genus Eupteryx. The above conclusions are consistent with the traditional classification of the subfamily.

Keywords: Characterization; Mitochondrial genome; Morphology; Typhlocybinae.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the World Top Discipline Program of Guizhou Province: Karst Ecoenvironment Sciences (No.125 2019 Qianjiao Keyan Fa), the Guizhou Provincial Science and Technology Foundation [[2018]1411], the Guizhou Science and Technology Support Project [[2019]2855], the Science and Technology Project of Guiyang City ([2020]7-18), the Innovation Group Project of Education Department of Guizhou Province ([2021]013), the Training Program for High-level Innovative Talents of Guizhou Province [[2016]4020], and the Project for Regional Top Discipline Construction of Guizhou Province: Ecology in Guiyang University [Qian Jiao Keyan Fa [2017]85]. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.