Description of the Three Complete Mitochondrial Genomes of Click Beetles (Coleoptera, Elateridae) with Phylogenetic Implications

Abstract

The family Elateridae, known as click beetles, is a mega-diverse lineage of Coleoptera. Wireworms are the larval stage of click beetles, which are generalist herbivores and which are recognized as economically important pests of crops. To more effectively control and monitor wireworms, it is crucial to understand the genetics, taxonomy and phylogenetics of Elateridae. Here, we sequenced and characterized three complete mitochondrial genomes (mitogenomes) from the subfamily Elaterinae using a next-generation sequencing approach. In addition, we provided the annotated mitogenomes of the newly sequenced species, namely Parasilesis musculus (Candèze, 1873), Melanotus cribricollis Candèze, 1860 and Glyphonyx sp., and compared their arrangement with other closely related species. The secondary structures of tRNA genes and rRNA genes were predicted. Combined with the published mitogenomes of elaterid species, we reconstructed the phylogenetic framework for Elateridae under maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference methods using nucleotide and amino acid sequence datasets separately. The results from the Bayesian analysis based on the nucleotide dataset PCGRNA including all 37 mitochondrial genes were congruent with previous studies. Within the monophyletic Elateridae, two main clades were recovered. The first clade included Elaterinae and Melanotus. The second clade consisted of the remaining subfamilies. Physodactylinae and Cardiophorinae formed a sister group. Agrypninae was monophyletic. A subclade comprised Negastriinae and Dendrometrinae.

Comparative and phylogenetic analyses of mitochondrial genomes in Elateridae (Coleoptera: Elateroidea)

“…In addition, a detailed reexamination of elaterid and lampyroid morphology, chemical defenses, and biology will provide new insight into the evolutionary relationships between them (Kusy et al, 2021b). Tetralobinae, represented by Sinelater perroti recovered at the basal of the phylogenetic tree and sister to all remaining click‐beetle groups, which was in line with a more recently study that inferred phylogenetic of Elateridae using mitogenomes (Qiu, 2023; Song et al, 2023). Kundrata et al (2018) examined the phylogenetic position of Tetralobinae within Elateridae using four molecular markers, including 18 S , 28 S , 16 S and cox1 .…”

“…The phylogenetic topology generated using mitogenomes here generally agrees with results of earlier phylogenomic analyses which resolved the deepest relationships (Douglas et al, 2021; Kusy et al, 2021a; Qiu, 2023; Song et al, 2023). However, there are several subfamilies of click beetles which have no mitogenomes or any molecular data.…”

“…Due to the low support values of clade N. sabulicola + A. castaneus in our study, it is likely that this result may have been artificially influenced. Four previous phylogenetic studies of Elateridae inferred from mitogenome consistently revealed that the Dendrometrinae was monophyletic group (He et al, 2022; Kusy et al, 2021a; Qiu, 2023; Song et al, 2023). Nevertheless, no taxa from Negastriinae were sampled in their analyses, so the relationship between the Dendrometrinae and Negastriinae was also unclear.…”

“…The basal phylogeny of Elateridae remains contentious as various dataset, sampling coverage and optimality criteria produced different topologies. While some relationships have been repeatedly found, others are inconclusive, such as who is the earliest branch of Elateridae (Bi et al, 2019; Douglas et al, 2021; Kundrata et al, 2018; Qiu, 2023; Song et al, 2023). The incomplete availability of mitogenomes limits our ability to fully understand the relationships within Elateridae.…”

DNA Barcoding and Molecular Phylogenetics Revealed a New Cryptic Bamboo Aphid Species of the Genus Takecallis (Hemiptera: Aphididae)

“…Although sequence variation in traditional DNA barcodes is sometimes insufficient for species-level discrimination in many large clades, the advances in computational and sequencing technology are changing the concept of DNA barcodes, from just a few loci to large, genome-scale sequences from organelles [47]. In particular, with the development of the next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies, increasing numbers of insect complete mitogenomes (mitochondrial DNA sequence, mtDNA) have been extensively used in species identification for insects [48]. Therefore, in the integrative taxonomy, the use of mtDNA is also promoted as an effective tool in a broad taxonomic toolkit.…”