The peacock butterfly
Aglais io
(Linnaeus, 1758) (Nymphalidae: Nymphalinae: Nymphalini) is a colorful and charismatic flagship butterfly species whose range spans from the British Isles and Europe through temperate Asia and the Far East. In Europe, it has been used as a model species for studying the effects of GMO maize pollen on caterpillar growth and survivorship. The Japanese subspecies,
Aglais io geisha
(Stichel
1907
), is not as well studied as its European counterpart. Genome skimming by Illumina sequencing allowed the assembly of a complete circular mitochondrial genome (mitogenome) of 15,252 bp from
A. io geisha
consisting of 80.6% AT nucleotides, 13 protein-coding genes, 22 tRNAs, two rRNAs, and a control region in the gene order typical of butterfly species.
Aglais io geisha COX1
gene features an atypical start codon (CGA) while
COX1, COX2, CYTB, ND1, ND3
,
ND4,
and
ND5
display incomplete stop codons finished by the addition of 3’ A residues to the mRNA. Bayesian phylogenetic reconstruction places
A. io geisha
within a clade with European
A. io
mitogenomes in the tribe Nymphalini, which is consistent with previous phylogenetic hypotheses.