Mitochondrial Genome Comparison and Phylogenetic Analysis of the Family Carabidae (Coleoptera: Adephaga)
TL;DR
These findings provide new mitochondrial genomic evidence for elucidating the evolutionary history of Carabidae and underscore the necessity of broader taxonomic sampling, as well as the integration of nuclear genomic data, to further resolve the contentious relationships within this diverse beetle family.
Abstract
Simple Summary This study enhances our understanding of the evolutionary relationships within the ground beetle family Carabidae by sequencing the complete mitochondrial genomes of five species, including four newly determined mitogenomes and one resequenced species. These mitogenomes contain the typical set of 37 genes and a control region, with genome sizes ranging from 15,800 to 17,352 bp. Our analyses reveal that most mitochondrial protein-coding genes exhibit conserved start and stop codon patterns, while ATP8 evolves the fastest and COX1 the slowest among these genes. The majority of tRNAs form the typical cloverleaf structure, with a few structural variations observed in tRNA-Ser (AGN) and tRNA-Phe. By combining our dataset with 124 previously published carabid mitogenomes, we reconstructed the phylogenetic relationships of 21 subfamilies within Carabidae. Our results support the monophyly of most subfamilies, but also identify non-monophyletic conditions for Brachininae, Trechinae, Licininae, and Platyninae. The phylogenetic position of Cicindelinae also remains ambiguous, with alternative topological placements recovered under different dataset treatments. These findings provide new mitochondrial genomic evidence for elucidating the evolutionary history of Carabidae and underscore the necessity of broader taxonomic sampling, as well as the integration of nuclear genomic data, to further resolve the contentious relationships within this diverse beetle family.
