Mitochondrial genome evolution and tRNA truncation in Acariformes mites: new evidence from eriophyoid mites

Abstract

The subclass Acari (mites and ticks) comprises two super-orders: Acariformes and Parasitiformes. Most species of the Parasitiformes known retained the ancestral pattern of mitochondrial (mt) gene arrangement of arthropods, and their mt tRNAs have the typical cloverleaf structure. All of the species of the Acariformes known, however, have rearranged mt genomes and truncated mt tRNAs. We sequenced the mt genomes of two species of Eriophyoidea: Phyllocoptes taishanensis and Epitrimerus sabinae. The mt genomes of P. taishanensis and E. sabinae are 13,475 bp and 13,531 bp, respectively, are circular and contain the 37 genes typical of animals; most mt tRNAs are highly truncated in both mites. On the other hand, these two eriophyoid mites have the least rearranged mt genomes seen in the Acariformes. Comparison between eriophyoid mites and other Aacariformes mites showed that: 1) the most recent common ancestor of Acariformes mites retained the ancestral pattern of mt gene arrangement of arthropods with slight modifications; 2) truncation of tRNAs for cysteine, phenylalanine and histidine occurred once in the most recent common ancestor of Acariformes mites whereas truncation of other tRNAs occurred multiple times; and 3) the placement of eriophyoid mites in the order Trombidiformes needs to be reviewed.

Morphological support for a clade comprising two vermiform mite lineages: Eriophyoidea (Acariformes) and Nematalycidae (Acariformes)

“…As expected, the heuristic search did not recover Eupodina (Eupodides) as a clade. Some of the commonly accepted members of Eupodina form a grade with respect to Raphignathina, whereas Eriophyoidea falls outside of Trombidiformes, a result that is consistent with the results of Xue et al (2016Xue et al ( , 2017. Aside from these features and the placement of Hybalicus (Lordalycidae) with several sarcoptiform mites (Grandjeanicus, Oehserchestes and Aphelacarus), the structure and composition of Trombidiformes largely accords with current classification schemes Zhang et al 2011).…”

“…This is concordant with the results of recent molecular based studies, which place Nematalycidae or Eriophyoidea outside of Trombidiformes (Pepato & Klimov 2015;Xue et al 2016;Xue et al 2017). But note that the constraint for the placement of EN within Trombidiformes (hypothesis 1 of table 4) results in a tree length that is not significantly different to the tree resulting from the unconstrained search (p=0.57: K-H test), and so the position of EN is not yet known.…”

“…The placement of Eriophyoidea within Trombidiformes has also been questioned by recent DNA based phylogenetic studies (Xue et al 2016;Xue et al 2017). Interestingly, one of them shows some support for a sister relationship between Eriophyoidea and Alycidae, albeit with an unusual placement of Astigmata as sister to these two taxa (Xue et al 2017).…”

Complete mitochondrial genome of the feather mite Ardeacarus ardeae (Acari, Sarcoptiformes, Pterolichidae)

“…Furthermore, A. ardeae of the family Pterolichidae showed a sister-group relationship with the family Pyroglyphidae (D. farinae and D. pteronyssinus) (Figure 1). The phylogenetic relationships found in our study are well-congruent with previous mitogenome studies reported by Lee and Wang (2016) and Xue et al (2016).…”

Evolutionary divergence of mitochondrial genomes in two Tetranychus species distributed across different climates

“…Among them, T. pueraricola and T. truncatus are predominant and distributed in different climate zones, providing an opportunity to investigate the potential effect of climate on the evolution of their mitogenome. Both these Tetranychus species are agricultural pests (Ehara and Gotoh, ; Seeman and Beard, ; Xue et al, ). Based on surveys, T. pueraricola is mainly distributed in the southern subtropical zone (in southern China), and T. truncatus is mainly distributed in the moderate temperate zone and warm temperate zone (in northern China).…”