Phylogeny of Coreoidea based on mitochondrial genomes show the paraphyly of Coreidae and Alydidae

Abstract

Coreoidea (Insecta: Hemiptera: Heteroptera) is a widely distributed and agriculturally important bugs. However, the phylogeny of Coreoidea lacked consensus on higher‐level relationships and several studies by comparative morphological characters and molecular data suggested the non‐monophyly of two families: Coreidae and Alydidae. The mitochondrial genome (mitogenome) has long been thought to be a significant marker to understand phylogenetic relationships, but the mitogenome in Alydidae is scarce to date. In the present study, we gathered the mitogenomes of 28 species from four families of Coreoidea excluding Hyocephalidae (Alydidae, Coreidae, Rhopalidae, and Stenocephalidae), including four newly sequenced mitogenomes of Alydidae, and conducted mitogenomic organization and phylogenetic studies. We used maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference methods to infer the higher‐level phylogeny from the perspective of mitogenomes, primarily to investigate the phylogenetic relationship betweeen Coreidae and Alydidae. We add evidence that neither Alydidae nor Coreidae are monophyletic based on mitogenomes. Newly sequenced mitogenomes of Alydidae have traditional gene structure and gene rearrangement was not found. Alydinae was always recovered as closely related to Pseudophloeinae of the coreid subfamily with high support. The placement of the coreid subfamily Hydarinae and alydid subfamily Micrelytrinae are unstable depending on approach used. In terms of the length and nucleotide composition of the protein coding genes in mitogenomes, Pseudophloeinae and Hydarinae of coreid were more similar to Alydidae. The unsettled classification issues of Coreidae and Alydidae by mitogenomes were demonstrated in this work, indicating that further study is needed.

Mitogenome of the leaf-footed bug Notobitus montanus (Hemiptera: Coreidae) and a phylogenetic analysis of Coreoidea

“…The position of non-coding control region (D-loop) in N. montanus was accordance with that of other Coreidae species [6]. The A+T content of D-loop was 67.17%, which was lower than PCGs, tRNAs and rRNAs.…”

“…The non-coding control region (D-loop) of N. montanus, located between 12s rRNA and trnI, was 1642 bp (Fig 5). Its position in the mitogenome was accordance with that of other Coreidae species [6]. The A+T content of D-loop was 67.17%.…”

“…Coreoidea consists of five extant families: Coreidae, Alydidae, Rhopalidae, Stenocephalidae and Hyocephalidae [1,6,7]. Currently, no mitogenome of Hyocephalidae species is available in NCBI, as a result, only four families were analyzed in the study.…”

“…However, some studies indicated that these morphological traits exhibited homoplasy [1,9], which might explain contradictory results from different studies [1]. Phylogenomic trees constructed with ultraconserved element loci and mitogenome showed that both Coreidae and Alydidae were not monophyly [1,6]. Furthermore, the phylogenomic analysis showed that several genera, and subfamilies of Coreidae were para-and polyphyly, which suggested that the taxonomic classification of Coreidae need revaluation and revision [9].…”

“…In addition to two extinct families (Trisegmentatidae and Yruipopovinidae), Coreoidea consists of five families: Coreidae (2571 species), Alydidae (282 species), Rhopalidae (224 species), Stenocephalidae (30 species) and Hyocephalidae (three species) [1,6,7]. The Coreidae is divided into four subfamilies: Coreinae, Hydarinae, Meropachyinae, and Pseudophloeinae [6,7]. Coreinae, with 2,320 (90%) species (372 genera), is the largest subfamily of Coreidae.…”