Published December 3, 2025
| Version v1
Journal article
Open
First record of the family Ptilocerembiidae (Insecta, Embioptera) from China, with morphological and molecular characterization of a new species
Authors/Creators
- 1. Jiangsu University of Science and Technology, Zhenjiang, China
- 2. China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing, China
Description
We report the first record of the webspinner family Ptilocerembiidae Miller & Edgerly, 2012, from China, represented by a new species, Ptilocerembia qiului sp. nov., discovered in Yunnan Province. Detailed morphological examination, particularly the comparative analysis of male terminalia, clearly distinguishes this species from its congeners. The complete mitochondrial genome of P. qiului sp. nov. (15,443 bp) was sequenced, exhibiting the canonical insect gene order with strong A+T bias but showing the absence of two tRNAs (trnV and trnS2). Notably, we detected novel tandem repeats between trnI and trnQ, a feature not reported from other sequenced embiopteran mitogenomes. All protein-coding genes evolve under purifying selection, with COX1 showing the highest conservation. DNA barcoding (COX1) and phylogenetic analyses further support species delimitation in Ptilocerembia, with interspecific divergences between the new species and other Ptilocerembia (12.6–17.6%) far exceeding frequently used intraspecific thresholds (~2%). The discovery extends the known distribution range of Ptilocerembiidae northeastward to southwestern China. Our integrative morphological and molecular framework highlights the previously underestimated species richness in Ptilocerembia and provides the first mitogenomic insights into Ptilocerembiidae.
Files
DEZ_article_170313.pdf
Files
(8.1 MB)
| Name | Size | Download all |
|---|---|---|
|
md5:80336dd2b63fcef2dc93b535b9059b0b
|
8.1 MB | Preview Download |
System files
(94.5 kB)
| Name | Size | Download all |
|---|---|---|
|
md5:260e4c03bf4186a41be5cb06ab1a4d63
|
94.5 kB | Download |
Linked records
Additional details
References
- Benson G (1999) Tandem repeats finder: A program to analyze DNA sequences. Nucleic Acids Research 27: 573–580. https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/27.2.573
- Bernt M, Donath A, Jühling F, Externbrink F, Florentz C, Fritzsch G, Pütz J, Middendorf M, Stadler PF (2013) MITOS: Improved de novo metazoan mitochondrial genome annotation. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 69: 313–319. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2012.08.023
- Burla H (1954) Zur Kenntnis der Drosophiliden der Elfenbeinkuste (Franzosisch West-Afrika). Revue Suisse de Zoologie 61: 1–218. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.part.75413
- Chen ZT (2022) Aposthonia guizhouensis sp. nov., a new webspinner of Oligotomidae (Insecta: Embioptera) from China. Zootaxa 5213(2): 190–198. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.5213.2.7
- Chen ZT (2023) Intraspecific variation in the mitochondrial genomes of the black carpet beetle, Attagenus unicolor japonicus Reitter (1877)(Coleoptera: Dermestidae). Journal of Stored Products Research 100: e102066. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jspr.2022.102066
- Chen ZT, Lü L, Lu MX, Du YZ (2017) Comparative mitogenomic analysis of Aposthonia borneensis and Aposthonia japonica (Embioptera: Oligotomidae) reveals divergent evolution of webspinners. Scientific Reports 7(1): e8279. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-09003-9
- Clary DO, Wolstenholme DR (1985) The mitochondrial DNA molecular of Drosophila yakuba: nucleotide sequence, gene organization, and genetic code. Journal of Molecular Evolution 22(3): 252–271. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02099755
- Davis C (1936) Studies in Australian Embioptera. Part I. Systematics. Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales 61: 229–253.
- Friederichs K (1923) Ökologische Beobachtungen über Embiidinen. Capita Zoologica 2: 1–29. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-3217-4_1
- Grant JR, Enns E, Marinier E, Mandal A, Herman EK, Chen C, Graham M, Van Domselaar G, Stothard P (2023) Proksee: In-depth characterization and visualization of bacterial genomes. Nucleic Acids Research 51(1): 484–492. ttps://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkad326
- Guindon S, Dufayard JF, Lefort V, Anisimova M, Hordijk W, Gascuel O (2010) New algorithms and methods to estimate maximum-likelihood phylogenies: Assessing the performance of PhyML 3.0. Systematic Biology 59: 307–321. https://doi.org/10.1093/sysbio/syq010
- Hagen HA (1885) Monograph of the Embidina. Canadian Entomologist 17(8): 141–155. https://doi.org/10.4039/Ent17141-8
- Hebert PD, Ratnasingham S, De Waard JR (2003) Barcoding animal life: cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 divergences among closely related species. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences 270: 96–99. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2003.0025
- Huang YSF, Brock PD (2001) A new species of Phasmotaenia Navas (Phasmida: Phasmatidae) from Taiwan. Journal of Orthoptera Research 10(1): 9–14. https://doi.org/10.1665/1082-6467(2001)010[0009:ANSOPN]2.0.CO;2
- Jin JJ, Yu WB, Yang JB, Song Y, Depamphilis CW, Yi TS, Li DZ (2020) GetOrganelle: A fast and versatile toolkit for accurate de novo assembly of organelle genomes. Genome Biology 21: e241. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13059-020-02154-5
- Kalyaanamoorthy S, Minh BQ, Wong TK, Von Haeseler A, Jermiin LS (2017) ModelFinder: Fast model selection for accurate phylogenetic estimates. Nature Methods 14: 587–589. https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.4285
- Meng G, Li Y, Yang C, Liu S (2019) MitoZ: A toolkit for animal mitochondrial genome assembly, annotation and visualization. Nucleic Acids Research 47(11): e63. https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkz173
- Miller KB, Hayashi C, Whiting MF, Svenson GJ, Edgerly JS (2012) The phylogeny and classification of Embioptera (Insecta). Systematic Entomology 37(3): 550–570. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-3113.2012.00628.x
- Minh BQ, Nguyen MA, von Haeseler A (2013) Ultrafast approximation for phylogenetic bootstrap. Molecular Biology and Evolution 30: 1188–1195. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/mst024
- Morrison DA (2010) How and where to look for tRNAs in Metazoan mitochondrial genomes, and what you might find when you get there. ArXiv 1001: 1–27. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1001.3813
- Nguyen LT, Schmidt HA, von Haeseler A, Minh BQ (2015) IQ-TREE: A fast and effective stochastic algorithm for estimating maximum-likelihood phylogenies. Molecular Biology and Evolution 32: 268–274. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msu300
- Poolprasert P, Edgerly JS (2014) Description of four new species of the genus Ptilocerembia Friederichs, 1923 (Embioptera: Ptilocerembiidae) from Thailand. Zootaxa 3852(3): 359–372. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.3852.3.5
- Poolprasert P, Senarat S, Dokchan P (2017) Using COI gene sequence for species identification of webspinners (Embioptera) in Thailand. YRU Journal of Science and Technology 2(1): 29–38.
- Poolprasert P, Tanruen K, Senarat S, Edgerly JS (2021) Diastolembia thailandensis, a remarkable new genus and species of embiids (Embioptera: Embiidae) from Thailand. Journal of Hunan University Natural Sciences 48(10): 56–63.
- Ronquist F, Teslenko M, Mark PVD, Ayres DL, Darling A, Höhna S, Larget B, Liu L, Suchard MA, Huelsenbeck JP (2012) MrBayes 3.2: Efficient Bayesian phylogenetic inference and model choice across a large model space. Systematic Biology 61: 539–542. https://doi.org/10.1093/sysbio/sys029
- Ross ES (1963) The families of Australian Embioptera, with descriptions of a new family, genus, and species. The Wasmann Journal of Biology 21: 121–136.
- Ross ES (2007) The Embiidina of Eastern Asia, Part I. Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences 58: 575–600.
- Tamura K, Stecher G, Kumar S (2021) MEGA11: Molecular evolutionary genetics analysis version 11. Molecular Biology and Evolution 38: 3022–3027. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msab120
- Zhang Z (2022) KaKs_Calculator 3.0: Calculating selective pressure on coding and non-coding sequences. Genomics, Proteomics & Bioinformatics 20(3): 536–540. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gpb.2021.12.002