First mitochondrial genome of subfamily Julodinae (Coleoptera, Buprestidae) with its phylogenetic implications

Complete mitochondrial genomes of three species of the family Buprestidae were sequenced, annotated, and analyzed in this study. To explore the mitogenome features of the subfamily Julodinae and verify its phylogenetic position, the complete mitogenome of Julodis variolaris was sequenced and annotated. The complete mitogenomes of Ptosima chinensis and Chalcophora japonica were also provided for the phylogenetic analyses within Buprestidae. Compared to the known mitogenomes of Buprestidae species varied from 15,499 bp to 16,771 bp in length, three newly sequenced mitogenomes were medium length (15,759–16,227 bp). These mitogenomes were encoded 37 typical mitochondrial genes. Among the three studied mitogenomes, Leu2 (L2), Ser2 (S2), and Pro (P) were the three most frequently encoded amino acids. Within the Buprestidae, the heterogeneity in sequence divergences of Agrilinae was highest, whereas the sequence homogeneity of Chrysochroinae was highest. Moreover, phylogenetic analyses were performed based on nucleotide matrix (13 PCGs + 2 rRNAs) among the available sequenced species of Buprestidae using Bayesian Inference and Maximum Likelihood methods. The results showed that the Julodinae was closely related to the subfamily Polycestinae. Meanwhile, the genera Melanophila, Dicerca, and Coomaniella were included in Buprestinae, which was inconsistent with the current classification system of Buprestidae. These results could contribute to further studies on genetic diversity and phylogeny of Buprestidae.