It's a moth! It's a butterfly! It's the complete mitochondrial genome of the American moth-butterfly Macrosoma conifera (Warren, 1897) (Insecta: Lepidoptera: Hedylidae)!

Bonnie S McCullagh; Mackenzie R Alexiuk; Josephine E Payment; Rayna V Hamilton; Melanie M L Lalonde; Jeffrey M Marcus

doi:10.1080/23802359.2020.1831991

It's a moth! It's a butterfly! It's the complete mitochondrial genome of the American moth-butterfly Macrosoma conifera (Warren, 1897) (Insecta: Lepidoptera: Hedylidae)!

Mitochondrial DNA B Resour. 2020 Oct 27;5(3):3633-3635. doi: 10.1080/23802359.2020.1831991.

Authors

Bonnie S McCullagh¹, Mackenzie R Alexiuk¹, Josephine E Payment¹, Rayna V Hamilton¹, Melanie M L Lalonde¹, Jeffrey M Marcus¹

Affiliation

¹ Department of Biological Sciences, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada.

Abstract

The taxonomic placement of the moth-butterfly, Macrosoma conifera (Warren 1897) (Lepidoptera: Hedylidae), has been controversial. The 15,344 bp complete M. conifera circular mitogenome, assembled by genome skimming, consists of 81.7% AT nucleotides, 22 tRNAs, 13 protein-coding genes, 2 rRNAs and a control region in the typical butterfly gene order. Macrosoma conifera COX1 features an atypical CGA start codon while ATP6, COX1, COX2, and ND5 exhibit incomplete stop codons completed by the post-transcriptional addition of 3' A residues. Phylogenetic reconstruction places M. conifera as sister to the skippers (Hesperiidae), which is consistent with several recent phylogenetic analyses.

Keywords: Hedylidae; Hesperiidae; Illumina sequencing; Papilionoidea; mitogenomics.

Grants and funding

This work received support from NSERC under [Grants RGPIN386337-2011 and RGPIN-2016-06012] and from the University of Manitoba under the University Research Grants Program.