EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF ENTOMOLOGY

Eur. J. Entomol. 119: 337-353, 2022 | DOI: 10.14411/eje.2022.035

Mitochondrial genomes of two wild silkmoths, Samia watsoni and Samia wangi (Lepidoptera: Saturniidae), and their phylogenetic implicationsOriginal article

Decai LU¹, Yixin HUANG^2,3,*, Stefan NAUMANN⁴, Ian J. KITCHING⁵, Zhenbang XU⁶, Yang SUN¹, Xu WANG^1,3,*

¹ Anhui Provincial Key Laboratory of the Conservation and Exploitation of Biological Resources, Key Laboratory of Biotic Environment and Ecological Safety in Anhui Province, College of Life Sciences, Anhui Normal University, Wuhu, Anhui, China; e-mails: ludecai0000@163.com, wangxu0322@ahnu.edu.cn, sy2019@ahnu.edu.cn

² Collaborative Innovation Center of Recovery and Reconstruction of Degraded Ecosystem in Wanjiang Basin Co-founded by Anhui Province and Ministry of Education; School of Ecology and Environment, Anhui Normal University, Wuhu, Anhui 241000, China; e-mail: huangyx@ahnu.edu.cn

³ Key Laboratory of the Zoological Systematics and Evolution, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 1 Beichen West Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100101, P.R. China

⁴ Research Associate of Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin; private address: Hochkirchstrasse 11, 10829 Berlin, Germany; e-mail: sn@saturniidae.com

⁵ Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD, UK; e-mail: i.kitching@nhm.ac.uk

⁶ Institute of Resource Plants, Yunnan University, Kunming, Yunnan 650500, China; e-mail: 306252408@qq.com

The wild silkmoth genus Samia Hübner, 1819 (Saturniidae) contains a number of economically important species in industrial silk production. However, the interspecific relationships within the genus remain unclear. We sequence the mitogenomes of Samia watsoni Oberthür, 1914 and Samia wangi Naumann & Peigler, 2001. Both mitogenomes are annotated and found to be cyclized, with 37 genes (13 PCGs, 2 rRNA genes and 22 tRNA genes). Using maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference methods, we analyze these mitogenomes together with a further 68 downloaded from GenBank (65 Bombycoidea and 5 Lasiocampidae as the outgroup) to investigate the phylogenetic relationships both within the genus and those among the three families of the 'SBS' group: Bombycidae, Saturniidae and Sphingidae. The results show that within Samia, S. ricini is closely related to S. canningi, and not S. cynthia of which it has previously been considered to be a subspecies. Although arguments have been proposed to treat S. ricini and S. canningi as conspecific, we choose to accept the morphological arguments and continue to treat them as two separate species. Samia watsoni is corroborated as the sister group of all other Samia species, but nevertheless should be included within Samia rather than being placed in its own monobasic genus. Our analysis recovers the following relationship among the three families of the 'SBS' group: (Saturniidae + (Bombycidae + Sphingidae)). This agrees with previous studies based on analysis of mitogenomes but continues to contradict the results derived from phylogenomic analysis of nuclear genomes.

Keywords: Bombycoidea, Bombycidae, Sphingidae, phylogeny

Received: April 14, 2022; Revised: August 4, 2022; Accepted: August 4, 2022; Published online: August 24, 2022  Show citation