The complete mitochondrial genome sequence of Trichopodus leerii (Perciformes: Osphronemidae) and phylogenetic studies of Osphronemidae

Trichopodus leerii has been given many popular names in the ornament market, such as pearl gourami, lace gourami and mosaic gourami, which causes confusion in species identification. This species belongs in the family Osphronemidae of Perciformes. This species and its congeners are characterized by a brownish-silver body, covered in a pearl-like pattern. In this study, we first determined and described the complete mitogenome sequence of T. leerii, which is 16,472 bp in length. The overall base composition is 29.2%, 27.3%, 28.0% and 15.5% for A, C, T and G, respectively, with a slight bias in the AT content (57.2%). All protein-coding genes share the start codon ATG and most of them have TAA or TAG as the stop codon, except ND4 and ND6 use an incomplete stop codon T. Maximum likelihood tree and Bayesian analyses based on partitioned nucleotide sequences of 12 mitochondrial protein-coding genes were constructed, and both yielded identical topologies. These results are expected to provide useful molecular data for species identification and further phylogenetic studies of Osphronemidae and Perciformes.