The Mitochondrial Genomes of Phytophagous Scarab Beetles and Systematic Implications

In this study, we newly sequenced five mitogenomes of representatives of phytophagous scarab beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae) by using next-generation sequencing technology. Two species have complete (or nearly complete) mitogenome sequences, namely Popillia mutans Newman (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae) and Holotrichia oblita Faldermann (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae). The remaining three species have the partial mitogenomes, and the missing genes are mainly located adjacent to the control region. The complete (or nearly complete) mitogenomes have the same genome structure as most of the existing Scarabaeidae mitogenomes. We conducted phylogenetic analyses together with 24 published mitogenomes of Scarabaeoidea. The results supported a basal split of coprophagous and phytophagous Scarabaeidae. The subfamily Sericinae was recovered as sister to all other phytophagous scarab beetles. All analyses supported a non-monophyletic Melolonthinae, which included two different non-sister clades. The Cetoniinae was recovered as sister to a clade including Rutelinae and Dynastinae. Although the Rutelinae was rendered paraphyletic by Dynastinae in the Bayesian trees inferred under the site-heterogeneous CAT-GTR or CAT-MTART model, discordant patterns were given in some of ML trees estimated using the homogeneous GTR model.