Abstract
The species diversity within the genus Uropsilus were underestimated: 10 species among the genus Uropsilus have been proposed. In this study, the complete mitochondrial genome of U. gracilis, with the topotype, was determined. It is 16,536 bp in length, comprising of 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 2 rRNA genes, 22 tRNA genes and 1 control region. The composition and arrangement of its genes are similar to most other mammals. The total base composition of the mitogenome is A, 33.4%; T, 30.3%; C, 22.7% and G, 13.6%, with a rich content of A+T pattern. We performed the similarity comparison based on 13 PCGs of three species of Asiatic shrew-like mole, U. gracilis, U. sp. 1 and U. soricipes. Pairwise sequence alignment showed that similarity data of U. gracilis versus U. sorcipes are significantly higher than those of U. gracilis versus U. sp.1. This pointed toward a cryptic species (U. sp.1) from Jiajin Mountains rather than U. gracilis.
Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge Dr. Yu Xu at Pingdingshan University for statistic analysis. We are also very grateful to Dr. Zhenxin Fan at Sichuan University for his great efforts to correct English language errors in the manuscript.
Declaration of interest
The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper. This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31272274).
Supplementary material available online
Supplementary Table S1