Abstract
The complete mitochondrial genome of Amblyomma testudinarium is reported for the first time in this study. Its entire mitogenome is 14,760 bp in length, contained 13 protein-coding genes, 2 ribosomal RNA genes, 22 transfer RNA genes, and 2 non-coding regions. The phylogenetic analysis by Bayesian inference method show that A. testudinarium and the others of genus Amblyomma are in the same clade, indicating that A. testudinarium belongs to the genus Amblyomma.
Amblyomma testudinarium (Acari: Ixodidae) has been reported as a ectoparasite of several species of animals, cats, dogs, and wild boars, and occasionally on humans. Amblyomma testudinarium is a rare tick species reported only in Asian countries including Malaysia, India, Japan, Philippines, and Cambodia (Chao et al. Citation2017). In China, it is distributed in Taiwan, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Hubei, Hunan, Fujian, Yuannan, Hainan, and Guangxi (Sun et al. Citation2016). The polyphyly of the genus Amblyomma is relatively complex (Burger et al. Citation2013). In this study, the complete mitochondrial genome sequence of A. testudinarium was obtained, which provided a basis for the classification study of the genus Amblyomma.
The adult of A. testudinarium were collected from Nanning City, Guangxi Province, China, on 10 April 2019. The individual tick was stored in the Department of Parasitology, Heilongjiang Bayi Agricultural University (specimen no. BYNKPL-190410). Species identification was conducted by professor Sun Yi based on morphological features. Primers were designed for polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification and sequencing on the basis of the mitogenome sequence of A. geoemydae (GenBank accession no. MK814531) (Chang et al. Citation2019).
The total length of A. testudinarium mt genome was 14,760 bp (GenBank accession no. MT029329), which contained 13 protein-coding genes (cox1-3, nad1-6, nad4L, atp6, atp8, and cytb), 2 rRNA genes, 22 tRNA genes, and 2 NCR. The arrangement of the A. testudinarium was identical with that of hard ticks (Burger et al. Citation2013). The A. testudinarium mt genome encoded 3615 amino acids in total. The concatenated amino acid sequences of 13 protein-coding genes were analyzed with Bayesian inference method. The phylogenetic tree show that the A. testudinarium and the others of genus Amblyomma are in the same clade (). This result supports traditional taxonomic assignment of A. testudinarium to the genus Amblyomma.
Figure 1. Phylogenetic relationships of Amblyomma testudinarium and other species based on mitochondrial sequence data.
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References
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