Six additional mitochondrial genomes for North American nightsnakes (Dipsadidae: Hypsiglena) and a novel gene feature for advanced snakes

Abstract

The North American nightsnakes in the genus Hypsiglena is composed of nine named and at least two unnamed species. Here, we provide the first mt-genome of H. affinis, an additional mt-genome for H. sp. nov. 1, and four additional mt-genomes from the widespread H. jani. These mtDNA genomes were sequenced using both Illumina and Ion Torrent sequencing technologies. The resulting genomes contained the expected 13 protein coding genes, 22 tRNA genes, 2 rRNA genes, and 2 control regions typical of colubroid snakes. Two of the H. jani samples had partial tRNA^Ile genes upstream of CR2 which has not been previously documented in colubroid snakes. A maximum likelihood gene-tree based on these data combined with previously published sequence data recovers a well-supported phylogeny and is in concordance with previous estimates of evolutionary relationships in this group.

Keywords:

• Hypsiglena
• nightsnake
• Squamata
• Dipsadinae
• mtDNA

Acknowledgements

All or portions of the laboratory and/or computer work were conducted in and with the support of the Laboratories of Analytical Biology facilities of the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) or its partner labs, in particular we thank K. Murphy for assistance in the lab and M. Dal Forno for providing reagents for Illumina sequencing. The authors also would like to thank L. Vonnahme and M. Arnold for quickly accessioning samples at AMNH. Lastly the authors thank J. R. Macey for assistance with assembling and annotating these data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

All Illumina and Ion Torrent reads have been accessioned on the NCBI Short Read Archive with BioProject ID PRJNA636782 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/PRJNA636782/). Assembled and annotated mt-genomes are accessioned on GenBank under the following accession numbers MT561495-MT561500 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/MT561495; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/MT561496; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/MT561497; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/MT561498; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/MT561499; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/MT561500).

Additional information

Funding

EAM was supported through the Peter Buck and Rathbone Bacon Fellowship from the National Museum of Natural History.