The complete mitochondrial genome of the African leaf butterfly Kallimoides rumia (Insecta: Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae)

Abstract

The African leaf butterfly Kallimoides rumia Doubleday, 1849 (Nymphalidae), lives in the understory of Afrotropical primary forests. Genome skimming with Illumina sequencing of K. rumia permitted assembly of a complete circular mitogenome of 15,234 bp consisting of 80.9% AT nucleotides, 22 tRNAs, 13 protein-coding genes, 2 rRNAs and a control region. Kallimoides rumia COX1 features an atypical start codon (CGA). Genes ATP6, COX1, COX2, ND2, ND4 and ND5 feature incomplete stop codons, completed by adding 3’ A residues to the mRNA. Phylogenetic reconstruction places K. rumia as a distinct lineage, not closely related to Kallima, consistent with previous phylogenetic hypotheses.

Keywords:

• Illumina sequencing
• mitogenomics
• Kallimoides
• Nymphalidae
• Kallima

Acknowledgments

We thank Mackenzie Alexiuk, and Rayna Hamilton for their constructive criticism on this manuscript and Genome Quebec for assistance with library preparation and sequencing.

Disclosure statement

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

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in GenBank of NCBI at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, reference numbers MT704827 and MT704830.

Additional information

Funding

This work received support from NSERC under [Grants RGPIN386337-2011 and RGPIN-2016-06012] and from the University of Manitoba under the University Research Grants Program.