The complete mitochondrial genome of the pirate butterfly Catacroptera cloanthe (Stoll, 1781) (Insecta: Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae: Kallimini)

Abstract

The pirate butterfly Catacroptera cloanthe (Stoll, 1781) (Nymphalidae: Kallimini) is a monotypic genus of butterfly that occupies grassland and savanna habitats in Sub-Saharan Africa, and exhibits seasonal variation. Genome skimming by Illumina sequencing allowed the assembly of a 78.8% AT-rich complete circular mitogenome of 15,204 bp from C. cloanthe. The mitogenome has a typical butterfly gene order consisting of 13 protein-coding genes, two rRNAs, 22 tRNAs, and a control region. Catacroptera cloanthe COX1 begins with an atypical CGA start codon, while COX2, ND3, ND4, and ND5 end with incomplete T or TA stop codons, completed by the addition of the poly-A tail during mRNA processing. Bayesian phylogenetic reconstruction placed Catacroptera cloanthe as sister to Mallika jacksoni in the monophyletic tribe Kallimini, which was consistent with previous phylogenetic hypotheses.

Keywords:

• Illumina sequencing
• mitogenomes
• Lepidoptera
• Nymphalidae
• Kallimini

Ethics statement

Ethics approval was not required for this study.

Author Contributions

M.L. contributed to the conception and design of research, the analysis of the and interpretation of the data, drafting, and revising of the manuscript.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Jeffrey Marcus for his constructive criticism of 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 genome sequence data that support the findings of this study are openly available in GenBank of NCBI at [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov] (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/) under the accession nos. MW722786 and MW722785. The associated BioProject, SRA, and Bio-Sample numbers are PRJNA706380, SRX10228918, and SAMN18128423, respectively.

Additional information

Funding

This work received support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) under [Grant RGPIN-2016-06012] and the University of Manitoba under the University Research Grants Program.