Characterization of the complete mitochondrial genome of Formica selysi (Insecta: Hymenoptera: Formicidae: Formicinae)

Abstract

The complete mitochondrial genome of Formica selysi has been assembled from Illumina sequencing data with an average coverage of 2733X. The circular genome was 16,752 bp in length, and consists of 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 22 transfer RNAs (tRNAs), two ribosomal RNAs (rRNAs) and one D-loop region. All PCGs initiated with ATN codons and terminated with the TAA codon. The nucleotide composition was highly asymmetric (40.33% A, 11.07% C, 5.66% G and 42.94% T) with an overall GC content of 16.73%. Unlike those of most other insects, the mitochondrial genome of F. selysi was characterized by an obviously high proportion of intergenic spacers. These data would contribute to the evolutionary studies of this and related ant taxa.

• Data mining
• illumina sequencing
• MITObim
• mitogenome
• next-generation sequencing (NGS)

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Dr. Jessica Purcell and her colleagues for generating the sequencing data used in this study.

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest, and alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper. Z.-Q. Qian was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31300308), the Natural Science Basic Research Plan in Shaanxi Province of China (2013JQ3007) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities in China (GK201503049).