The complete mitochondrial genome of an endangered triton snail Charonia lampas (Littorinimorpha: Charoniidae) from South Korea

Abstract

The complete mitochondrial genome of an endangered triton snail Charonia lampas (Littorinimorpha: Charoniidae) from South Korea was determined with the size of 15,330 bp, which contained 13 protein-coding genes, 22 tRNAs, and two rRNAs. The overall features of the mitochondrial genome are similar to those of typical gastropod mitochondrial genomes, except for the absence of a control region (CR): a conserved gene order, a high A + T content (67.45% for C. lampas), preference for AT-rich codons, etc. It is the second mitochondrial genome reported from this species after Cho et al. (2017), and there is ca. 98% sequence similarity between those of the species. According to the maximum-likelihood tree, C. lampas placed within the monophyletic Tonnoidea, forming a monoclade with Cypraeoidea and Stromboidea within Littorinimorpha. Interestingly, we confirmed that Vermetoidea is placed at the basal position of the monophyletic Littorinimorpha.

Keywords: Charonia lampas; Littorinimorpha; Tonnoidea; mitochondrial genome; phylogenetic analysis.

Figure 1.

A maximum-likelihood tree constructed based on the amino acid sequence alignment made of 13 PCGs of 48 littorinimorph mitochondrial genomes. The selected best-fitting model mtMet + F+I + G4 was implemented for the ML analysis. The two vetigastropod species of Haliotis discus hannai and H. rubra were used as outgroups. Branch supports are inferred from the ultrafast bootstrap method using the IQ-TREE webserver. The dotted box indicates the phylogenetic position of the mitochondrial genome of Charonia lampas obtained through this study.