Animals (Sep 2022)

Complete Mitogenomes of <i>Polypedates</i> Tree Frogs Unveil Gene Rearrangement and Concerted Evolution within Rhacophoridae

  • Lin Cui,
  • An Huang,
  • Zhi He,
  • Lisha Ao,
  • Fei Ge,
  • Xiaolan Fan,
  • Bo Zeng,
  • Mingyao Yang,
  • Deying Yang,
  • Qingyong Ni,
  • Yan Li,
  • Yongfang Yao,
  • Huailiang Xu,
  • Jiandong Yang,
  • Zhimin Wei,
  • Tongqing Li,
  • Taiming Yan,
  • Mingwang Zhang

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/ani12182449
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12, no. 18
p. 2449

Abstract

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New developments in sequencing technology and nucleotide analysis have allowed us to make great advances in reconstructing anuran phylogeny. As a clade of representative amphibians that have radiated from aquatic to arboreal habitats, our understanding of the systematic status and molecular biology of rhacophorid tree frogs is still limited. We determined two new mitogenomes for the genus Polypedates (Rhacophoridae): P. impresus and P. mutus. We conducted comparative and phylogenetic analyses using our data and seven other rhacophorid mitogenomes. The mitogenomes of the genera Polypedates, Buergeria, and Zhangixalus were almost identical, except that the ATP8 gene in Polypedates had become a non-coding region; Buergeria maintained the legacy “LTPF” tRNA gene cluster compared to the novel “TLPF” order in the other two genera; and B. buergeri and Z. dennysi had no control region (CR) duplication. The resulting phylogenetic relationship supporting the above gene rearrangement pathway suggested parallel evolution of ATP8 gene loss of function (LoF) in Polypedates and CR duplication with concerted evolution of paralogous CRs in rhacophorids. Finally, conflicting topologies in the phylograms of 185 species reflected the advantages of phylogenetic analyses using multiple loci.

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