Phylogenetic relationships of the Amblyomma cajennense complex (Acari: Ixodidae) at mitogenomic resolution

COTES-PERDOMO, ANDREA P.; NAVA, SANTIAGO; CASTRO, LYDA R.; RIVERA-PAÉZ, FREDY A.; CORTÉS-VECINO, JESÚS A.; URIBE, JUAN E.

Ticks and Tick-borne Diseases

Elsevier

Año: 2023 vol. 14

1877-959X

The genus Amblyomma is the third most diverse in the number of species within the Ixodidae, with practicallyhalf of its species distributed in the Americas, though there are also species occurring in Africa, Asia, andAustralia. Within the genus, there are several species complexes with veterinary and public health importance.The Amblyomma cajennense complex, in the Americas, is represented by six species with a wide distribution, fromTexas to northern Argentina. We combined two sequencing techniques to generate complete mitogenomes ofspecies belonging to the Amblyomma cajennense complex: genome skimming and long-range PCRs sequencingmethods. Thus, we generated seven new mitochondrial genomes for all species of the Amblyomma cajennensecomplex, except for Amblyomma interandinum. Genetic distances between the mitogenomes corroborate the cleardifferentiation between the five species of the Amblyomma cajennense complex. The phylogenetic relationships ofthese species had previously been evaluated by combining partial nuclear and mitochondrial genes and herethese relationships are corroborated with a more robust framework of data, which demonstrates that theconjunction of mitochondrial and nuclear partial genes can resolve close relationships when entire genes orgenomes are unavailable. The gene order, structure, composition, and length are stable across these mitogenomes,and they share the general characteristics of Metastriata. Future studies should increase the number ofavailable mitogenomes for this genus, especially for those species from the Indo-Pacific region and Africa, bymeans of a better understanding of their relationships and evolutionary process.