What does mitogenomics tell us about the evolutionary history of the Drosophila buzzatii cluster (repleta group)?

MOREYRA, N; ALMEIDA, F; MOREYRA, N; ALMEIDA, F; MENSCH, J; LAPRIDA, C; MENSCH, J; LAPRIDA, C; HURTADO, J; HASSON, E; HURTADO, J; HASSON, E

PLOS ONE

PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE

Lugar: San Francisco; Año: 2019

1932-6203

            The Drosophila repletagroup is an array of more than100 species endemic to the ?New World?, many of which are cactophilic. Theability to utilize decaying cactus tissues as breeding and feeding sites is akey aspect that allowed the successful diversification of the repletagroup in American deserts and arid lands. Within this group, the Drosophila buzzatii cluster is a South American cladeof seven closely related species in different stages of divergence, making thema valuable model system for evolutionary research. Substantial effort has been devoted toelucidating the phylogenetic relationships among members of the D.buzzatii cluster,including molecular phylogenetic studies that have generated ambiguousresults where different tree topologies have resulted dependent on the kinds ofmolecular marker used. Even though mitochondrialDNA regions have become useful markers in evolutionary biology and populationgenetics, none of the more than twenty Drosophila mitogenomes assembledso far includes this cluster. Here,we report the assembly of six complete mitogenomes of five species: D.antonietae, D. borborema, D.buzzatii, two strains of D.koepferae and D. seriema, with the aim of revisiting phylogeneticrelationships and divergence times by means of mitogenomic analyses. Ourrecovered topology using complete mitogenomes supports the hypothesis ofmonophyly of the D. buzzatii cluster and shows two main clades,one including D. buzzatii and D. koepferae (both strains), andthe other containing the remaining species. These results are in agreement withprevious reports based on a few mitochondrial and/or nuclear genes, but conflictwith the results of a recentlarge-scale nuclear phylogeny, indicating that nuclear and mitochondrial genomes depict different evolutionary histories.