The Complete Mitochondrial Genomes of Three Bristletails (Insecta: Archaeognatha): The Paraphyly of Machilidae and Insights into Archaeognathan Phylogeny

The order Archaeognatha was an ancient group of Hexapoda and was considered as the most primitive of living insects. Two extant families (Meinertellidae and Machilidae) consisted of approximately 500 species. This study determined 3 complete mitochondrial genomes and 2 nearly complete mitochondrial genome sequences of the bristletail. The size of the 5 mitochondrial genome sequences of bristletail were relatively modest, containing 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 2 ribosomal RNA (rRNA) genes, 22 transfer RNA (tRNA) genes and one control region. The gene orders were identical to that of Drosophila yakuba and most bristletail species suggesting a conserved genome evolution within the Archaeognatha. In order to estimate archaeognathan evolutionary relationships, phylogenetic analyses were conducted using concatenated nucleotide sequences of 13 protein-coding genes, with four different computational algorithms (NJ, MP, ML and BI). Based on the results, the monophyly of the family Machilidae was challenged by both datasets (W12 and G12 datasets). The relationships among archaeognathan subfamilies seemed to be tangled and the subfamily Machilinae was also believed to be a paraphyletic group in our study.