First report of complete mitogenome for an Itarinae species (Orthoptera, Grylloidea) with phylogenetic analysis

The subfamily Itarinae Shiraki, 1930 belongs to the cricket family Gryllidae Laicharting, 1781 based on morphology. However, there is no phylogenetic research on Itarinae and the relationships of Itarinae within Gryllidae remain to be solved. Mitochondrial genomes (mitogenomes) have been extensively used as markers to infer the phylogenetic relationships between some families in Orthoptera. Here, we reported the first complete mitogenome of subfamily Itarinae and the mitogenome features of Itara minor Chopard, 1925. The mitogenome of this species is 17342 bp which contains 37 genes (13 protein-coding genes, 2 ribosomal RNA and 22 transfer RNA) and a control region, and is conserved in structure as most of species in Gryllidae. The composition of nucleotide has high content of A + T, presenting a significant bias towards A and T. Except trnS1 with missing DHU arm structure, the remaining of tRNAs presents typical clover-leaf secondary structure. Moreover, we performed the phylogenetic trees based on 37 genes of the 35 mitogenomes along with I. minor in this study. The results of phylogenetic analysis strongly supported that Itarinae is the sister group of Gryllinae with the following topology ((((((Gryllinae + Itarinae) + Eneopterinae) + (Oecanthinae + Podoscirtinae)) + Cacoplistinae) + (Nemobiinae + Trigonidiinae)) + Mogoplistinae) in superfamily Grylloidea Laicharting, 1781.