Phylogenetic analysis of the complete mitochondrial genome of the orange-winged sulphur butterfly <i>Dercas nina</i> Mell 1913 (Insecta: Lepidoptera: Pieridae: Coliadinae)

<i>Dercas nina</i> Mell 1913 (Pieridae) is a little-studied butterfly species endemic to China that flies primarily in the forest canopy. Genome skimming by Illumina sequencing allowed assembly of 146,702 reads for complete 1471.3-fold mean coverage of the circular 15,264 bp mitogenome from <i>D. nina</i> consisting of 82.1% AT nucleotides. A gene order typical of butterflies was recovered consisting of 13 protein-coding genes, 22 tRNAs, two rRNAs, and a predicted control region. The <i>Dercas nina COX1</i> open reading frame begins with atypical start codon CGA. Six protein-coding genes (<i>COX1</i>, <i>COX2</i>, <i>ND2</i>, <i>ND3</i>, <i>ND4</i>, <i>ND5</i>) with single-nucleotide (T) stop codons, and two protein-coding genes (<i>ATP6</i>, <i>ATP8</i>) with two-nucleotide (TA) stop codons encoded in the DNA were inferred to be completed by adenine nucleotides from the Poly-A tail of the mRNA. Bayesian's phylogenetic reconstruction places the <i>D. nina</i> and <i>D. lycorias</i> mitogenomes as sister clades. <i>Dercas</i> mitogenomes were sister to those from genus <i>Colias</i> in the monophyletic subfamily Coliadinae. The mitogenome phylogeny is consistent with previous molecular phylogenetic hypotheses based on other markers, but differs somewhat from a morphology-based hypothesis that suggested that <i>Dercas</i> was more closely related to genus <i>Gonepteryx</i>. This may falsify the hypothesis or may instead reflect mitochondrial-nuclear phylogenetic discordance.