Characteristics of the Complete Mitochondrial Genome of Yunleon longicorpus (Neuroptera, Myrmeleontidae) and Implications for Its Phylogeny within Myrmeleontidae

The genus Yunleon comprises only two recorded species in China. The NCBI database currently lacks mitochondrial genome sequences for species of the genus Yunleon, which makes difficult to understand the phylogeny and evolution of this group. In this study, we used Illumina NovaSeq technology to sequence and characterize the mitochondrial genome of Yunleon longicorpus. Subsequently, the mitochondrial genome sequence of Y. longicorpus was used to explore its phylogenetic relationships at the tribe level. The results showed, the entire length of mitochondrial genome of Y. longicorpus contained 16 810 bp with 37 typical genes. Notably, the mitochondrial genomes of Y. longicorpus exhibited a rearrangement pattern, i.e., tRNACys-tRNATrp-tRNATyr. Among the 22 tRNAs, most of them displayed the typical cloverleaf secondary structure, expect for trnS1, which lacked the dihydrouridine (DHU) arm. Interestingly, the phylogenetic analysis of the family Myrmeleontidae revealed a different relationship between the genus Yunleon and Epacanthaclisis compared with previous studies. And, genus Yunleon was closely clustered into the tribe Megistopini, while genus Epacanthaclisis was clustered into the tribe Acanthoplectrini. The results supported that the genus Yunleon belongs to the tribe Megistopini and the genus Epacanthaclisis might belong to the tribe Acanthoplectrini rather than Dendroleontini. Our study provides some basic data and insight into the further research for this group.