The complete mitochondrial genomes of two vent squat lobsters, Munidopsis lauensis and M. verrilli: Novel gene arrangements and phylogenetic implications

Hydrothermal vents are considered as one of the most extremely harsh environments on the Earth. In this study, the complete mitogenomes of hydrothermal vent squat lobsters, Munidopsis lauensis and M. verrilli, were determined through Illumina sequencing and compared with other available mitogenomes of anomurans. The mitogenomes of M. lauensis (17,483 bp) and M. verrilli (17,636 bp) are the largest among all Anomura mitogenomes, while the A+T contents of M. lauensis (62.40%) and M. verrilli (63.99%) are the lowest. The mitogenomes of M. lauensis and M. verrilli display novel gene arrangements, which might be the result of three tandem duplication–random loss (tdrl) events from the ancestral pancrustacean pattern. The mitochondrial gene orders of M. lauensis and M. verrilli shared the most similarities with S. crosnieri. The phylogenetic analyses based on both gene order data and nucleotide sequences (PCGs and rRNAs) revealed that the two species were closely related to Shinkaia crosnieri. Positive selection analysis revealed that eighteen residues in seven genes (atp8, Cytb, nad3, nad4, nad4l, nad5, and nad6) of the hydrothermal vent anomurans were positively selected sites.