Mitogenome and phylogenetic analysis of typhlocybine leafhoppers (Hemiptera: Cicadellidae)

Mitogenomes have been widely used to estimate phylogenetic relationships among insects and provide data useful for augmenting traditional morphological characters in delimiting species. Here, complete mitogenome sequences of two closely related typhlocybine leafhoppers, Cassianeura cassiae (Ahmed, 1970) and C. bimaculata Dworakowska, 1984, were obtained and found to be 15,423 bp and 14,597 bp in length, respectively. The gene order was found to be similar to other published leafhopper mitogenomes, but the control region of C. bimaculata is the shortest among known leafhoppers and lacks tandem repeats. Phylogenetic analysis of 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), the first and second codons of 13 PCGs, 13 PCGs and two rRNAs formed three well-supported tree topologies. The topologies of phylogenetic trees inferred from three datasets were almost identical, which was consistent with previous molecular phylogenies of this group. Comparative morphological study of the ovipositors revealed several characters potentially useful for diagnosing genera and resolving their phylogenetic relationships. Phylogenetic analysis of these and other morphological characters yielded a tree that is mostly consistent with the tree obtained from analysis of mitogenome sequences. In both molecular and morphological phylogenenies, Typhlocybini and Zyginellini clustered into one clade, but neither was recovered as monophyletic.