Phylogenetic Position of the Genus Alulacris (Orthoptera: Acrididae: Melanoplinae: Podismini) Revealed by Complete Mitogenome Evidence

SIMPLE SUMMARY: The phylogenetic position of the genus Alulacris is clarified based on complete mitogenome evidence. The results show that Alulacris consistently has the closest relationship to the genus Yunnanacris of the subfamily Melanoplinae in all phylogenetic trees and is extremely similar to Yunnanacris yunnaneus (Ramme, 1939) morphologically. Therefore, the genus Alulacris is transferred here from Catantopinae incertae sedis to the nominal subtribe Podismina of the tribe Podismini sensu Ito (2015) of the subfamily Melanoplinae. ABSTRACT: Whole mitogenomes are a useful data source for a wide variety of research goals due to the vastly cheaper sequencing cost and the far less demanding high-quality templates. The mitogenome has demonstrated great potential in resolving phylogenetic questions in Orthoptera at different taxonomic scales as well as exploring patterns of molecular and morphological character evolutions. In this study, the complete mitogenome of Alulacris shilinensis (Zheng, 1977) was sequenced using next-generation sequencing, the characteristics of the mitogenome are presented briefly, and the phylogeny of the Melanoplinae and Catantopinae was reconstructed using a selected dataset of mitogenome sequences under maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference frameworks. The results show that the genus was consistently assigned to the subfamily Melanoplinae rather than Catantopinae in all phylogenetic trees deduced from different datasets under different frameworks, and this finding is entirely consistent with its morphological characters. Therefore, it is more appropriate to place the genus Alulacris in Melanoplinae rather than in Catantopinae.