Characterization of the complete mitochondrial genome sequence of Smerinthus caecus (Lepidoptera: Sphingidae)

In this study, we sequenced and analyzed the complete mitogenome of Smerinthus caecus Ménétriés, 1857. The mitogenome of S. caecus is a circular structure, and 15,363 bp long in size and encodes 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), two ribosomal RNA genes (rRNAs), 22 transfer RNA genes (tRNAs), and a control region (CR). An extremely high AT bias of 79.2% was found in the nucleotide composition of mitogenome. Most of the PCGs used ATN as the start codon and TAA or TAG as the stop codon, which is similar to most other insect mitogenomes, except cox1, which starts with CGA. The phylogeny of Smerinthinae was reconstructed using a maximum-likelihood method, a total of 33 mitogenomes were sampled for phylogenetic analyses. The subfamily Langiinae was selected as outgroup. The results confirmed the position of S. caecus in the Smerinthinae, in which Smerinthus caecus was placed as the sister taxon to Smerinthus planus, then to Laothoe amurensis.