The genus Nylanderia is an ecologically significant group of ants found all around the world, especially in warmer environments. They are mainly generalist foragers, highly efficient in locating resources, and recruiting nestmates, often resulting as the most abundant ants (LaPolla et al. 2011). Nylanderia flavipes is an Asian Nylanderia species, which was introduced to northern Europe and the United States, replacing some native species (Wetterer 2011). They are often the dominant species in their natural habitats of Korea where colonies are usually found queenless due to their unique polydomous colony structure (Ichinose 1986). They are also common in urban areas, sometimes even indoors utilizing their excellent foraging techniques for leftovers. We completed the mitogenome of N. flavipes as the first mitogenome of both the genus Nylanderia and tribe Lasiini.

Total DNA of N. flavipes was extracted from females collected in Namyangju-si, Gyeonggi-do, Republic of Korea (37°34′13.2′′N, 127°18′08.8′′E) using DNeasy Blood &Tissue Kit (QIAGEN, Hilden, Germany). Raw sequences obtained from HiSeqX at Macrogen Inc., Korea, were filtered by Trimmomatic 0.33 (Bolger et al. 2014). De novo assembly and confirmation were conducted by Velvet 1.2.10 (Zerbino and Birney 2008), SOAPGapCloser 1.12 (Zhao et al. 2011), BWA 0.7.17 (Li et al. 2009), and SAMtools 1.9 (Li 2013). Geneious R11 11.1.5 (Biomatters Ltd, Auckland, New Zealand) and ARWEN (Laslett and Canbäck 2008) were used for annotation based on alignments with other ant mitogenomes. DNA sample and specimen (95% ethanol) were deposited in InfoBoss Cyber Herbarium (IN; Korea; J. Park, KFDS00153).

The mitochondrial genome of N. flavipes (Genbank accession is MN654113) is 16,687 bp long and its GC ratio is 18.9%. It contains 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 2 rRNAs, 22 tRNAs, and a control region. All PCGs start with either ATG or ATT and end with TAA except ND2 containing TAG as a stop codon. Gene order (GO) of N. flavipes is identical to that of Camponotus (Kim et al. 2016), where GO of tRNA is rearranged from trnM-trnI-trnQ to trnI-trnM-trnQ compared to other Formicine ants (Anoplolepis, Formica, and Polyrhachis; Babbucci et al. 2014; Liu et al. 2017; Lee et al. 2018). N. flavipes also presents trnP gene with forward strand, which is unique among all ant mitogenomes. Additional mitogenomes are required to confirm whether this uniqueness is common in the genus or the tribe or not.

Thirteen PCGs and two rRNA genes from 23 ants including all available Formicine species and an outgroup species were aligned by MAFFT 7.450 (Katoh and Standley 2013). Bootstrapped maximum likelihood, neighbor joining, and Bayesian inference trees were constructed using MEGA X (Kumar et al. 2018) and Mr. Bayes 3.2.6 (Huelsenbeck and Ronquist 2001). Our tree constructed based on mitogenome is congruent with that of the previous study from 959 ultra-conserved elements except for position of tribe Camponotini (Figure 1; Ward et al. 2016). Both trees suggest that the same GO of Nylanderia and Camponotus was formed by independent rearrangements events during evolution. N. flavipes mitogenome will contribute to understanding mitochondrial structures of ants with upcoming ant mitogenomes.

The complete mitochondrial genome of Nylanderia flavipes (Smith, 1874) (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

All authors

Jonghyun Park, Hong Xi & Jongsun Park

https://doi.org/10.1080/23802359.2019.1703572

Published online:

08 January 2020

Figure 1. Maximum likelihood (bootstrap repeat is 1,000), neighbor joining (bootstrap repeat is 10,000), and Bayesian inference (1,100,000 generations) phylogenetic trees of all available Formicinae ant mitochondrial genomes: Nylanderia flavipes ( MN654113 in this study), Camponotus atrox (NC_029357), Camponotus concavus (NC_042676), Polyrhachis dives (NC_030790), Brachymyrmex patagonicus (MG253259), Anoplolepis gracilipes (NC_039576), Formica fusca (NC_026132), Formica selysi (NC_026711), as well as 15 ants form other subfamilies: Ooceraea biroi (CM010870), Tetraponera rufonigra (BK010387), Pseudomyrmex gracilis (BK010472), Linepithema humile (NC_045057), Dolichoderus sibiricus (NC_041075), Ectatomma ruidum (MG870227), Ectatomma tuberculatum (MG870211), Myrmica scabrinodis (NC_026133), Pristomyrmex punctatus (NC_015075), Cardiocondyla obscurior (KX951753), Wasmannia auropunctata (NC_030541), Solenopsis invicta (NC_014672), Vollenhovia emeryi (NC_030176), Cryptopone sauteri (NC_041202), Ectomomyrmex javanus (NC_042678), and a honey bee: Apis mellifera ligustica (NC_001566) as an outgroup species. Phylogenetic tree was drawn based on maximum likelihood tree. The numbers above branches indicate bootstrap support values of maximum likelihood and neighbor joining trees, and posterior probability of Bayesian inference tree, respectively.

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