Complete mitochondrial genome of the Galápagos sea lion, Zalophus wollebaeki (Carnivora, Otariidae): paratype specimen confirms separate species status

Abstract

The endangered Galápagos sea lion (Zalophus wollebaeki) inhabits the Galápagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador. We present a complete mitochondrial genome (16 465 bp) of a female paratype from the collections of the Natural History Museum Oslo, Norway, assembled from next-generation sequencing reads. It contains all canonical protein-coding, rRNA, tRNA genes, and the D-loop region. Sequence similarity is 99.93% to a previously published conspecific mitogenome sequence and 99.37% to the mitogenome sequence of the sister species Z. californianus. Sequence similarity of the D-loop region of the Z. wollebaeki paratype mitogenome is >99%, while the sequence difference to the Z. californianus sequences exceeds 2.5%. The paratype mitogenome sequence supports the taxonomic status of Z. wollebaeki as a separate species.