Mitogenomes of the two historical species Seira ferrarii Parona, 1888 and Seira pallidipes Reuter, 1895 (Collembola, Entomobryidae, Seirinae) with their phylogenetic placement within Seirinae

Abstract

The present paper reports the first occurrence of Seira ferrarii Parona, 1888 from Hungary. On this occasion, molecular analyses were performed on both S. ferrarii and another historical species of the genus, S. pallidipes Reuter, 1895, originally described from Hungary. Using low-coverage whole-genome sequencing, the complete mitogenomes were assembled and annotated using MitoZ. To test the phylogenetic placement of both species, we performed maximum likelihood and Bayesian analyses using a matrix containing 14 Seirinae species and two outgroups. Both resultant trees showed that the European populations of the sampled Seira spp. likely derive from ancestral branches of Seirinae, compared to the Asian and American populations. Our results put in question the monophyly of the genus Seira, as already observed in previous studies.