Background: Complete mitochondrial genome sequences facilitate species identification and analyses of phylogenetic relationships. However, the available data are limited for the diverse and widespread insect familiy Cicadellidae. In this study, we sequenced complete mitochondrial genomes of two species of Erythroneurini.
Results: The mitogenomes of Empoascanara wengangensis and E. gracilis were 14,830 and 14,627 bp in length, respectively, and similar to other published leafhopper mitogenomes in terms of gene size, base composition, gene order, PCGs codon usage, and tRNA secondary structure. Most protein coding genes start with ATN and end with TAA or TAG. Two rRNA genes are highly conserved and encoded on the minority strand, and the AT content in 16S is higher than that of 12S. The control regions in the genus Empoascanara are highly variable and contain various numbers of repeat sequences.
Conclusions: The mitogenomes of these two species closely resemble those of most other sequenced leafhoppers in various structural and compositional aspects. Phylogenetic analysis of 13 PCGs yielded a well-supported topology with most branches receiving maximum support and most relationships agreeing with those of other recent phylogenetic studies. Nucleotide diversity analysis show that nad4 and nad5 can be evaluated as potential DNA markers that define the Cicadellidae insect species. Like other studies, the main evolutionary event of leafhoppers occurred in the Tertiary, and its divergence time is estimated to be 10.03~122.48 Ma. This study confirms results of previous studies indicating that mitochondrial genome sequences are informative of leafhopper phylogeny.