Mitogenome features
Most leafhopper mitochondrial genomes are highly conserved with an
arrangement of the 37 genes consistent with that of the inferred
ancestral insect, Drosophila yakuba (Clary & Wolstenholme,
1985). However, more than ten species in Cicadellinae, Deltocephalinae,
Iassinae, Megophthalminae and Ledrinae have the phenomenon of gene
rearrangements with the previous studies (Mao et al., 2017; Du et al.,
2017, 2019; Song et al., 2019, Wang et al., 2020a) and our unpublished
data. Only three types of gene rearrangements have been detected in
Cicadellidae, which arise from three tRNA clusters: (1) inElymana sp. (MK251130), Osbornellus sp. (MK251136), andStirellus bicolor (MK251122), the tRNA cluster of
trnA–R–N–S1–E–F is rearranged to trnR–E–F–A–N–S1; (2) inCofana unimaculata (MK251095), the tRNA cluster of trnI–Q–M is
rearranged to trnQ–I–M; (3) in Cicadulina mbila (MK251127),Japananus hyalinus (NC_036298), Macrosteles
quadrilineatus (NC_034781) and Macrosteles quadrimaculatus(NC_039560), the tRNA cluster of trnW–C–Y is rearranged to trnY–W–C
or trnC–W–Y. In this study, Shaddai sp. (MW284820) has the gene
trnW translocated behind trnY, trnC–Y–W, with an intergenic spacer of
460 bp (Figure 1, b). Gene rearrangements may represent an additional
set of characters useful for phylogenetic reconstruction (Dowton et al.,
2002; Tyagi et al., 2020) but additional data on leafhopper species will
be needed to determine whether any such rearrangements are shared by
closely related taxa.