Phylogeny of Anophelinae using mitochondrial protein coding genes

Abstract

Malaria is a vector-borne disease that is a great burden on the poorest and most marginalized communities of the tropical and subtropical world. Approximately 41 species of Anopheline mosquitoes can effectively spread species of <i>Plasmodium</i> parasites that cause human malaria. Proposing a natural classification for the subfamily Anophelinae has been a continuous effort, addressed using both morphology and DNA sequence data. The monophyly of the genus <i>Anopheles</i>, and phylogenetic placement of the genus <i>Bironella</i>, subgenera <i>Kerteszia</i>, <i>Lophopodomyia</i> and <i>Stethomyia</i> within the subfamily Anophelinae, remain in question. To understand the classification of Anophelinae, we inferred the phylogeny of all three genera (<i>Anopheles</i>, <i>Bironella</i>, <i>Chagasia</i>) and major subgenera by analysing the amino acid sequences of the 13 protein coding genes of 150 newly sequenced mitochondrial genomes of Anophelinae and 18 newly sequenced <i>Culex</i> species as outgroup taxa, supplemented with 23 mitogenomes from GenBank. Our analyses generally place genus <i>Bironella</i> within the genus <i>Anopheles</i>, which implies that the latter as it is currently defined is not monophyletic. With some inconsistencies, <i>Bironella</i> was placed within the major clade that includes <i>Anopheles</i>, <i>Cellia</i>, <i>Kerteszia</i>, <i>Lophopodomyia</i>, <i>Nyssorhynchus</i> and <i>Stethomyia</i>, which were found to be monophyletic groups within Anophelinae. Our findings provided robust evidence for elevating the monophyletic groupings <i>Kerteszia</i>, <i>Lophopodomyia</i>, <i>Nyssorhynchus</i> and <i>Stethomyia</i> to genus level; genus <i>Anopheles</i> to include subgenera <i>Anopheles</i>, <i>Baimaia</i>, <i>Cellia</i> and <i>Christya</i>; <i>Anopheles parvus</i> to be placed into a new genus; <i>Nyssorhynchus</i> to be elevated to genus level; the genus <i>Nyssorhynchus</i> to include subgenera <i>Myzorhynchella</i> and <i>Nyssorhynchus</i>; <i>Anopheles atacamensis</i> and <i>Anopheles pictipennis</i> to be transferred from subgenus <i>Nyssorhynchus</i> to subgenus <i>Myzorhynchella</i>; and subgenus <i>Nyssorhynchus</i> to encompass the remaining species of Argyritarsis and Albimanus Sections.