Project description:The Black-veined White Aporia crataegi (Linnaeus, 1758), a common and widespread butterfly ranging from northwestern Africa to Europe and Asia, has been extinct in Britain since the 1920s and is on a steady decline in several other parts of its range. In order to investigate genetic diversity within A. crataegi and its correspondence with current subspecies-level taxonomy, we barcoded 173 specimens from across its range including, for the first time, extinct populations from Britain and Korea. Using next generation sequencing we also obtained a sequence for Aporia joubini, a peculiar taxon from China known only by its type specimen collected in the early twentieth century. Our phylogenetic analysis placed A. joubini sister to A. oberthuri, although further taxon sampling may reveal a different scheme. Within A. crataegi, we observed a shallow and weak mitogenomic structure with only a few distinct lineages in North Africa, Sicily, Iran, and Japan. Eurasian populations, including those extinct in Britain and Korea, clustered into a large set of closely allied lineages, consistent with a recent expansion during the Late Pleistocene glacial period. This study highlights the importance of museum collections and the unique opportunities they provide in documenting species diversity and helping conservation efforts.
Project description:The complete mitochondrial genome of Aporia crataegi is 15,147 bp long, and consists of 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 2 ribosomal RNA genes, 22 transfer RNA (tRNA) genes, and a putative control region (GenBank accession No. MN371463). The nucleotide composition is significantly biased (A, G, C, and T is 39.66%, 7.30%, 11.41%, and 41.63%, respectively) with A + T contents of 81.29%. All PCGs are initiated by ATG, ATT, and ATC codons. Seven PCGs use a common stop codon of TAA, whereas the remaining six terminated with a single T. The phylogenetic relationships based on maximum-likelihood phylogenetic tree method showed that A. crataegi is closely related to Aporia bieti, Mesapia peloria, and Aporia martineti.
