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Data from: Phylogeny of Anophelinae using mitochondrial protein coding genes

Cite this dataset

Foster, Peter G. et al. (2017). Data from: Phylogeny of Anophelinae using mitochondrial protein coding genes [Dataset]. Dryad. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.1d8th

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. About 41 species of Anopheline mosquitoes can effectively spread species of Plasmodium 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. Monophyly of the genus Anopheles, and phylogenetic placement of the genus Bironella, subgenera Kerteszia, Lophopodomyia, and Stethomyia within the subfamily Anophelinae, remain in question. To understand the classification of Anophelinae we inferred the phylogeny of all three genera (Anopheles, Bironella, Chagasia) and major subgenera by analyzing the amino acid sequences of the 13 protein coding genes of 150 newly sequenced mitochondrial genomes of Anophelinae and 18 newly sequenced Culex species as outgroup taxa, supplemented with 23 mitogenomes from GenBank. Our analyses generally place genus Bironella within the genus Anopheles, which implies that the latter as it is currently defined is not monophyletic. With some inconsistencies, Bironella was placed within the major clade that includes Anopheles, Cellia, Kerteszia, Lophopodomyia, Nyssorhynchus, and Stethomyia, which were found to be monophyletic groups within Anophelinae. Our findings provided robust evidence for elevating the monophyletic groupings Kerteszia, Lophopodomyia, Nyssorhynchus, and Stethomyia to genus level; genus Anopheles to include subgenera Anopheles, Baimaia, Cellia and Christya; Anopheles parvus to be placed into a new genus; Nyssorhynchus to be elevated to genus level; the genus Nyssorhynchus to include subgenera Myzorhynchella and Nyssorhynchus; Anopheles atacamensis and Anopheles pictipennis to be transferred from subgenus Nyssorhynchus to subgenus Myzorhynchella; and subgenus Nyssorhynchus to encompass the remaining species of Argyritarsis and Albimanus Sections.

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