Assembly and annotation of full mitochondrial genomes for the corn rootworm species, Diabrotica virgifera virgifera and Diabroticabarberi (Insecta: Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae), using Next Generation Sequence data

• Corn rootworm mitochondrial genomes were assembled from Next Generation Sequence data.
• Variation in full mitochondrial genome sequences suggests that species diverged ~ 3.68 mya.
• Sequence data are valuable for phylogenomic comparison in the insect Order Coleoptera.

Complete mitochondrial genomes for two corn rootworm species, Diabrotica virgifera virgifera (16,747 bp) and Diabrotica barberi (16,632; Insecta: Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae), were assembled from Illumina HiSeq2000 read data. Annotation indicated that the order and orientation of 13 protein coding genes (PCGs), and 22 tRNA and 2 rRNA sequences were in typical of insect mitochondrial genomes. Non-standard nad4 and cox3 stop codons were composed of single T nucleotides and likely completed by adenylation, and atypical TTT start codons was predicted for both D. v. virgifera and D. barberinad1 genes. The D. v. virgifera and D. barberi haplotypes showed 819 variable nucleotide positions within PCG regions (7.36% divergence), which suggest that speciation may have occurred ~ 3.68 million years ago assuming a linear rate of short-term substitution. Phylogenetic analyses of Coleopteran MtD genome show clustering based on family level, and may have the capacity to resolve the evolutionary history within this Order of insects.

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