The mitochondrial genome of the lone star tick (Amblyomma americanum)

Amblyomma americanum is an abundant tick in the southeastern, midwestern, and northeastern United States. It is a vector of multiple diseases, but limited genomic resources are available for it. We sequenced the complete mitochondrial genome of a single female A. americanum collected in Georgia using the Illumina platform. The consensus sequence was 14,709 bp long, and the mean coverage across the assembly was >12,000×. All expected tick genomic features were present, including two “Tick-Box” motifs, and in the expected order for the Metastriata. Heteroplasmy rates were low compared to the most closely related tick for which data are available, Amblyomma cajennense. The phylogeny derived from the concatenated protein coding and rRNA genes from the 33 available tick mitochondrial genomes was consistent with those previously proposed for the Acari. This is the first complete mitochondrial sequence for A. americanum, which provides a useful reference for future studies of A. americanum population genetics and tick phylogeny.