Comparative mitogenomic analysis confirms that the southern African long-snout pipefish Syngnathus temminckii is distinct from the northern hemisphere Syngnathus acus

Abstract

Sequencing of mitochondrial genomes is a powerful tool to resolve taxonomic relationships between closely related taxa with high confidence. Syngnathus temminckii is a pipefish species endemic to Southern Africa. The taxonomic status of this species and the phylogenetic relationship with its widely distributed northern hemisphere congener Syngnathus acus has been subject to uncertainty. The current study is the first to assemble, annotate and describe the complete mitochondrial genome of this species, and investigate phylogenetic relationships with its northern hemisphere sister taxa. The mitogenome assembly pipeline reconstructed a circular contig 16,452 bp in length, with an average GC content of 44.8%. A total of 37 mitogenomic features, including 13 protein-coding genes, 22 tRNAs, two rRNAs and a putative control region, were annotated. A Bayesian phylogenetic analysis confirmed that S. temminckii is a distinct southern African species that diverged from a northern hemisphere clade of pipefishes that includes its congener S. acus approximately seven million years ago.