Comparative Analysis of Four Complete Mitochondrial Genomes of Epinephelidae (Perciformes).

Groupers are commercial, mainly reef-associated fishes, classified in the family Epinephelidae (Perciformes). This study first sequenced the complete mitogenomes of , , , and . The lengths of the four Epinephelidae mitogenomes ranged from 16,585 base pair (bp) to 16,872 bp with the typical gene order. All tRNA genes had a typical cloverleaf structure, except the tRNA- (AGY) gene which was lacking the entire dihydrouridine arm. The ratio of nonsynonymous substitution (Ka) and synonymous substitution (Ks) indicated that four groupers were suffering a purifying selection. Phylogenetic relationships were reconstructed by Bayesian inference (BI) and maximum likelihood (ML) methods based on all mitogenomic data of 41 groupers and 2 outgroups. The identical topologies result with high support values showed that and are not monophyletic genera. and clustered to . and assembled a clad. , , and are also in a clade. is close to and , and is a sister group with . More mitogenomic data from Epinephelidae species are essential to understand its taxonomic status with the family Serranidae.