A time-calibrated mitogenomic phylogeny suggests that Korean is a bridge between Chinese and Japanese ..

The cicada species, and . (Hemiptera: Cicadidae), share numerous morphological characters, and their status as distinct species remains controversial. We reconstructed a phylogeny based on two new mitogenomes of . from Korea and . from Japan, in combination with GenBank sequences of . from China and Japan, and other closely related cicada species. Maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference phylogenies showed that . from Korea is more closely related to . from China than either is to . from Japan. The time-calibrated Bayesian evolutionary analysis by sampling trees (BEAST) phylogeny indicated that the mainland and insular forms diverged approximately 1.7-2.6 million years ago. This coincides with the formation of the East China Sea land bridge between East Asia and the Japanese archipelago, which would provide a dispersal corridor for from the mainland via the Korean peninsula southeastward to Japan. East Asian . is a geographic variant that may be considered synonymous with . .