Museomics allows comparative analyses of mitochondrial genomes in the family Gryllidae (Insecta, Orthoptera) and confirms its phylogenetic relationships.

BACKGROUND

Next-generation sequencing technology can now be used to sequence historical specimens from natural history collections, an approach referred to as museomics. The museomics allows obtaining molecular data from old museum-preserved specimens, a resource of biomolecules largely underexploited despite the fact that these specimens are often unique samples of nomenclatural types that can be crucial for resolving scientific questions. Despite recent technical progress, cricket mitogenomes are still scarce in the databases, with only a handful of new ones generated each year from freshly collected material.

METHODS

In this study, we used the genome skimming method to sequence and assemble three new complete mitogenomes representing two tribes of the cricket subfamily Eneopterinae: two were obtained from old, historical type material of (68 years old) and (80 years old), the third one from a freshly collected specimen of . We compared their genome organization and base composition, and reconstructed the molecular phylogeny of the family Gryllidae.

RESULTS

Our study not only confirmed that the genome skimming method used by next generation sequencing allows us to efficiently obtain the whole mitogenome from dry-pinned historical specimens, but we also confirmed how promising it is for large-scale comparative studies of mitogenomes using resources from natural history collections. Used in a phylogenetic context the new mitogenomes attest that the mitogenomic data contain valuable information and also strongly support phylogenetic relationships at multiple time scales.