The Population Differentiation Of Named Subspecies Of Chinese Tiger Swallowtail And Discussion On The Phylogenetic Status Of Parnassius

The precious butterfly,Luehdorfia chinensis Leech(Lepidoptera:Papilionidae),is native only to China as a class II nationally protected animal.The L.chinensis is a wild butterfly known as the giant panda of butterfly for its uniqueness and preciousness.So far the research of L.chinensis Leech has been widely reported including systematic position,biological characteristics,feeding and protection.However,the genetic differentiation of population has not yet been studied.In this study,we analyzed the genetic diversity and structure of L.chinensis nominate subspecies located in the middle and lower reaches of Changjiang River in China,and a cytochrome c oxidase subunit I(COI)gene and three non-coding DNA were used as molecular markers.The main research results are as follows:1)Analysis of genetic diversity indicated that the population of L.chinensis in Baohua Mountain has the relatively high haplotype and nucleotide diversity.Significant differences of genetic differentiation were found between the population in Baohua Mountain and other populations.2)The L.chinensis populations had no undergone a recent population expansion.So far,domestic and foreign scholars have various opinions about the evolutionary relationships of subfamily-level within Papilionidae.Increasingly,researches are showing that mitogenomes can provide information for phylogenetic analyses and evolutionary biology.We can confirm the phylogeography of some related species by using mitogenomes data.In the study,we sequenced and analyzed the near complete mitochondrial genome of Parnassius nomion,which is 14547 bp in length without control region,including 13 protein-coding genes(ATP6,ATP8,COI-?,ND1-6,ND4L,Cytb),22 transfer RNAs,two ribosomal RNAs(12S and 16S).We combined the mitogenomes of P.nomion with 17 previously sequenced butterfly mitochondrial genomes in the GenBank for phylogenetic and molecular clock analyses.We constructed two phylogenetic trees based on nucleotide sequences of 13 PCGs by using Bayesian inference and maximum likelihood methods.Our results support the butterflies of the subfamily Parnassiinae as sister to Papilioninae belong to the family of Papilionidae,but do not support the taxonomic status of Parnassiidae,and the results also suggest that the butterflies of the genus Luehdorfia belong to Parnassiinae.Finally,age estimates show the Papilionidae lineage diverged at approximately 47 million years ago,both Parnassiinae and Papilioninae lineages diverged at around 42 million years ago.