The Complete Mitochondrial Genomes Of Six Passeriform Birds And Their Phylogenetic Relationship

Passerine is one of the largest groups of aves. They show a diversity of morphology, complex behavior, and distributed widely. Nevertheless, the phylogenetic relationship of this group has always been the subject of focus and heated debates. With the development of molecular biology, more and more research results about the phylogenesis of birds based on the Mitochondrial genomics has been published, to some extent, this would help to resolve the taxonomic status and basal relationships among passeriform,however, the relationships of some nodes, especialy some Family or Genus, are still ambiguous, hence need add taxon sampling and methods of analysis.In this study, we amplified and sequenced complete Mitochondrial genome of six species which belongs to three Families(such as Tarsiger cyanurus, Phoenicurus auroreus, Turdus hortulorum, Garrulax cineraceu,Garrulax perspicillatus, Paradoxornis webbianus) by the method of PCR,meanwhile, we analyzed and annotated the sequence of complete mtDNA genome. We used the sequence of mitgenome which were published in the GenBank and sequenced in this study, all the sequences composed of Protein coding gene, the ND6 gene was excluded from the analyses. we selected Gallus gallus(Galliformes) and Anser fabalis(Anseriformes) as outgroups here. Next,we constructed and analysized the phylogenetic relationship of Passeriformes by four analytical methods based on the data set mentioned above. Main results are as follows:The length of complete mitochondrial genome of T. cyanurus ? P.auroreus?T. hortulorum?G. cineraceus?G. perspicillatus?P. webbianus are16803 bp, 16772 bp, 16759 bp, 17873 bp, 17800 bp and 16960 bp,respectively. The mitochondrial genome all contains 37 genes: 22 tRNA, 13 protein coding genes, 2 ribosome genes(12s rRNA ? 16 s rRNA) and 1 or 2control region. There were two control regions in G. cineraceus and G.perspicillatus, P. webbianus has one control region and one short nonconding region.Reconstructing the phylogenetic relationship of passerine indicate that the monophyly status of passerine is undoubted. Suggest to divide passerine into Suboscine and Oscine; the monophyly of Paridae was supported, but the monophyly of Sylviidea was rejected; suggest to separate Regulus from Muscicapidae as an independent family; Muscicapidae was sister to Turdidae,Paradoxornithidae nests other groups of Sylviidae, indicates Sylviidae has a close genetic relationship with Passeridae; strongly supported put Paridae into Muscicapidae, this is coincident with previous research results.