Bruna Trevisan

and 3 more

The recognized potential of using mitogenomics in phylogenetics and the more accessible use of high-throughput sequencing (HTS) offer an opportunity to investigate groups of neglected organisms. Here, we leveraged HTS to execute the most comprehensive documentation of mitogenomes for cestodes based on the number of terminals sequenced. We adopted modern approaches to obtain the complete mitogenome sequences of 86 specimens representing five orders of cestodes (three reported for the first time: Phyllobothriidea, “Tetraphyllidea” and Trypanorhyncha). The complete mitogenomes provided represent an increase of 41% of the mitogenomes available for cestodes (61 to 147) and an addition of 33% in the representativeness of the cestode orders. The complete mitochondrial genomes are conserved, circular, encoded in the same strand, and transcribed in the same direction, following the pattern observed previously for tapeworms. Their length varies from 13,369–13,795 bp, containing 36 genes in total. Except for the Trypanorhyncha specimen, the gene order of the other four cestode orders sequenced here suggests that it could be a synapomorphy for the acetabulate group (with a reversion for taenids). Our results also suggest that no single gene should be used as a molecular marker alone since none of them could tell all the evolutionary history in the mitogenome and that cestodes phylogenies should be improved with phylogenetic analysis conducted under a total evidence framework. The characterization of the new mitochondrial genomes is the first step to provide a valuable resource for future studies on the evolutionary relationships of these groups of parasites.