Complete mitochondrial genome of the dark mealworm Tenebrio obscurus Fabricius (Insecta: Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae)

Abstract

The dark meal worm Tenehrio obscurus (Fabricius) is frequently found as a pest of stored grain, but it is an important resource insect like the yellow meal worm (Tenebrio molitor), larvae of which has high-protein content. The mitochondrial genome of T. obscurus is a circular molecule of 15,771 bp (GenBank accession number MG739327), with A + T bias of 72.69%. It comprises 13 protein-coding, 22 tRNA and two rDNA genes. The protein-coding genes had typical ATN (Met) as the initiation codon and were terminated by the typical stop codon TAN, except for COX2, COX3, nadh5 and nadh4. The phylogenetic tree based on maximum-likelihood method showed that the phylogenetic position of T. obscurus is closely related to T. molitor.