ARPHA Preprints, doi: 10.3897/arphapreprints.e84946
The Complete Mitochondrial Genome of the Brazilian Cownose Ray Rhinoptera brasiliensis (Myliobatiformes, Rhinopteridae) in the Western Atlantic: Genome Characterization and Phylogenetic Analysis
expand article infoPaola Yanira Palacios-Barreto‡, Adán Fernando Mar-Silva‡, Natalia Bayona-Vásquez§, Douglas H. Adams|, Pindaro Díaz-Jaimes
‡ Posgrado en Ciencias del Mar y Limnología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico city, Mexico§ Division of Natural Science and Mathematics, Oxford College, Emory University, Oxford, Oxford, GA, United States of America| Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, Fish and Wildlife Research Institute, Indian River Field Laboratory, Melbourne, FL, United States of America

Corresponding author: Pindaro Díaz-Jaimes ( pindaro@cmarl.unam.mx )

© Paola Yanira Palacios-Barreto, Adán Fernando Mar-Silva, Natalia Bayona-Vásquez, Douglas H. Adams, Pindaro Díaz-Jaimes.
This is an open access preprint distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation: Palacios-Barreto PY, Mar-Silva AF, Bayona-Vásquez N, Adams DH, Díaz-Jaimes P (2022) The Complete Mitochondrial Genome of the Brazilian Cownose Ray Rhinoptera brasiliensis (Myliobatiformes, Rhinopteridae) in the Western Atlantic: Genome Characterization and Phylogenetic Analysis. ARPHA Preprints. https://doi.org/10.3897/arphapreprints.e84946
Open Access
Abstract

The Brazilian cownose ray, Rhinoptera brasiliensis has undergone a global population reduction and is currently classified by IUCN as Vulnerable. We sequenced the complete mitochondrial genome of R. brasiliensis, resulting in a 17,759 bp genome size, featuring the typical vertebrate mitochondrial genome structure. The mtDNA genome contains 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), two ribosomal RNA (rRNA) genes, 22 transfer RNA (tRNA) genes, and a non-coding control region (D-loop). Each PCG was initiated by an authoritative ATG codon, except for COX1 that initiated by a GTG codon. Most of the PCGs were terminated by a complete codon (TAA/TAG), while an incomplete termination codon (TA/T) was found in five out of the 13 PCGs. Both Maximum Likelihood (ML) and Bayesian Inference (BI) analyses were used to reconstruct the phylogenetic relationships which revealed that R. brasiliensis was closely related to R. steindachneri whereas the reported mitogenome from a single specimen identified as R. steindachneri from Sri Lanka (GenBank accession number KM364982) was found to correspond to the sequence for R. javanica. These novel results provide a useful resource for further phylogeographic and population genetics studies of Rhinoptera spp.

Keywords
Cownose ray, elasmobranch, mitogenome, phylogeny, protein-coding genes