Xue-Juan Li; Yuan Huang; Fu-Min Lei
Bonasa sewerzowi, the smallest and most southerly distributed grouse species in the world, is a bird endemic to China. The population of B. sewerzowi had shown a declining trend, which made it to be the endangered species in the China Red Data Book and Category I of nationally protected animals. So far, however, most studies about this species were mainly focused on the morphological and ecological aspects. In order to further study the feature of B. sewerzowi, the complete mitochondrial genome (mitogenome) of B. sewerzowi was sequenced by Illumina Hiseq 2000 high-throughput sequencing. Then, we focused on comparative genomics of two Bonasa species to find their characteristics. Finally, phylogenetic position of Bonasa was made based on the mitogenome dataset. Our results revealed that: (1) the mitogenome of B. sewerzowi, consisting of 16 658 bp, displayed typical genome organization and gene order found in other previously determined Galliformes mitogenomes; (2) the structure and composition of mitogenomes were similar between B. sewerzowi and B. bonasia; (3) the monophyly of Bonasa was well supported, which had a closer phylogenetic relationship with Meleagris gallopavo.
