Phylogenetic Analysis of Korean Cicada (Insecta: Hemiptera) Species Using Mitochondrial and Nuclear Loci

Abstract

Documenting species diversity and elucidating their evolutionary relationships are critical to the understanding of the evolutionary processes such as adaptation and speciation. While 13 cicada species from 11 genera are known to inhabit in the Republic of Korea, their phylogenetic relationships remain poorly understood. In this study, we present phylogenies of 12 species found in the Republic of Korea along with other closely related species, using maximum likelihood, Bayesian inference and maximum parsimony methods based on a mitochondrial Cytochrome B Oxidase locus, two nuclear loci (elongation factor 1-alpha and 18S rRNA), and a dataset composed of two or all loci concatenated. The estimated phylogenies were generally congruent with one another. More specifically, all species belonging to the subfamily Cicadettinae formed a monophyletic group with high bootstrap support using the concatenated sequences. The positions of some species varied depending on the loci used, possibly due to a lack of phylogenetic signal in parts of the dataset. Our analysis fills the knowledge gap in the evolutionary positions of three Korean cicada species, Suisha coreana Matsumura, 1927, Leptosemia takanonis Matsumura 1917 and Tettigetta isshikii Kato 1926, all of which were not previously investigated.