The complete mitochondrial genome of spittlebug Paphnutius ruficeps (Insecta: Hemiptera: Cercopidae) with a fairly short putative control region.

The mitochondrial genome of the spittlebug Paphnutius ruficeps is a double-strand DNA circular molecule of 14,841 bp with a total A and T content of 73.8%. It is one of the shortest genomes among published hemipteran mitogenomes and encodes 13 protein-coding genes, 2 ribosome RNA genes and 22 transfer RNA (tRNA) genes. The gene order is consistent with the hypothesized ancestral arthropod genome arrangement. Most of the protein-coding genes use ATG as start and TAA as stop codon. The codons show an evident bias toward the nucleotides T and A at the third codon position and the most commonly used codons contain more A and T than their synonymous ones. The anticodons of the 22 tRNA genes are identical to those of the mitogenome of Philaenus spumarius, another studied spittlebug. All the tRNAs could be folded into traditional clover leaf secondary structures. The putative control region (traditionally called A + T-rich region) is the main non-coding part of the mitogenome. The AT content of this region (74.5%) is not significantly higher than that of the total mitogenome (73.8%) and slightly lower than that of the N-chain protein-coding genes (75.3%). The absence of repeat sequences as well as its short length is the most obvious characteristics of the mitochondrial genome of Paphnutius ruficeps compared with those of other published hemipteran species.