The complete mitochondrial genome and phylogeny of Indian oil sardine, Sardinella longiceps and Goldstripe Sardinella, Sardinella gibbosa from the Indian Ocean

Abstract

The Indian oil Sardine, Sardinella longiceps and Goldstripe Sardinella, Sardinella gibbosa are the two commercially important, small pelagic fishes from Indian waters belonging to the family Clupeidae. Characterization of the complete mitogenome is very helpful in resolving taxonomic ambiguities and hence we characterized the complete mitogenome of S. longiceps and S. gibbosa from Indian waters. The assembled mitogenomes of S. longiceps and S. gibbosa are 16,613 and 16658 bp circles respectively, contained the 37 mitochondrial structural genes (2 rRNA, 22 tRNA, 13 protein-coding genes) with the gene order identical to that of typical vertebrates. In the phylogenetic tree, S. longiceps and S. gibbosa clustered with species belonging to the family Clupeidae. This study is the first report of the complete mitogenome of two commercially important clupeids from Indian waters which form the baseline for further studies on molecular systematics, population genetics, historic demography, adaptive variation and conservation of these species.