Abstract
Mitochondrial DNA sequences, often in combination with nuclear markers and morphological data, are frequently used to unravel the phylogenetic relationships, population dynamics and biogeographic histories of a plethora of organisms. The information provided by examining complete mitochondrial genomes also enables investigation of other evolutionary events such as gene rearrangements, gene duplication and gene loss. Despite efforts to generate information to represent most of the currently recognized groups, some taxa are underrepresented in mitochondrial genomic databases. One such group is leeches (Annelida: Hirudinea: Clitellata). Herein, we expand our knowledge concerning leech mitochondrial makeup including gene arrangement, gene duplication and the evolution of mitochondrial genomes by adding newly sequenced mitochondrial genomes for three bloodfeeding species: Haementeria officinalis, Placobdella lamothei and Placobdella parasitica. With the inclusion of three new mitochondrial genomes of leeches, a better understanding of evolution for this organelle within the group is emerging. We found that gene order and genomic arrangement in the three new mitochondrial genomes is identical to previously sequenced members of Clitellata. Interestingly, within Placobdella, we recovered a genus-specific duplication of the trnD gene located between cox2 and atp8. We performed phylogenetic analyses using 12 protein-coding genes and expanded our taxon sampling by including GenBank sequences for 39 taxa; the analyses confirm the monophyletic status of Clitellata, yet disagree in several respects with other phylogenetic hypotheses based on morphology and analyses of non-mitochondrial data.