Abstract: Up to now, the reports about the complete mitochondrial genome of butterflies and their corresponding molecular evolutions are still limited. In this paper, the complete mitochondrial genome (mitogenome) of Calinaga davidis was sequenced and analyzed using the long PCR and the conserved primer walking technology. The results showed that the entire mitochondrial genome sequence was 15 267 bp long (GenBank accession no. HQ658143), containing 13 proteincoding genes (ATP6, ATP8, COI-III, ND1-6, ND4L and Cytb), 22 transfer RNA genes, 2 ribosomal RNA genes (lrRNA and srRNA) and a putative control region (D-loop). All the 37 genes are arranged in the same orientations as those of other lepidopteran species determined; and there are 11 intergenic spacer sequences totalling 130 bp (1 bp to 46 bp for each sequence) and 13 overlapping sequences totalling 66 bp (1 bp to 35 bp for each sequence), interspersed throughout the genome, and the largest (46 bp) spacer region and overlapping region are located between the tRNA^Gln and ND2, and between COII and tRNA^Lys genes, respectively. The large and small rRNA genes are 1 337 bp and 773 bp in size, respectively. All the tRNA genes have typical leaf clover secondary structures, except for the tRNA^Ser(AGN), whose DHU arm forms a simple loop. The 13 protein-coding genes are 11 247 bp in length with corresponding 3 737 codons, their base compositions have a relatively higher AT bias and their codon usages are also predominantly A+T-rich. All the protein coding genes (PCGs) use standard initiation codons ATN, except for the COI gene, which uses TTG as its starting codon, and all the PCGs use common stop codon (TAA), except for the COI and ND4 genes, which terminate into a single T and TA, respectively. The A+T-rich region is 389 bp in length with the AT content up to 92.0%, and this region contains two microsatellite-like repeating sequences (TA)₆ and (AAT)₄. The results of this study provide some important molecular data to clarify the systematical status of Calinaginae, as well as its phylogenetic relationship with other nymphalid subfamilies.

Key words: Lepidoptera, Calinaga davidis, mitochondrial genome, tRNA secondary structure, tandemly repeated sequences