Chrysochroa fulgidissima is the most beautiful Korean beetle and valuable insect in traditional culture because of ancient fulgidissima's adornments in Korea and Japan. The species is also recognized as very rare in the Korean fauna. However, we recently realized that the Korean population has been applied to Ch. fulgidissima without detailed taxonomic approaches since Japanese colonial rule of Korea. Therefore, we investigated 76 dried specimens belonging to seven populations collected from N. Vietnam, E. China, Taiwan, Japan, and Korea through morphological and molecular taxonomy using DNA barcoding of COI and 16S rRNA. As the result, the Korean population is strongly formed a monophyletic branch divided from other populations by genetic divergence of each 10.2%~11.7% in DNA barcoding and 6.4%~7.9% in 16S rRNA, and as well as fine structure in the male genitalia. It is allowed to us that the Korean population, which has been underestimated at species discrimination in morphology, may be considered as a novel species.

In this study, we determined the complete mitochondrial genome of the jewel beetle, Chrysochroa fulgidissima (Coleoptera: Buprestidae), from four overlapping fragments. The 15,592-bp long C. fulgidissima mitogenome exhibits a gene arrangement and content identical to the most common type in insects. The start codon of the C. fulgidissima COI gene is unusual, in that no typical ATN codon is available. The 875-bp A+T-rich region is the shortest among the coleopteran mitogenomes that have thus far been sequenced in their entirety. The most unusual feature of the genome is the presence of three tRNA-like sequences within the A+T-rich region: two tRNALeu(UUR)-like sequences and one tRNAAsnlike sequence. These sequence stretches evidence the proper anticodon sequence and the potential to form secondary structures, but also harbor many mismatches in the stems. Phylogenetic analysis using a concatenation of 13 amino acid sequences of protein-coding genes among the available sequenced species of coleopteran superfamilies (Buprestoidea and Elateroidea belonging to the infraorder Elateriformnia, and Chrysomeloidea and Tenebrioroidea belonging to the infraorder Cucujoiformia) by Bayesian inference, maximum-parsimony analyses, and maximum-likelihood analysis unexpectedly revealed a lack of support for monophyletic Elateriformia.

We determined the complete mitochondrial genome (mitogenome) of the jewel beetle, Chrysochroa fulgidissima (Coleoptera: Buprestidae) from two overlapping fragments and subsequent sub fragments. The 15,592-bp long C. fulgidissima mitogenome contains gene arrangement and content identical to the most common arrangement found in insects. Most individual C. fulgidissima mitochondrial (mt) genes were well within the range found in the respective genes of other insects. The 875-bp A+T-rich region is shortest among the coleopteran mitogenomes sequenced in their entirety. The region is interesting in that it contains several stem-and-loop structures and tRNA-like structure found in the A+T-rich regions of other insect mitogenomes. As seen in other insect motogenomes the start codon of C. fulgidissima COI gene also is unusual because no typical start codon is available. Three of the 13 protein-coding genes have incomplete termination codon T or TA. All tRNA formed stable stem-and-loop structure, except for tRNASer(AGN), the DHU arm of which formed a simple loop as seen in many other metazoan mt tRNASer(AGN).