Sequencing the mitochondrial genome of African savanna elephant louse

The Asian elephant lice and the African savanna elephant lice are currently treated as the same species, Haematomyzus elephantis (Piaget, 1869), based on morphology despite the fact that their hosts diverged 8.4 million years ago. In the current study, we sequenced 23 mitochondrial (mt) genes of African savanna elephant lice collected in South Africa and analysed the sequence divergence between African savanna elephant lice and previously sequenced Asian elephant lice.