Northern olingo (Bassaricyon gabbi), zorilla (Ictonyx striatus), and honey badger (Mellivora capensis) mitochondrial genomes and a phylogeny of Musteloidea

Musteloidea is a superfamily of carnivorous mammals divided into four families (Wilson and Mittermeier, 2009). The relationship among the families and subfamilies has been resolved using mitochondrial, nuclear, and morphological characters (Koepfli et al., 2008; Law et al., 2018; Hassanin et al., 2021) and is mostly congruent. The two families Ailuridae (red pandas) and Mephitidae (skunks) are the sistergroups to a grouping of Procyonidae (raccoons, olingos, among others) and Mustelidae (weasels and badgers, among others) (Koepfli et al., 2008; Sato et al., 2012; Law et al., 2018; Hassanin et al., 2021).

The mustelids are the largest subfamily with 58 species (Wilson and Mittermeier, 2009), each typically with an elongated body with relatively short legs, thick fur, and short round ears. They exhibit great variation in body length and weight, the smallest species being the least weasel (Mustela nivalis, Linneaus 1766) with 13–26 cm in length and < 250 g body weight, the longest being the giant otter (Pteronura brasiliensis, Gmelin 1788) at up to 1.7 m, and the heaviest being the sea otter (Enhydra lutris, Linneaus 1758), at up to 45 kg.

The zorilla (Ictonyx striatus, Perry 1810), also called striped polecat or African skunk, is a small African carnivore of the mustelid subfamily Ictonychinae (Koepfli et al., 2008; Kingdon, 2015). It resembles in appearance, behavior, and ecology the North American skunks (Mephitidae) and likewise uses a foul-smelling secretion from its anal gland for self-defense (Apps et al., 1988).

The honey badger (Mellivora capensis, Storr 1780) is the only species within the mustelid subfamily Mellivorinae and the genus Mellivora. The species is listed as “the world's most fearless animal” in the Guinness Book of World Records because of its ferocious defense abilities and can withstand venomous snake bites because of its thick skin and venom resistance (Drabeck et al., 2015).

Procyonidae is a family with a distribution in the New World and consists of 14 species, including raccoons, coatis, olingos, kinkajous, ring-tailed cats, and cacomistles (Wilson and Mittermeier, 2009). The most recently newly described extant carnivoran species in the past 35 years was the procyonid olinguito (Bassaricyon neblina) (Helgen et al., 2013). So far, four extant species of the genus Bassaricyon have been described, including the northern olingo (B. gabbii Allen 1876), which is the most common of the four species and is a tree-living, nocturnal herbivore found in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Panama.

Here we used short-read sequencing to determine the complete mitochondrial DNA sequence of the zorilla, honey badger, and the northern olingo and reconstructed the phylogeny of Musteloidea as a source for future evolutionary analyses.