Mitogenomic analysis of Rüppell's fox ( Vulpes rueppellii ) confirms phylogenetic placement within the Palaearctic clade shared with its sister species, the red fox ( Vulpes vulpes ).

The Rüppell's fox ( Vulpes rueppellii ) inhabits desert regions across North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and southwestern Asia. Its phylogenetic relationship with other fox species, especially within the phylogeographic context of its sister species, V. vulpes , remain unclear. We here report the sequencing and de-novo assembly of the first annotated mitogenome of V. rueppellii , analysed with data from other foxes (tribe Vulpini, subfamily Caninae). We used four bioinformatic approaches to reconstruct the V. rueppellii mitogenome, obtaining identical sequences except for the incompletely assembled tandem-repeat region within the D-loop. The mitogenome displayed an identical organization, number and length of genes as V. vulpes . We found high support for clustering of both known subclades of V. rueppellii within the Palearctic clade of V. vulpes , rendering the latter species paraphyletic, consistent with previous analyses of shorter mtDNA fragments. More work is needed for a full understanding of the evolutionary drivers and consequences of hybridization in foxes.