The blue-tailed damselfly, Ischnura elegans Van der Linden, 1820 (Odonata: Coenagrionidae), is a climate-sensitive indicator species in South Korea. In this study, we sequenced the complete mitochondrial genome (mitogenome) of I. elegans collected from South Korea for subsequent population genetic analysis, particularly to trace population movements in response to climate change. The 15,963 base pair (bp)-long complete mitogenome of I. elegans has typical sets of genes including a major non-coding region (the A+T-rich region), and an arrangement identical to that observed in ancestral insect species. The ATP6, ND3 and ND1 genes have the TTG start codon, which, although rare, is the canonical start codon for animal mitochondrial tRNA. The A/T content was 71.4% in protein-coding genes, 72.1% in tRNAs, 72.9% in the whole genome, 74.7% in srRNA, 75.3% in lrRNA, and 83.8% in the A+T-rich region. The A+T-rich region is unusually long (1,196 bp) and contains two subunits (192 bp and 176?165 bp), each of which is tandemly triplicated and surrounded by non-repeat sequences. Comparison of the sequence divergence among available mitogenomes of I. elegans, including the one from the current study, revealed ND2 as the most variable gene, followed by COII and COI, suggesting that ND2 should b...