I also found this repeat region in mt genome. But I did not found any person said it belong to microsatelites. Most people thought those sequences were like-microsatellites.
Thanks for all the suggestions. A bit more, the species is the snake pipefish, Entelurus aequoreus from the northeastern Atlantic. Its a [TA]10 repeat in the mtDNA control region although about 16% of the samples have a [TA]9 repeat - potentially a stepwise deletion. No geographic structure is found with the microsatellite and haplotypes can be the same with and without the presence of the microsatellite. For some analyses like PhiST, AMOVA, Bayesian Skyline Plots we've excluded the microstellite as it just seems to add noise to the signal. I'm wondering if anyone else has had these issues before.
Two good references on microsatellites in mitochondria:
Lunt DH, Whipple, LE, Hyman. 1998. Mitochondrial DNA variable number tandem repeats (VNTRs): utility and problems in molecular ecology. Molecular Ecology, 7, 1441-1455
Mayer F, Kerth G. 2005. Microsatellite evolution in the mitochondrial genome of Bechstein's bat (Myotis bechsteinii). Journal of Molecular Ecology. 61. 408-416
Just a quick update - we report our experience with a mitochondrial microsatellite and how we dealt with it for population genetics purposes in this publication: Article Phylogeography of the snake pipefish, Entelurus aequoreus (F...
This might also help you: S Mahfooz* et al., (2012) Microsatellite repeat dynamics in mitochondrial genomes of phytopathogenic fungi: frequency and distribution in the genic and intergenic regions. Bioinformation 8, 1171