A draft genome assembly of the eastern banjo frog Limnodynastes dumerilii dumerilii (Anura: Limnodynastidae)

Abstract

34Amphibian genomes are usually challenging to assemble due to large genome size and high 35 repeat content. The Limnodynastidae is a family of frogs native to Australia, Tasmania and 36 New Guinea. As an anuran lineage that successfully diversified on the Australian continent, it 37 represents an important lineage in the amphibian tree of life but lacks reference genomes. Here 38 we sequenced and annotated the genome of the eastern banjo frog Limnodynastes dumerilii 39 dumerilii to fill this gap. The total length of the genome assembly is 2.38 Gb with a scaffold 40 N50 of 285.9 kb. We identified 1.21 Gb of non-redundant sequences as repetitive elements and 41 annotated 24,548 protein-coding genes in the assembly. BUSCO assessment indicated that 42 more than 94% of the expected vertebrate genes were present in the genome assembly and the 43 gene set. We anticipate that this annotated genome assembly will advance the future study of 44 anuran phylogeny and amphibian genome evolution. 45