Draft genomes of a male and female Australian jacky dragon (Amphibolurus muricatus)

Australia is remarkable for its lizard diversity, with very high endemicity because of continental-scale diversification and adaptive radiation during prolonged isolation. We here employed stLFR linked-read technology to generate male and female draft genomes of the jacky dragon Amphibolurus muricatus, an Australian dragon lizard (family Agamidae; the agamids). The assemblies are 1.8 Gb in size and have a repeat content (39%) and GC content (42%) similar to other dragon lizards. The longest scaffold was 39.7 Mb (female) and 9.6 Mb (male), with corresponding scaffold N50 values of 6.8 Mb and 1.6 Mb. The BUSCO (Sauropsida database) completeness percentages were 90.2% and 88.8% respectively. Phylogenetic comparisons show that Australian and Asian agamids split from a common ancestor about 80 million years ago, while the Australian genera Amphibolurus, Pogona, and the basal Intellagama split ~37 million years ago. The draft A. muricatus assemblies will be a valuable resource for understanding lizard sex determination and the evolution and conservation of Australian dragon lizards.(male), with corresponding scaffold N50 values of 6.8 Mb and 1.6 Mb. The BUSCO (Sauropsida database) completeness percentages were 90.2% and 88.8% respectively. These statistics are comparable to those for other lizard genomes. Phylogenetic comparisons show that Australian dragon lizard species split from a common ancestor about 35.4 million years ago. The draft A. muricatus assemblies will be a valuable resource for understanding lizard sex determination and the evolution and conservation of Australian dragon lizards.