Low coverage 454 genome sequencing of North American fireflies

Fireflies are a globally-relevant organism both culturally and scientifically. However, little is known about their genomes. Here we present low-coverage genome sequencing of 21 taxa using 454 technology with the goal of discovering repetitive DNA content across species. This data informs our understanding of genome content evolution in this captivating family of insects with implications for genome size evolution, speciation, and future whole-genome sequencing experiments.