Sensonator valentiensis Genome sequencing and assembly. Sensonator valentiensis

The exceptional amphipod family Sensonatoridae Lowry & Myers, 2012 is formed by a single monotypic genus. Sensonator valentiensis Notenboom, 1986 was originally found in hyporheic habitats of a restricted area in Valencia (South of Catalonia). It is a rather large amphipod with remarkable characteristics, showing similarities with several superfamilies (such as Gammaroidea, Pardaliscoidea or Lilljeborgoidea), but it could not be placed satisfactorily in one of these groups yet. It is a relict marine genus that probably got stranded in groundwaters over 60 Mya and represents an early offshoot of the ancestral lineage that gave rise to freshwater gammarid amphipods. Type locality habitats have been damaged due to human impact and the species could no longer be found there in 2018-2020 (personal obs.). Our research team recently discovered a new population in a previously unexplored anchihaline cave in Valencia and we have been able to successfully obtain the first molecular data for Sensonator, including part of an Illumina 4000 run (114 million PE150 reads, 17 Gb). Preliminary results show good completeness (C:59.8%[S:59.5%,D:0.3%],F:14.9%,M:25.3%) and contig lengths (up to 130kb) despite shallow sequencing. Genome size is estimated to be ~730Mb.