A nuclear genome assembly of an extinct flightless bird, the little bush moa

We present a draft genome of the little bush moa (Anomalopteryx didiformis) - one of approximately nine species of extinct flightless birds from Aotearoa, New Zealand - using ancient DNA recovered from a fossil bone from the South Island. We recover a complete mitochondrial genome at 249.9X depth of coverage and almost 900 Mb of a male moa nuclear genome at ~4-5X coverage, with sequence contiguity sufficient to identify more than 85% of avian universal single-copy orthologs. We describe a diverse landscape of transposable elements and satellite repeats; estimate a long-term effective population size of ~240,000; identify a diverse suite of olfactory receptor genes and an opsin repertoire with sensitivity in the UV range; show that the wingless moa phenotype is likely not attributable to gene loss or pseudogenization; and identify potential function-altering coding sequence variants in moa that could be synthesized for future functional assays. This genomic resource should support furthe..., , , # A nuclear genome assembly of an extinct flightless bird, the little bush moa

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.d51c59zxp](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.d51c59zxp)

## Description of the data and file structure

GENERAL INFORMATION

1\. Title of Dataset: A nuclear genome assembly of an extinct flightless bird, the little bush moa

2\. Author Information

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A. Principal Investigator Contact Information

Name: Scott V. Edwards

Institution: Harvard University

Address: Dept. of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge MA, 02138 USA

Email: [e-mail]
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3\. Date of data collection (single date, range, approximate date): 2000-2018

4\. Geographic location of data collection: South Island, New Zealand

5\. Information about funding sources that supported the collection of the data: Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC, to A.J.B.); Royal Ontario Museum Governors Fund (to A.J.B.); National Science Fo...