A high-quality genome assembly for a desert-adapted rodent, Merriam’s kangaroo rat (Dipodomys merriami)

Merriam’s kangaroo rat (Dipodomys merriami) is a member of a unique family of primarily desert-adapted North American rodents (Heteromyidae). Of the 20 species in the genus, D. merriami is one of the most wide-ranging and ecologically flexible, inhabiting desert scrub, grassland, sagebrush steppe, and juniper-piñon woodland in the southwestern deserts of the United States and Mexico. We present a de novo reference genome for D. merriami generated from PacBio HiFi long-read and Omni-C chromatin proximity sequencing as a part of the California Conservation Genomics Project. The primary pseudo-haplotype assembly comprises 3,110 scaffolds, with a contig N50 of 8.6 Mb, scaffold N50 of 49.1 Mb, and a total length of 3.57 Gb. Further, a BUSCO completeness score of 97.8% suggests that the assembly is highly complete. The reference genome sequence is available on NCBI under accession GCA_023159225.1. Here, we share supplementary data, including a a mitochondrial genome assembly and a basic prote..., , , # Data from: A high-quality genome assembly for a desert-adapted rodent, Merriam’s kangaroo rat (Dipodomys merriami)

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.x0k6djhtc](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.x0k6djhtc)

## Description of the data and file structure

This dataset corresponds to a genome assembly report for *Dipodomys merriami* (Voss et al. Journal of Heredity, in review).

The genome assembly is available on NCBI under the identifier mDipMer1.0.p at [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/datasets/genome/GCA_024711535.1/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/datasets/genome/GCA_024711535.1/)

Here, we have deposited associated files that were generated for the purposes of preliminary genome annotation. 

1. GCA_024711535.1_mDipMer1.NCBI.p_ctg.Liftoff_Annotation_polished.gff: GFF file containing preliminary genome feature annotation for *D. merriami genome* assembly. Genome features were lifted over from the closest relative with a high-quality genome annotation (*D. spectabilis*, Harder et al. 2022) with L...,