Data from: Resources for phylogenomic analyses of Australian terrestrial vertebrates

High-throughput sequencing methods promise to improve our ability to infer the evolutionary histories of lineages and to delimit species. These are exciting prospects for the study of Australian vertebrates, a group comprised of many globally unique lineages with a long history of isolation. The evolutionary relationships within many of these lineages have been difficult to resolve with small numbers of loci, and we now know that many lineages also exhibit substantial cryptic diversity. Here, we present a set of phylogenetically diverse transcriptome resources to enable exon-based sequence capture studies of Australian vertebrates, including transcriptome sequences for four species of birds, four frogs, seven lizards and seven mammals. We also use exon data from the marsupial transcriptomes we generated to examine an approach for choosing a moderate number (dozens or hundreds) of phylogenetically informative exons based on a single transcriptome sequence, and a relatively distant reference genome.

高通量测序（High-throughput sequencing）方法有望提升我们推断演化支系（lineage）演化历史、界定物种类别的能力。这对于澳大利亚脊椎动物的研究而言是极具潜力的方向：该类群包含诸多全球特有的演化支系，且经历了长期的地理隔离演化历程。过往依靠少量基因座（locus，复数形式为loci）难以解析诸多这类支系内部的演化关系，而如今我们已明确，不少支系还存在显著的隐蔽物种多样性。本研究提供一套系统发育覆盖度广泛的转录组（transcriptome）资源，以支持澳大利亚脊椎动物的外显子（exon）序列捕获研究，其中包含4种鸟类、4种蛙类、7种蜥蜴及7种哺乳类的转录组序列。本研究同时利用所获得的有袋类转录组外显子数据，探索了一种基于单份转录组序列与亲缘关系相对较远的参考基因组（reference genome），筛选适量（数十至数百个）系统发育信息性外显子的方法。