Chromosome-Level Reference Genome of the Ponza Grayling (Hipparchia sbordonii), an Italian Endemic and Endangered Butterfly.

ABSTRACT: Islands are crucial evolutionary hotspots, providing unique opportunities for differentiation of novel biodiversity and long-term segregation of endemic species. Islands are also fragile ecosystems, where biodiversity is more exposed to environmental and anthropogenic pressures than on continents. The Ponza grayling, Hipparchia sbordonii, is an endemic butterfly species that is currently found only in two tiny islands of the Pontine archipelago, off the coast of Italy, occupying an area smaller than 10 km2. It has been classified as Endangered (IUCN) because of the extremely limited area of occurrence, population fragmentation, and the recent demographic decline. Thanks to a combination of different assemblers of long and short genomic reads, bulk transcriptome RNAseq, and synteny analysis

SUBMITTER: Fava S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11255612 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature