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Genome Assemblies for 39 Reptile Species Released, Including a Tropical House Gecko From Ethiopia

Tropical house gecko photographed in Picard, Dominica
Research · Genetics & genomics

A genomic resource paper published on 13 August 2026 released genome assemblies for 39 reptile species, including the tropical house gecko (Hemidactylus mabouia). The sequences and underlying data were deposited in public GenBank databases.

The tropical house gecko sample came from a single wild-collected individual from Ethiopia. Researchers extracted DNA from tissue and used paired-end Illumina sequencing before assembling the reads into longer genomic sequences. The whole-genome shotgun project is deposited under accession JBZFWZ000000000, with the assembly registered as GCA_058545105.1.

NCBI lists the tropical house gecko assembly at scaffold level. This means the sequence has been assembled into larger stretches of DNA, but not into complete chromosome-length sequences. The distinction matters because the paper describes the 39 datasets as complete genome sequences, while the public assembly record shows the actual resolution available for this species.

The paper is primarily a genomic-resource publication rather than a study testing a specific ecological, behavioural or population-genetic hypothesis. Its 2026 contribution is the public release of genomic data from 39 reptiles collected in Ethiopia, Guyana, Mexico and the United States, creating sequence resources that can be reused in later comparative and species-focused research.

Sources and image credit

  1. Colston, T. J., Rosado-Ramos, E. L., Pirro, S., & Pyron, R. A. (2026). The Complete Genome Sequences of 39 Species of Reptiles. Biodiversity Genomes. https://doi.org/10.56179/001c.166999Primary 2026 genomic-resource paper releasing genome sequence data for 39 reptile species. Hemidactylus mabouia was represented by one wild-collected individual from Ethiopia; its WGS project is JBZFWZ000000000 and NCBI lists assembly GCA_058545105.1 at scaffold level.

Image: Tropical house gecko (Hemidactylus mabouia) photographed in Picard, Dominica, 15 September 2009. Photo: Postdlf. Source: Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0. Representative image; not the individual sequenced in the 2026 genome project. · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Source

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