The complete mitochondrial genome of the Australian ghost bat Macroderma gigas

Abstract

The Ghost bat Macroderma gigas is a monotypic bat species that is endemic to northern Australia and named on the basis of the large size of its partially conjoined ears. It is the only carnivorous bat found in Australia and its conservation status is currently listed as Vulnerable. Here, we describe the complete mitochondrial genome of M. gigas and compare it to other vertebrates. The M. gigas circularized mitogenome was 16,661 bp and contained 13 protein-coding genes, two rRNA genes, 22 tRNAs and a control region (D-loop) of 1228 bp. Phylogenetic analysis of available entire mitogenomes reveals that Macroderma gigas is most closely related to the Indian false vampire bat Megaderma lyra in the family Megadermatidae (false vampire bats).

Keywords:

• Chordata
• ghost bat
• mitogenome
• chiroptera
• Megadermatidae

Acknowledgements

We thank Mark Cowan, Stephen Van Leeuwin for securing financial and logistical help and the Perth Zoo for the original tissue sample used to sequence this species

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflict of interest.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from either GenBank (see Figure 1) or from the corresponding author, [PS], upon reasonable request. The complete mitochondrial sequence has been deposited in the NCBI online database under the accession MW006543 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/MW006543.1/). Sequencing data can be retrieved from NCBI Biosample (SAMN16048702) SRA platform (SRX11310596) (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sra?LinkName=biosample_sra&from_uid=16048702)

Additional information

Funding

This sequencing work was supported with funding from Roy Hill, and Murdoch University.