show Abstracthide AbstractBotta's pocket gopher (Thomomys bottae) is native to western North America. Botta's pocket gopher is highly adaptable, burrowing into a very diverse array of soils from loose sands to tightly packed clays, and from arid deserts to high altitude meadows. This sample is from a wild caught male in California, USA, collected by James L. Paton of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, and provided by Chris Conroy of the same museum, and used to generate a high-quality reference genome for the Vertebrate Genomes Project (VGP). Sequencing and genome assembly were conducted at the Vertebrate Genome Lab (VGL), coordinated by Olivier Fedrigo and Erich D. Jarvis.