High-quality genome assembly of the endemic, threatened, White-bellied Sholakili Sholicola albiventris (Muscicapidae: Blanford, 1868) from the Shola Sky Islands, India.

The White-bellied Sholakili (Sholicola albiventris) is an endemic, elevationally restricted species occurring in the Shola Sky Islands of the Western Ghats of India. This unique understory bird, with a complex vocal repertoire, exhibits impacts of anthropogenic habitat fragmentation on gene flow. Here, we present the first genome assembly for Sholicola albiventris, which was assembled using a combination of Nanopore and Illumina sequences. The final assembly is 1.083 Gbp, consisting of 975 scaffolds with an N50 of 68.64 Mbp and L50 of 6. Our genome assembly's completeness is supported by a number of metrics - high BUSCOs (99.9%), and a total of 4887 ultraconserved element (UCE) loci retrieved. We also report the complete mitochondrial genome comprising 13 protein-coding genes, 22 tRNAs, and 2 rRNAs. We identified 11.82% of the nuclear genome as repetitive and 36,000 putative genes, with 12017 genes functionally annotated. Our assembly showed a great synteny between Taeniopygia guttata and Gallus gallus chromosome level assemblies. This reference will be pivotal for investigating landscape connectivity, sub-population genetics, local adaptation, and conservation genetics of this high-elevation, range-restricted endemic bird species.