Prairie
+ meadow
vole genomes
Prairie voles are central to the study of pair bonding, but their genome remained incomplete. We built the first near-complete, chromosome-scale, haplotype-resolved reference from a single combined HiFi‑CiFi library and sequencing run, recovering the full karyotype and resolving the prairie-specific Avpr1a duplication.
For decades, the prairie vole has been central to research on pair bonding, parental care, and social attachment. But the genome behind that work remained incomplete. More than 600 Mb of sequence was unplaced, the Y chromosome was missing, and neither Avpr1a paralog was resolved.
Here we release the first near-complete, chromosome-scale, haplotype-resolved prairie vole reference. We recovered the complete karyotype, including both sex chromosomes, and anchored more than 500 Mb of previously unplaced sequence to chromosomes. Our assembly resolved the prairie-vole-specific Avpr1a duplication in its full chromosome context. Synteny with the meadow vole breaks down on the Y, where the two chromosomes have diverged completely.