The first linkage map for Australo-Papuan Treefrogs (family: Pelodryadidae) reveals the sex-determination system of the Green-eyed Treefrog (Litoria serrata)

Lorenzo V Bertola; Conrad J Hoskin; David B Jones; Kyall R Zenger; Donald T McKnight; Megan Higgie

doi:10.1038/s41437-023-00642-5

The first linkage map for Australo-Papuan Treefrogs (family: Pelodryadidae) reveals the sex-determination system of the Green-eyed Treefrog (Litoria serrata)

Heredity (Edinb). 2023 Oct;131(4):263-272. doi: 10.1038/s41437-023-00642-5. Epub 2023 Aug 4.

Authors

Lorenzo V Bertola^{1

2}, Conrad J Hoskin³, David B Jones^{3

4}, Kyall R Zenger^{3

4}, Donald T McKnight^{3

5}, Megan Higgie^{3

6}

Affiliations

¹ College of Science and Engineering, James Cook University, Townsville, QLD, 4811, Australia. Lorenzo.bertola@my.jcu.edu.au.
² Centre for Tropical Bioinformatics and Molecular Biology, James Cook University, Townsville, QLD, 4811, Australia. Lorenzo.bertola@my.jcu.edu.au.
³ College of Science and Engineering, James Cook University, Townsville, QLD, 4811, Australia.
⁴ Centre for Sustainable Tropical Fisheries and Aquaculture, James Cook University, Townsville, QLD, 4811, Australia.
⁵ Department of Environment and Genetics, School of Agriculture, Biomedicine and Environment, West Wodonga, La Trobe University, Melbourne, VIC, 3690, Australia.
⁶ Centre for Tropical Bioinformatics and Molecular Biology, James Cook University, Townsville, QLD, 4811, Australia.

Abstract

Amphibians represent a useful taxon to study the evolution of sex determination because of their highly variable sex-determination systems. However, the sex-determination system for many amphibian families remains unknown, in part because of a lack of genomic resources. Here, using an F1 family of Green-eyed Treefrogs (Litoria serrata), we produce the first genetic linkage map for any Australo-Papuan Treefrogs (family: Pelodryadidae). The resulting linkage map contains 8662 SNPs across 13 linkage groups. Using an independent set of sexed adults, we identify a small region in linkage group 6 matching an XY sex-determination system. These results suggest Litoria serrata possesses a male heterogametic system, with a candidate sex-determination locus on linkage group 6. Furthermore, this linkage map represents the first genomic resource for Australo-Papuan Treefrogs, an ecologically diverse family of over 220 species.