The authors report the generation of high coverage Illumina short read sequence data and genome assembly for the leopard gecko (Eublepharis macularius). As an "eye-lidded" gecko without sticky toe pads, this species represents a unique lineage in geckos and its genome can help answer questions about the evolution of many amazing gecko traits. Also, as reptile genomes are under-sampled with respect to mammals in proportion to species diversity, another gecko genome can help resolve questions about genome evolution in sauropsids. Thus, the project, and all the work that went into it, is justified and should be published. As the current manuscript is a Data Note, there is no true biological question that was addressed using the genome assembly and no results reported from comparative analyses. Whether or not this group of authors intends to actually use the genome assembly remains to be seen, but that is not the point right now.

For the purposes of this manuscript, the data generation and analyses are mostly well documented and are done according to widespread practices in genome assembly. They generated 136X genome coverage of raw illumina data from a variety of insert sizes, filtered conservatively and wisely, and assembled contigs, scaffolds, and closed gaps. The scaffold N50 is 664Kb which is good for a reptile genome nowadays, although scaffolding practices are greatly improving. In any case, this genome will be useful for future comparative analyses.

I see no roadblocks to publishing this manuscript with just some very minor revisions.

I would like to know more about the gene annotation merging process. Was this done with a published tool like MAKER, or with in-house computational pipelines? There should be more transparency about this method.

Other than that, I wish the Leopard Gecko Genome Group luck going forward (but make sure you share the data!).

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An article whose findings are important to those with closely related research interests.

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