The complete chloroplast genomes of the mangrove fern Acrostichum aureum

The mangrove fern Acrostichum aureum is widely distributed in the Indo West-Pacific and Atlantic East-Pacific regions. Here we assembled and annotated its chloroplast genome based on the Illumina sequencing reads. The complete chloroplast genome of A. aureum was 154,805 bp in length with the GC content of 38.38%. It contains a large single copy (LSC) region of 82,826 bp and a small single copy (SSC) region of 21,617 bp, separated by a pair of inverted repeat region (IRs) of 25,181 bp each. It contains 84 protein coding genes, 27 tRNA genes, and four rRNA genes. Phylogenetic analysis shows that A. aureum is closest to Ceratopteris cornuta in the subfamily Parkerioideae. The chloroplast genome of A. aureum reported here offers a useful resource for its phylogeography and conservation genetics studies.