Chromosome-Level Genome Assembly of the Common Chaffinch (Aves: Fringilla coelebs): A Valuable Resource for Evolutionary Biology.

Abstract

The common chaffinch, Fringilla coelebs, is one of the most common, widespread, and well-studied passerines in Europe, with a broad distribution encompassing Western Europe and parts of Asia, North Africa, and the Macaronesian archipelagos. We present a high-quality genome assembly of the common chaffinch generated using Illumina shotgun sequencing in combination with Chicago and Hi-C libraries. The final genome is a 994.87-Mb chromosome-level assembly, with 98% of the sequence data located in chromosome scaffolds and a N50 statistic of 69.73 Mb. Our genome assembly shows high completeness, with a complete BUSCO score of 93.9% using the avian data set. Around 7.8% of the genome contains interspersed repetitive elements. The structural annotation yielded 17,703 genes, 86.5% of which have a functional annotation, including 7,827 complete universal single-copy orthologs out of 8,338 genes represented in the BUSCO avian data set. This new annotated genome assembly will be a valuable resource as a reference for comparative and population genomic analyses of passerine, avian, and vertebrate evolution.