The Complete Genome Sequences of 22 Species of Owls (Strigiformes, Aves)

Taylor Hains; Therese Catanach; Stacy Pirro; John Bates; Shannon Hackett

doi:10.56179/001c.128167

Hains, Taylor, Therese Catanach, Stacy Pirro, John Bates, and Shannon Hackett. 2025. “The Complete Genome Sequences of 22 Species of Owls (Strigiformes, Aves).” Biodiversity Genomes, January. https://doi.org/10.56179/001c.128167.

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Abstract

We present the complete genome sequences of 22 species of owls. Illumina sequencing was performed on DNA extracted from wild-caught specimens. The reads were assembled using a de novo method followed by a finishing step. The raw and assembled data are publicly available via Genbank.

Methods

Single wild-collected individuals were sampled for this study.

DNA extraction was performed using the Qiagen DNAeasy genomic extraction kit using the standard protocol. A paired-end sequencing library was constructed using the Illumina TruSeq kit according to the manufacturer’s instructions. The library was sequenced on an Illumina Hi-Seq platform in paired-end, 2 × 150 bp format. The resulting fastq files were trimmed of adapter/primer sequence and low-quality regions with Trimmomatic v0.33 (Bolger, Lohse, and Usadel 2014). The trimmed sequence was assembled by SPAdes v2.5 (Bankevich et al. 2012) followed by a finishing step using Zanfona (Kieras, O’Neill, and Pirro 2021).

Results and Data Availability

All data, including raw reads and assembled genome sequence, is available via Genbank.

taxname	specimen_voucher	accession
Asio madagascariensis	FMNH 185845	JBJNIK000000000
Glaucidium cuculoides	FMNH 102348	JBEUDJ000000000
Megascops albogularis	FMNH 287980	JBIMPI000000000
Megascops choliba	FMNH 62510	JBFCBS000000000
Megascops ingens	FMNH 287769	JBIMPG000000000
Megascops kennicottii	FMNH 74747	JBGOFM000000000
Megascops trichopsis	FMNH 137851	JBISCZ000000000
Megascops watsonii	FMNH 247145	JBFSXE000000000
Otus brucei	FMNH 230012	JBGAFH000000000
Otus elegans	FMNH 152192	JBFSXD000000000
Otus icterorhynchus	FMNH 270519	JBEUSX000000000
Otus lempiji	FMNH 213903	JBEUDB000000000
Otus lettia	FMNH 230033	JBFBVQ000000000
Otus longicornis	FMNH 429202	JBGOFK000000000
Otus manadensis	FMNH 219912	JBGDLS000000000
Otus mirus	FMNH 357429	JBFTWZ000000000
Otus nigrorum	FMNH 103133	JBGGHY000000000
Otus rutilus	FMNH 363793	JBEUDL000000000
Otus scops	FMNH 276079	JBDLLQ000000000
Otus semitorques	FMNH 226369	JBGDLU000000000
Otus senegalensis	FMNH 285590	JBEUDK000000000
Phodilus badius	FMNH 229975	JBEALI000000000

Funding

Funding was provided by Iridian Genomes, grant# IRGEN_RG_2021-1345 Genomic Studies of Eukaryotic Taxa and by NSF grant DEB 2203228, awarded to TAC.

Submitted: January 02, 2025 EDT

Accepted: January 10, 2025 EDT

References

Bankevich, Anton, Sergey Nurk, Dmitry Antipov, Alexey A. Gurevich, Mikhail Dvorkin, Alexander S. Kulikov, Valery M. Lesin, et al. 2012. “SPAdes: A New Genome Assembly Algorithm and Its Applications to Single-Cell Sequencing.” Journal of Computational Biology 19 (5): 455–77. https://doi.org/10.1089/cmb.2012.0021.

Google Scholar

Bolger, Anthony M., Marc Lohse, and Bjoern Usadel. 2014. “Trimmomatic: A Flexible Trimmer for Illumina Sequence Data.” Bioinformatics 30 (15): 2114–20. https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btu170.

Google Scholar

Kieras, M., K. O’Neill, and S. Pirro. 2021. “Zanfona, a Genome Assembly Finishing Tool for Paired-End Illumina Reads.” https://github.com/zanfona734/zanfona.