A high-quality genome assembly and annotation of the European earwig Forficula auricularia.

Abstract

The European earwig Forficula auricularia is an important model for studies of maternal care, sexual selection, sociality and host-parasite interactions. However, detailed genetic investigations of this species are hindered by a lack of genomic resources. Here we present a high-quality hybrid genome assembly for F. auricularia. The genome was assembled using nanopore long-reads and 10x chromium link-reads. The final assembly is 1.06Gb in length with 31.03% GC content. It consists of 919 scaffolds with an N50 of 12.55Mb. Half of the genome is present in only 20 scaffolds. Benchmarking Universal Single-Copy Orthologs scores are ~90% from three sets of single-copy orthologs (eukaryotic, insect, and arthropod). The total repeat elements in the genome are 64.62%. The MAKER2 pipeline annotated 12,876 protein-coding genes and 21,031 mRNAs. A phylogenetic analysis revealed the isolate used in our genomic analysis belongs to Subspecies B, one of the two known genetic subspecies of F. auricularia. The genome assembly, annotation, and associated resources will be of high value to a large and diverse group of researchers working on Dermapterans.