Results: We generated 43 Gb of short Illumina reads and 9 Gb of long Nanopore reads, representing approximate genome coverage of 54× and 11×, respectively, based on the range of estimated k-mer-predicted genome sizes of between 791 and 967 Mbp. The final assembled genome is contained in 6404 scaffolds with an accumulated length of 880 Mb (96.3% BUSCO-calculated genome completeness). Compared with the Illumina-only assembly, the hybrid approach generated 94% fewer scaffolds with an 18-fold increase in N50 length (401 kb) and increased the genome completeness by an additional 16%. A total of 27 240 high-quality protein-coding genes were predicted from the clown anemonefish, 26 211 (96%) of which were annotated functionally with information from either sequence homology or protein signature searches.
Conclusions: We present the first genome of any anemonefish and demonstrate the value of low coverage (∼11×) long Nanopore read sequencing in improving both genome assembly contiguity and completeness. The near-complete assembly of the A. ocellaris genome will be an invaluable molecular resource for supporting a range of genetic, genomic, and phylogenetic studies specifically for clownfish and more generally for other related fish species of the family Pomacentridae.