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. 2024 Feb 19;9:48. [Version 1] doi: 10.12688/wellcomeopenres.20652.1

The genome sequence of the Emperor moth, Saturnia pavonia (Linnaeus, 1758)

Liam M Crowley 1, Ellen Baker 1, Peter W H Holland 1; University of Oxford and Wytham Woods Genome Acquisition Lab; Darwin Tree of Life Barcoding collective; Wellcome Sanger Institute Tree of Life Management, Samples and Laboratory team; Wellcome Sanger Institute Scientific Operations: Sequencing Operations; Wellcome Sanger Institute Tree of Life Core Informatics team; Tree of Life Core Informatics collective; Darwin Tree of Life Consortiuma
PMCID: PMC11101921  PMID: 38764484

Abstract

We present a genome assembly from an individual male Saturnia pavonia (the Emperor moth; Arthropoda; Insecta; Lepidoptera; Saturniidae). The genome sequence is 489.9 megabases in span. Most of the assembly is scaffolded into 30 chromosomal pseudomolecules, including the Z sex chromosome. The mitochondrial genome has also been assembled and is 15.29 kilobases in length. Gene annotation of this assembly on Ensembl identified 11,903 protein coding genes.

Keywords: Saturnia pavonia, Emperor moth, genome sequence, chromosomal, Lepidoptera

Species taxonomy

Eukaryota; Metazoa; Eumetazoa; Bilateria; Protostomia; Ecdysozoa; Panarthropoda; Arthropoda; Mandibulata; Pancrustacea; Hexapoda; Insecta; Dicondylia; Pterygota; Neoptera; Endopterygota; Amphiesmenoptera; Lepidoptera; Glossata; Neolepidoptera; Heteroneura; Ditrysia; Obtectomera; Bombycoidea; Saturniidae; Saturniinae; Saturniini; Saturnia; Eudia; Saturnia pavonia (Linnaeus, 1758) (NCBI:txid332931).

Background

The family Saturniidae, named after the ringed planet Saturn, includes over 2000 species of moth worldwide and includes emperor moths and giant silk moths. Two species of Saturniidae have been recorded in Britain: Saturnia pavonia (the Emperor moth or Small Emperor moth, a resident breeding species) and S. pyri (the Giant peacock moth, the few records likely to be escapees from captive breeding). As befits the family and genus name, S. pavonia has large eyespots in the centre of all four wings, each with a black centre surrounded by a buff yellow ring and arcs formed from blue or red scales. The four coloured eyespots give the moth a striking appearance, especially as the moth is one of the largest in Britain or Northern Europe with a wingspan of 60 mm in males or 80 mm in females. Ford (1967) speculated that a hypothesised role of the eye-spots in predator deterrence could be accentuated immediately after eclosion from the pupa, when the wings are still puckered.

The Emperor moth S. pavonia is found widely across Europe, from the north of Finland and Norway to the south of Spain and Italy. The range also extends further east in Eurasia to Russia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia ( GBIF Secretariat, 2023). In Britain and Ireland, the moth has been recorded from the south coast of England to the north of Scotland, but is commonest on acid heathlands, moorlands and coastal sand dunes ( NBN Atlas Partnership, 2023).

Adult males are day-flying and particularly active on bright warm days in April and May, when they may be seen flying in search of scent trails released by receptive females. Much has been written about the potency of the S. pavonia female sex pheromones and the distances over which males detect females, but many estimates are based conjecture rather than controlled experimentation. After mating, eggs are laid on the foodplant and larvae develop rapidly though summer. On heathlands, the preferred larval foodplant is heather, Calluna vulgaris, but the larvae will also eat leaves of hawthorn, apple, bramble and many other shrubs and trees ( South, 1961). Late instar larvae are bright green with black hoops studded with yellow globular outgrowths (scoli); a genetic variant with pink-coloured scoli has also been reported ( Laussmann et al., 2012). When physically stimulated, hollow spines on the scoli secrete a blend of proteins and aromatic compounds thought to deter pathogens or predators; benzonitrile is the dominant small molecule but the secreted proteins have not been identified ( Deml & Dettner, 1990; Laussmann et al., 2012). Larvae pupate inside a tough silken cocoon attached to stems and twigs of the foodplant near the ground. The species overwinters at the pupal stage, sometimes for two or more winters ( Laussmann et al., 2012).

Here we report a complete genome sequence for the Emperor moth Saturnia pavonia determined as part of the Darwin Tree of Life project. The genome sequence of S. pavonia will facilitate research into the biochemical basis of chemical defence and pheromone communication in insects, and contribute to the growing set of resources for studying molecular evolution in the Lepidoptera.

Genome sequence report

The genome was sequenced from one male Saturnia pavonia ( Figure 1) reared from a larva collected in Wytham Woods, Oxfordshire, UK (51.77, –1.33). A total of 50-fold coverage in Pacific Biosciences single-molecule HiFi long reads was generated. Primary assembly contigs were scaffolded with chromosome conformation Hi-C data. Manual assembly curation corrected 6 missing joins or mis-joins and removed 2 haplotypic duplications, reducing the scaffold number by 13.51%.

Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Photograph of the Saturnia pavonia (ilSatPavo1) specimen used for genome sequencing; a) Larva, b) Adult.

The final assembly has a total length of 489.9 Mb in 31 sequence scaffolds with a scaffold N50 of 17.7 Mb ( Table 1). The snailplot in Figure 2 provides a summary of the assembly statistics, while the distribution of assembly scaffolds on GC proportion and coverage is shown in Figure 3. The cumulative assembly plot in Figure 4 shows curves for subsets of scaffolds assigned to different phyla. Most (99.98%) of the assembly sequence was assigned to 30 chromosomal-level scaffolds, representing 29 autosomes and the Z sex chromosome. Chromosome-scale scaffolds confirmed by the Hi-C data are named in order of size ( Figure 5; Table 2). While not fully phased, the assembly deposited is of one haplotype. Contigs corresponding to the second haplotype have also been deposited. The mitochondrial genome was also assembled and can be found as a contig within the multifasta file of the genome submission.

Figure 2. Genome assembly of Saturnia pavonia, ilSatPavo1.1: metrics.

Figure 2.

The BlobToolKit Snailplot shows N50 metrics and BUSCO gene completeness. The main plot is divided into 1,000 size-ordered bins around the circumference with each bin representing 0.1% of the 489,898,868 bp assembly. The distribution of scaffold lengths is shown in dark grey with the plot radius scaled to the longest scaffold present in the assembly (22,760,314 bp, shown in red). Orange and pale-orange arcs show the N50 and N90 scaffold lengths (17,680,408 and 11,900,431 bp), respectively. The pale grey spiral shows the cumulative scaffold count on a log scale with white scale lines showing successive orders of magnitude. The blue and pale-blue area around the outside of the plot shows the distribution of GC, AT and N percentages in the same bins as the inner plot. A summary of complete, fragmented, duplicated and missing BUSCO genes in the lepidoptera_odb10 set is shown in the top right. An interactive version of this figure is available at https://blobtoolkit.genomehubs.org/view/CANNWM01/dataset/CANNWM01/snail.

Figure 3. Genome assembly of Saturnia pavonia, ilSatPavo1.1: BlobToolKit GC-coverage plot.

Figure 3.

Scaffolds are coloured by phylum. Circles are sized in proportion to scaffold length. Histograms show the distribution of scaffold length sum along each axis. An interactive version of this figure is available at https://blobtoolkit.genomehubs.org/view/CANNWM01/dataset/CANNWM01/blob.

Figure 4. Genome assembly of Saturnia pavonia, ilSatPavo1.1: BlobToolKit cumulative sequence plot.

Figure 4.

The grey line shows cumulative length for all scaffolds. Coloured lines show cumulative lengths of scaffolds assigned to each phylum using the buscogenes taxrule. An interactive version of this figure is available at https://blobtoolkit.genomehubs.org/view/CANNWM01/dataset/CANNWM01/cumulative.

Figure 5. Genome assembly of Saturnia pavonia, ilSatPavo1.1: Hi-C contact map of the ilSatPavo1.1 assembly, visualised using HiGlass.

Figure 5.

Chromosomes are shown in order of size from left to right and top to bottom. An interactive version of this figure may be viewed at https://genome-note-higlass.tol.sanger.ac.uk/l/?d=SljOrrzkSG67snu-sBNiBg.

Table 1. Genome data for Saturnia pavonia, ilSatPavo1.1.

Project accession data
Assembly identifier ilSatPavo1.1
Species Saturnia pavonia
Specimen ilSatPavo1
NCBI taxonomy ID 332931
BioProject PRJEB57274
BioSample ID SAMEA110451586
Isolate information ilSatPavo1, male: thorax (DNA and Hi-C sequencing),
abdomen (RNA sequencing)
Assembly metrics * Benchmark
Consensus quality (QV) 68.6 ≥ 50
k-mer completeness 100.0% ≥ 95%
BUSCO ** C:98.6%[S:98.4%,D:0.2%],
F:0.4%,M:1.0%,n:5,286
C ≥ 95%
Percentage of assembly mapped
to chromosomes
99.98% ≥ 95%
Sex chromosomes Z localised homologous pairs
Organelles Mitochondrial genome:
15.29 kb
complete single alleles
Raw data accessions
PacificBiosciences SEQUEL II ERR10462077
Hi-C Illumina ERR10466811
PolyA RNA-Seq Illumina ERR11606290
Genome assembly
Assembly accession GCA_947532125.1
Accession of alternate haplotype GCA_947532135.1
Span (Mb) 489.9
Number of contigs 72
Contig N50 length (Mb) 13.2
Number of scaffolds 31
Scaffold N50 length (Mb) 17.7
Longest scaffold (Mb) 22.76
Genome annotation
Number of protein-coding genes 11,903
Number of non-coding genes 1,739
Number of gene transcripts 22,289

* Assembly metric benchmarks are adapted from column VGP-2020 of “Table 1: Proposed standards and metrics for defining genome assembly quality” from ( Rhie et al., 2021).

** BUSCO scores based on the lepidoptera_odb10 BUSCO set using version 5.3.2. C = complete [S = single copy, D = duplicated], F = fragmented, M = missing, n = number of orthologues in comparison. A full set of BUSCO scores is available at https://blobtoolkit.genomehubs.org/view/CANNWM01/dataset/CANNWM01/busco.

Table 2. Chromosomal pseudomolecules in the genome assembly of Saturnia pavonia, ilSatPavo1.

INSDC accession Chromosome Length (Mb) GC%
OX383895.1 1 21.77 35.0
OX383896.1 2 20.59 34.5
OX383897.1 3 20.11 34.5
OX383898.1 4 20.09 34.5
OX383899.1 5 20.08 34.5
OX383900.1 6 19.53 34.5
OX383901.1 7 18.97 34.0
OX383902.1 8 18.82 34.5
OX383903.1 9 17.89 34.5
OX383904.1 10 17.84 34.5
OX383905.1 11 17.8 34.5
OX383906.1 12 17.68 34.5
OX383907.1 13 17.4 34.5
OX383908.1 14 17.22 34.5
OX383909.1 15 17.0 34.5
OX383910.1 16 16.6 35.0
OX383911.1 17 16.28 35.0
OX383912.1 18 16.26 35.5
OX383913.1 19 16.23 35.0
OX383914.1 20 15.11 35.0
OX383915.1 21 14.8 35.0
OX383916.1 22 12.6 35.5
OX383917.1 23 12.32 36.0
OX383918.1 24 12.19 35.5
OX383919.1 25 11.9 35.5
OX383920.1 26 11.49 38.5
OX383921.1 27 10.06 36.0
OX383922.1 28 9.4 36.5
OX383923.1 29 8.99 37.0
OX383894.1 Z 22.76 34.0
OX383924.1 MT 0.02 19.0

The estimated Quality Value (QV) of the final assembly is 68.6 with k-mer completeness of 100.0%, and the assembly has a BUSCO v5.3.2 completeness of 98.6% (single = 98.4%, duplicated = 0.2%), using the lepidoptera_odb10 reference set ( n = 5,286).

Metadata for specimens, barcode results, spectra estimates, sequencing runs, contaminants and pre-curation assembly statistics are given at https://links.tol.sanger.ac.uk/species/332931.

Genome annotation report

The Saturnia pavonia genome assembly (GCA_947532125.1) was annotated using the Ensembl rapid annotation pipeline ( Table 1; https://rapid.ensembl.org/Saturnia_pavonia_GCA_947532125.1/Info/Index). The resulting annotation includes 22,289 transcribed mRNAs from 11,903 protein-coding and 1,739 non-coding genes.

Methods

Sample acquisition and nucleic acid extraction

The Saturnia pavonia specimen used for genome sequencing and Hi-C data (specimen ID Ox002139, ToLID ilSatPavo1) was collected as a larva from Wytham Woods, Oxfordshire (biological vice-county Berkshire), UK (latitude 51.77, longitude –1.33) on 09/08/2021 by Ellen Baker (University of Oxford). The larva was reared by Liam Crowley (University of Oxford). The adult moth eclosed on 02/05/2022 and was preserved on dry ice.

Protocols developed by the Wellcome Sanger Institute (WSI) Tree of Life core laboratory have been published on protocols.io ( Denton et al., 2023b). The workflow for high molecular weight (HMW) DNA extraction at the WSI includes a sequence of core procedures: sample preparation; sample homogenisation, DNA extraction, fragmentation, and clean-up. In sample preparation, the ilSatPavo1 sample was weighed and dissected on dry ice ( Jay et al., 2023). Tissue from the thorax was homogenised using a PowerMasher II tissue disruptor ( Denton et al., 2023a). HMW DNA was extracted in the WSI Scientific Operations core using the Automated MagAttract v2 protocol ( Oatley et al., 2023). HMW DNA was sheared into an average fragment size of 12–20 kb in a Megaruptor 3 system with speed setting 31 ( Bates et al., 2023). Sheared DNA was purified by solid-phase reversible immobilisation ( Strickland et al., 2023): in brief, the method employs a 1.8X ratio of AMPure PB beads to sample to eliminate shorter fragments and concentrate the DNA. The concentration of the sheared and purified DNA was assessed using a Nanodrop spectrophotometer and Qubit Fluorometer and Qubit dsDNA High Sensitivity Assay kit. Fragment size distribution was evaluated by running the sample on the FemtoPulse system.

RNA was extracted from abdomen tissue of ilSatPavo1 in the Tree of Life Laboratory at the WSI using the RNA Extraction: Automated MagMax™ mirVana protocol ( do Amaral et al., 2023). The RNA concentration was assessed using a Nanodrop spectrophotometer and a Qubit Fluorometer using the Qubit RNA Broad-Range Assay kit. Analysis of the integrity of the RNA was done using the Agilent RNA 6000 Pico Kit and Eukaryotic Total RNA assay.

Sequencing

Pacific Biosciences HiFi circular consensus DNA sequencing libraries were constructed according to the manufacturers’ instructions. Poly(A) RNA-Seq libraries were constructed using the NEB Ultra II RNA Library Prep kit. DNA and RNA sequencing was performed by the Scientific Operations core at the WSI on Pacific Biosciences SEQUEL II (HiFi) and Illumina NovaSeq 6000 (RNA-Seq) instruments. Hi-C data were also generated from remaining thorax tissue of ilSatPavo1 using the Arima2 kit and sequenced on the Illumina NovaSeq 6000 instrument.

Genome assembly, curation and evaluation

Assembly was carried out with Hifiasm ( Cheng et al., 2021) and haplotypic duplication was identified and removed with purge_dups ( Guan et al., 2020). The assembly was then scaffolded with Hi-C data ( Rao et al., 2014) using YaHS ( Zhou et al., 2023). The assembly was checked for contamination and corrected using the gEVAL system ( Chow et al., 2016) as described previously ( Howe et al., 2021). Manual curation was performed using gEVAL, HiGlass ( Kerpedjiev et al., 2018) and Pretext ( Harry, 2022). The mitochondrial genome was assembled using MitoHiFi ( Uliano-Silva et al., 2023), which runs MitoFinder ( Allio et al., 2020) or MITOS ( Bernt et al., 2013) and uses these annotations to select the final mitochondrial contig and to ensure the general quality of the sequence.

A Hi-C map for the final assembly was produced using bwa-mem2 ( Vasimuddin et al., 2019) in the Cooler file format ( Abdennur & Mirny, 2020). To assess the assembly metrics, the k-mer completeness and QV consensus quality values were calculated in Merqury ( Rhie et al., 2020). This work was done using Nextflow ( Di Tommaso et al., 2017) DSL2 pipelines “sanger-tol/readmapping” ( Surana et al., 2023a) and “sanger-tol/genomenote” ( Surana et al., 2023b). The genome was analysed within the BlobToolKit environment ( Challis et al., 2020) and BUSCO scores ( Manni et al., 2021; Simão et al., 2015) were calculated.

Table 3 contains a list of relevant software tool versions and sources.

Table 3. Software tools: versions and sources.

Genome annotation

The Ensembl gene annotation system ( Aken et al., 2016) was used to generate annotation for the Saturnia pavonia assembly (GCA_947532125.1). Annotation was created primarily through alignment of transcriptomic data to the genome, with gap filling via protein-to-genome alignments of a select set of proteins from UniProt ( UniProt Consortium, 2019).

Wellcome Sanger Institute – Legal and Governance

The materials that have contributed to this genome note have been supplied by a Darwin Tree of Life Partner. The submission of materials by a Darwin Tree of Life Partner is subject to the ‘Darwin Tree of Life Project Sampling Code of Practice’, which can be found in full on the Darwin Tree of Life website here. By agreeing with and signing up to the Sampling Code of Practice, the Darwin Tree of Life Partner agrees they will meet the legal and ethical requirements and standards set out within this document in respect of all samples acquired for, and supplied to, the Darwin Tree of Life Project.

Further, the Wellcome Sanger Institute employs a process whereby due diligence is carried out proportionate to the nature of the materials themselves, and the circumstances under which they have been/are to be collected and provided for use. The purpose of this is to address and mitigate any potential legal and/or ethical implications of receipt and use of the materials as part of the research project, and to ensure that in doing so we align with best practice wherever possible. The overarching areas of consideration are:

•   Ethical review of provenance and sourcing of the material

•   Legality of collection, transfer and use (national and international)

Each transfer of samples is further undertaken according to a Research Collaboration Agreement or Material Transfer Agreement entered into by the Darwin Tree of Life Partner, Genome Research Limited (operating as the Wellcome Sanger Institute), and in some circumstances other Darwin Tree of Life collaborators.

Funding Statement

This work was supported by Wellcome through core funding to the Wellcome Sanger Institute [206194, <a href=https://doi.org/10.35802/206194>https://doi.org/10.35802/206194</a>] and the Darwin Tree of Life Discretionary Award [218328, <a href=https://doi.org/10.35802/218328>https://doi.org/10.35802/218328</a>].

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

[version 1; peer review: 2 approved, 2 approved with reservations]

Data availability

European Nucleotide Archive: Saturnia pavonia (emperor moth). Accession number PRJEB57274; https://identifiers.org/ena.embl/PRJEB57274 ( Wellcome Sanger Institute, 2022). The genome sequence is released openly for reuse. The Saturnia pavonia genome sequencing initiative is part of the Darwin Tree of Life (DToL) project. All raw sequence data and the assembly have been deposited in INSDC databases. Raw data and assembly accession identifiers are reported in Table 1.

Author information

Members of the University of Oxford and Wytham Woods Genome Acquisition Lab are listed here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7125292.

Members of the Darwin Tree of Life Barcoding collective are listed here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4893703.

Members of the Wellcome Sanger Institute Tree of Life Management, Samples and Laboratory team are listed here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10066175.

Members of Wellcome Sanger Institute Scientific Operations: Sequencing Operations are listed here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10043364.

Members of the Wellcome Sanger Institute Tree of Life Core Informatics team are listed here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10066637.

Members of the Tree of Life Core Informatics collective are listed here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5013541.

Members of the Darwin Tree of Life Consortium are listed here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4783558.

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Wellcome Open Res. 2024 May 21. doi: 10.21956/wellcomeopenres.22857.r82138

Reviewer response for version 1

Marco Gerdol 1

The manuscript by Crowley and colleagues reports the genome assembly of the Emperor moth, Saturnia pavonia. This resource was obtained as a part of the Darwin Tree of Life project, through the use of a highly standardized and reproducible pipeline. Therefore, there are no significant methodological concerns, and the quality of the assembled genome appears to be very high.

I just have a very few minor comments dealing with cosmetic changes that the authors may consider including in a revised version.

“(51.77, –1.33)” -> I am not sure this is the standard or most common way of reporting geographical coordinates. Please add “latitude” and “longitude”.

Genome annotation report: this was obtain though the Ensembl rapid annotation pipeline, which in other phyla (I am not really sure about arthropods) performs rather poorly. Do the BUSCO metrics obtained by analyzing the annotated gene set match those reported in the previous paragraph by analyzing the genome assembly?

Data availability: consider adding here the link to the Ensembl rapid annotation report.

Are sufficient details of methods and materials provided to allow replication by others?

Yes

Is the rationale for creating the dataset(s) clearly described?

Yes

Are the datasets clearly presented in a useable and accessible format?

Yes

Are the protocols appropriate and is the work technically sound?

Yes

Reviewer Expertise:

non-model species genomics

I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard.

Wellcome Open Res. 2024 May 17. doi: 10.21956/wellcomeopenres.22857.r78300

Reviewer response for version 1

Peter Dearden 1

This report describes the genome sequencing of a large day-flying moth; the Emperor moth ( Saturnia pavonia). The report describes the key biological details of the moth well, including the relationships between the sampled British populations, and those in the rest of Europe. Photos are provided of the sampled animal from both larval and adult stages.

The genome report indicates that this is a very high-quality, contiguous, uncontaminated genome. the BUSCO scores show the genome is highly complete, and indicates the high quality of the assembly. 

The data generated is available, and the tools used to carry out the work, are well described and available to others.

I strongly support this report. I would ask that in the section where the authors are describing the correction of scaffolds that they state the numbers of scaffolds affected, rather than just a percentage.

Are sufficient details of methods and materials provided to allow replication by others?

Yes

Is the rationale for creating the dataset(s) clearly described?

Yes

Are the datasets clearly presented in a useable and accessible format?

Yes

Are the protocols appropriate and is the work technically sound?

Yes

Reviewer Expertise:

Insect Genomics

I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard.

Wellcome Open Res. 2024 May 17. doi: 10.21956/wellcomeopenres.22857.r82144

Reviewer response for version 1

Jaakko Pohjoismäki 1

The genome report by Liam M Crowley, Ellen Baker, Peter WH Holland and the DToL consortium presents the reference genome assembly of the Emperor moth. It is a nice addition of an iconic species to the growing number of Lepidopteran genomes from the DToL.

Background

The background is well written and concise. One could add that pavonia is replaced by pavoniella in the east and that the two species have been separated only recently. This close relatedness might then deserve a comment regarding the utility of the genome assembly? Also, the pavonia is fairly early spring species, so I would imagine that May is too late for the flight time in the UK? As of note, there are many old studies on the pheromone attracting marked males, but these will require a bit of digging as they are difficult to find. Main point is that not all estimates are based on "conjecture".

The larvae are also sexually dimorphic, but this is maybe an unnecessary detail.

The genome assembly, annotation and completeness looks very good, representing the DToL quality standards. The methods are adequately described and following the DToL genome production pipeline without any issues.

My main complaint is that the genome assembly is from a male and thus lacks the W sex chromosome. I think this is a missed opportunity to collect valuable genome data on the sex chromosome evolution among insects. For Saturnia pavonia missing this opportunity is especially unnecessary, as the females are easily available from light traps, collecting as larvae or bought from a (British) web shop ( https://www.wwb.co.uk/emperor-moth-pavonia-cocoons).

However, this detail does not otherwise affect the quality of the work. So far the use of males for the genome assemblies has been a recurrent issue with the Lepidopteran genomes. I hope this will be avoided in the future and females will be used for the coming species.

Are sufficient details of methods and materials provided to allow replication by others?

Yes

Is the rationale for creating the dataset(s) clearly described?

Yes

Are the datasets clearly presented in a useable and accessible format?

Yes

Are the protocols appropriate and is the work technically sound?

Yes

Reviewer Expertise:

taxonomy; genetics; genomics; insects; mammals; molecular biology

I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard, however I have significant reservations, as outlined above.

Wellcome Open Res. 2024 May 10. doi: 10.21956/wellcomeopenres.22857.r80533

Reviewer response for version 1

Christopher Cunningham 1

I think this is a good general resource for the genomics community. The methods are sound and relatively well documented. The article needs a few more details to be reasonably reproducible.

Abstract. There is no justification within the abstract, just results. At least a sentence that this was part of a large survey of insects is needed. And one sentence for its possible value.

Keywords. Not present.  

Background. There is little true motivation for this study in the introduction. Nothing wrong is said, but the reader has little idea why the work was done. It’s perfectly fine that the work was done in the context of a large survey, but tell the reader that. Almost all the details of its life history are irrelevant to the reader. The paper is not about its ecology or morphology, but about its genetics. That is not mentioned once.

            The end paragraph mentions it is an existing or potential model for chemical defenses and pheromone communication but not direct justification or citation of why this species is particularly useful for these is given.

Figure 2/3/4/5 titles. These should be informative and tell the reader what you would like them to understand about the data; e.g., Fig 3. Little contamination was found in the final genome assembly.

Figure 4. has very little information and can easily be summarized as a sentence in the results. The same is true of Fig 5

All parameter setting if they were different from default of each piece of bioinformatic software needs to be specified. Just put a sentence to begin that everything was default unless specified otherwise. What assessment was done to ensure that default was adequate?

A reasonable amount of genes is predicted. However, the reader has very little understanding of how these were evaluated beyond their initial generation. What QC beyond an automated annotation was done? One annotation run with default parameters should come with a strong disclaimer that any further work on specific gene families requires QC on the part of the user because the current annotation is a guide only.

            What is the BUSCO percentage of the predicted gene set? That is an absolute minimum for a reader to be able to assess the minimum quality of the annotation.

Table 3 is of little to no value and contains much duplicated information. Just add the version numbers of software used inline at the appropriate places in the methods section.

Is the Ethics statement needed? It just says the provider of the sample should meet some agreed upon standard, but does not actually say that they did in this case. Either drop the statement or actually say the standard was met for this sample. This is not a paper about the standards of collection.

Add something to the report that contextualize the research for the reader. Is this species the first of a taxon to be assembled, is it an outgroup to some established model species, is it now possible to investigate some interesting aspect of the species biology, etc? This does not to be extensive or highly directed, but there is currently no justification of this work outside of the Data Availability Statement. Even Data Note should contain rationale for the work.

Are sufficient details of methods and materials provided to allow replication by others?

Partly

Is the rationale for creating the dataset(s) clearly described?

Partly

Are the datasets clearly presented in a useable and accessible format?

Yes

Are the protocols appropriate and is the work technically sound?

Yes

Reviewer Expertise:

Genomics, genetics, epigenetics, behavior, reproduction

I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard, however I have significant reservations, as outlined above.

Associated Data

    This section collects any data citations, data availability statements, or supplementary materials included in this article.

    Data Citations

    1. Wellcome Sanger Institute: The genome sequence of the Emperor moth, Saturnia pavonia (Linnaeus, 1758). European Nucleotide Archive.[dataset], accession number PRJEB57274,2022.

    Data Availability Statement

    European Nucleotide Archive: Saturnia pavonia (emperor moth). Accession number PRJEB57274; https://identifiers.org/ena.embl/PRJEB57274 ( Wellcome Sanger Institute, 2022). The genome sequence is released openly for reuse. The Saturnia pavonia genome sequencing initiative is part of the Darwin Tree of Life (DToL) project. All raw sequence data and the assembly have been deposited in INSDC databases. Raw data and assembly accession identifiers are reported in Table 1.


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