Asian giant hornet, Vespa mandarinia, genome assembly

The Asian giant hornet, Vespa mandarinia, has a native range that extends from northern India to East Asia. In 2019, the hornet was confirmed for the first time in North America, posing an invasive threat to honey bees and human health. In September 2019, local beekeepers, tracked down a nest in a park in Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada and exterminated it. The specimen we used for genome sequencing was obtained from that nest, the first one found in North America. DNA was extracted from the thorax for PacBio HiFi sequencing on two cells and data were assembled using IPA to yield a contig assembly of 248 Mb with a 3.14 Mb N50. The assembly was generated by the Agricultural Research Service's Ag100Pest Initiative in collaboration with Pacific Biosciences. This high-quality genome assembly is being released prior to publication in scientific journals as a public service to the research community. The Primary and Haplotig assemblies, along with the HiFi reads have been archived at NCBI. Relevant accessions include: SRA: SRR12366675 - PacBio HiFi reads for both cells BioProject: PRJNA649644, BioSample: SAMN15675875, GenBank: JACHAV000000000 - Primary contig assembly and mitochondrial genome BioProject: PRJNA649643, BioSample: SAMN15675875, GenBank: JACHAW000000000 - Alternate (Haplotigs) contig assembly