Chromosomal-level genome assembly of golden birdwing Troides aeacus (Felder & Felder, 1860)

The golden birdwing Troides aeacus (Lepidoptera, Papilionidae) is a large swallowtail butterfly widely distributed in Asia. Despite its occurrence, T. aeacus has been assigned as a major protective species in many places given the loss of their native habitats under urbanisation and anthropogenic activities. Nevertheless, the lack of its genomic resources hinders our understanding of their biology, diversity, as well as carrying out conservation measures based on genetic information or markers. Here, we report the first chromosomal-level genome assembly of T. aeacus using a combination of PacBio SMRT and Omni-C scaffolding technologies. The assembled genome (351 Mb) contains 98.94% of the sequences anchored to 30 pseudo-molecules. The genome assembly also has high sequence continuity with contig length N50 = 11.67 Mb and L50 = 14, and scaffold length N50 = 12.2 Mb and L50 = 13. A total of 24,946 protein-coding genes were predicted, and high BUSCO score completeness (98.8% and 94.7% of genome and proteome BUSCO lepidoptera_odb10 genes, respectively) was also revealed. This high-quality genome offers a new and significant resource for understanding the swallowtail butterfly biology, as well as carrying out conservation measures of this ecologically important lepidopteran species.BioProject PRJNA973839 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/PRJNA973839Assembly GCA_032854445 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/datasets/genome/GCA_033220335.2