Chromosomal-level reference genome of moth Heortia vitessoides (Lepidoptera: Crambidae), a pest of agarwood-producing trees

Moth <em>Heortia vitessoides</em> Moore (Lepidoptera: Crambidae) is a major pest of ecological, commercial and cultural important agarwood-producing trees <em>Aquilaria sinensis</em>. Nevertheless, genomic resource of <em>H. vitessoides</em> is lacking. Here, we present a chromosomal-level assembly for <em>H. vitessoides</em>. A 517 megabase (Mb) genome assembly was obtained with high physical contiguity (scaffold N50 of 18.2 Mb) and high completeness (97.9% complete BUSCO score). 8 transcriptomes from different developmental stages were included, and a total of 16,421 gene models were predicted. Phylogenetic analysis revealed <em>H. vitessoides </em>was diverged from the non- Pyraustinae-Spilomelinae clade that emerged ~58 million years ago. Expansion of gene families that are involved in xenobiotic metabolisms and development were also detected, from which we highlighted the gene duplication of cytosolic sulfotransferase across lepidopterans for the first time. Moreover, small RNA sequencing on 5 developmental stages facilitated the identification of 85 conserved and 94 novel microRNAs in <em>H. vitessoides</em>. Together with annotations on essential hormonal pathways, neuropeptides and microRNAs, the high-quality moth <em>H. vitessoides</em> genome data will provide valuable resources to address a variety of fundamental genomic and evolutionary questions in the lepidopterans, as well as contribute to the development of technology for pest management.