Chromosome-Level genome assembly and transcriptome analysis of the ural owl, Strix uralensis Pallas, 1771

The Ural owl (Strix uralensis) is a large member of the Strigidae family and inhabits Eurasian forests ranging from Germany to Japan. However, it faces increased range reduction, particularly at its southwestern distribution edges. Despite being considered ‘Least Concern’ by the IUCN, local populations have become threatened in Central Europe due to severe habitat loss. Reintroduction programs aim to restore these populations by closing distribution gaps and facilitating natural recolonization of suitable habitats. To support these efforts, genomic resources have become an established tool to assess genetic diversity, geographic structure, and potential inbreeding, crucial for maintaining the genetic health and adaptability of newly established populations. Here, we present a de novo genome assembly and transcriptome of the Ural owl based on ONT long-reads, Omni-C Illumina short-reads, and RNASeq data. The final assembly has a total length of 1.26 Gb, of which 96.42% is anchored into th..., , , # Chromosome-level genome assembly and transcriptome analysis of the Ural owl, *Strix uralensis* PALLAS, 1771

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.qjq2bvqs3](10.5061/dryad.qjq2bvqs3)

## Description of the data and file structure

Assembly:

We assembled a high-quality reference genome and transcriptome for the Ural owl (*Strix uralensis*) from a female bird found dead in the municipality of Kuhmo near Lentiira, Finland.

The assembly was generated from three Oxford Nanopore long-read libraries sequenced on either the MinION Mk1c or PromethION 2Solo. The resulting data was assembled with Flye v. 2.9.3, including one iteration of long-read polishing. Subsequently, the contigs of the polished assembly were anchored into chromosome-scale scaffolds with YaHS v.1.1 using Dovetail Omni-C data generated from the same individual, and prepared following the Arima Hi-C mapping pipeline ([https://github.com/VGP/vgp-assembly/blob/master/pipeline/salsa/arima_mapping_pipeline.sh](https://github.com/VGP/vgp-a...,