The Draft Genome of the American Eel (Anguilla rostrata)

American eel (Anguilla rostrata) reproduce in a single panmictic population in the Sargasso Sea in the Atlantic Ocean. After hatching, they migrate as leptocephali to a large diversity of salt, brackish, and freshwater habitats in Eastern North America. Despite panmixia, there are extreme differences in morphology, growth rate, and sex ratio by rearing habit resulting in the contradiction of a panmictic species that also seems to exhibit phenotypic attributes of locally adaptation. There is tremendous conservation concern, because some of these unique rearing groups are in steep decline. Also, due to their complex life history, it is not possible to economically produce the full life cycle in a fish farm, so every fish consumed has a wild origin. We sequenced 100X coverage with paired-end reads and in addition 2kb and two 4.5kb insert mate pair libraries including one Nextera library.  The resulting assembly and scaffolding indicated a total genome size of 1.5 Gb, which is in line with estimates by more direct methods. There are 398,895 contigs, the largest of which is 72,008 bp and the contig N50 is 5,818 bp. There are 121,797 scaffolds, the largest of which is 866,215 bp and the scaffold N50 is 74,883 bp.