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Four African Storks Now Have Public Whole-genome Assemblies

Wild saddle-billed stork spreading its wings in Serengeti National Park
Research · Genetics & genomics

A 2026 genome-resource paper released whole-genome assemblies for four African storks: Saddle-billed Stork (Ephippiorhynchus senegalensis), African Openbill (Anastomus lamelligerus), Marabou Stork (Leptoptilos crumenifer) and Yellow-billed Stork (Mycteria ibis). Each assembly came from one wild-collected museum specimen and is available as a public genomic reference.

The assemblies are genome resources, not population-genetic assessments

The paper describes the resources as “complete genome sequences”, but the deposited data are whole-genome shotgun assemblies produced from paired-end Illumina short reads rather than chromosome-level references. NCBI, for example, classifies the Saddle-billed Stork assembly at scaffold level. The important result is therefore the availability of broad whole-genome sequence assemblies for all four species, not a claim that every chromosome has been reconstructed end to end.

The specimens came from several parts of Africa. The Saddle-billed Stork was a Field Museum specimen collected in Eswatini, listed as Swaziland in the paper. The African Openbill and Yellow-billed Stork specimens came from Somalia, and the Marabou Stork specimen came from Cameroon. The assemblies and their species-specific accessions were deposited in public sequence archives.

Because only one individual from each species was sequenced, the study does not measure genetic diversity, inbreeding, population structure or gene flow within these storks. The four assemblies should therefore be read as genome references, not as population-genetic assessments.

Sources and image credit

  1. Gula, J., Hains, T., Pirro, S., Bates, J., & Hackett, S. (2026). The complete genome sequences of 4 species of Storks (Ciconiiformes : Aves). Biodiversity Genomes.Primary peer-reviewed genome resource. Published 27 January 2026.

Image: Giles Laurent — wild saddle-billed stork spreading its wings in Serengeti National Park, Tanzania, photographed 10 July 2024; Wikimedia Commons Quality Image; representative species image, not the museum specimen sequenced in the genome study · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source

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Genetics & genomics

SPECIES IN THIS STORY

Species in this story

Saddle-billed Stork Ephippiorhynchus senegalensis Explore species African Openbill Anastomus lamelligerus Explore species

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