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Eastern Red-rumped Swallow Now Has Its First Chromosome-Level Genome

Eastern red-rumped swallow in flight
Research · Genetics & genomics

The Eastern red-rumped swallow (Cecropis daurica) now has its first chromosome-level reference genome. A chromosome-level assembly goes beyond a collection of DNA fragments by organising sequence into the chromosomes it belongs to, giving researchers a more useful framework for comparisons across the genome.

The researchers combined PacBio HiFi long reads and BGI short reads with Hi-C sequencing. Hi-C uses information about which DNA regions lie physically close together inside the cell nucleus to help order sequence into chromosomes. The finished assembly spans 1.19 billion DNA base pairs and includes sequence anchored to 40 chromosomes, corresponding to a diploid chromosome number of 2n = 80 — two chromosome sets containing 80 chromosomes in total.

Genome completeness was estimated at 99.1% with BUSCO, a test that looks for conserved genes expected to be present in a lineage. The high score therefore indicates that very few of these expected genes were missing from the assembly. The researchers predicted 20,580 protein-coding genes, and 18,968 of them could be assigned functional annotations, meaning they could be linked to known or predicted biological roles.

The genome is a reference resource rather than a study showing a particular adaptation. The authors highlight its value for future ecological and evolutionary work on the species, including comparisons of how swallows have adapted to human-modified and urban environments.

Sources and image credit

  1. Zhu, W., Jiang, C., Wang, L., et al. (2026). A chromosome-level genome assembly of Eastern Red-rumped Swallow, Cecropis daurica (Passeriformes, Aves). Scientific Data. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-026-08127-wPrimary peer-reviewed Data Descriptor published 22 August 2026. The first chromosome-level genome assembly for Cecropis daurica spans 1.19 Gb, comprises 570 contigs and 362 scaffolds, anchors sequence to 40 chromosomes (2n=80), reaches 99.1% BUSCO completeness and contains 20,580 predicted protein-coding genes, 18,968 of them functionally annotated.

Image: Drashokk (Ashok Kolluru) — Eastern red-rumped swallow (Cecropis daurica) in flight in India, photographed 3 February 2019; Wikimedia Commons. Representative species image, not a bird from the genome study. · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source

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