Figure 3

Whole genome alignments of the canary genome and 13 other publicly available bird genome assemblies using the zebra finch genome as a reference underline the high long-range continuity of the canary genome assembly and highly conserved collinearity and synteny of genomes throughout the bird taxa. Scaffold colours were chosen in a random fashion to visualize the assembly N50 length of the top level sequences (chromosomes, superscaffolds or scaffolds, depending on genome project), resulting in highly heterogeneous coloured plots for low quality genome assemblies (outside rings) and homogeneous coloured plots for high quality genome assemblies (inside rings). Black arcs depict putative intra-chromosomal rearrangements of the genome assemblies compared with zebra finch, many of which are found in different bird taxa and thus likely trace back to zebra finch-specific rearrangements or mis-assemblies in the zebra finch assembly. For the canary genome we also show five putative inter-chromosomal rearrangements (red arcs). For scientific species names and sources of genome assemblies see Materials and methods section M5.