De novo genome assembly and annotation of Curculio nanulus (Coleoptera: Curculionidae)

Found in the western United States, the acorn weevil Curculio nanulus (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) lays its eggs in oak and hickory seeds. The female weevil uses her rostrum (snout), which is approximately the length of her body, to dig into the flesh of a developing hard-shelled seed and lay her eggs inside where they can safely develop into larvae. Using PacBio HiFi sequencing, we sequenced the DNA from a single larval C. nanulus. Assembly and annotation were done with hifiasm and the GALBA pipeline respectively. The final assembly is ~1.5 Gbp in size and is highly complete with a compleasm complete score of 97.46%. Additionally, the assembly is highly contiguous with an L50 of 51 contigs and an N50 of ~7.709 Mbp. For comparison, we also assembled the genome of the pecan weevil Curculio caryae from publicly available PacBio HiFi reads. These genome assemblies will be a valuable resource in studying weevil seed predators and their impact on forest ecology.