Observing copepods through a genomic lens

Table 1 Publicly available sequence data for copepods

	Core nucleotide	Expressed sequence tags	Mitochondrial genome sequence	Nuclear genomic sequence (chromosome/whole genome)	Scientific relevance of species
Hexapoda (insects)	3,076,212	4,496,444	235	51/20
Copepoda (Total)	15,316	207,282	8	0/0
Lepeophtheirus salmonis	4,345	129,250	2	0/0	Parasite of wild and farmed marine fish, economically and ecologically important
Caligus rogercresseyi	1,610	32,037	0	0/0	Parasite of wild and farmed marine fish, economically important
Caligus clemensi	1,227	14,806	0	0/0	Parasite of wild and farmed marine fish
Lernaeocera branchialis	1	14,927	0	0/0	Parasite of wild marine fish
Calanus finmarchicus	48	11,461	0	0/0	Key marine zooplankton species
Tigriopus californicus	920	4,801	3	0/0	Tidepool copepod used as a model system in evolutionary genetics and ecotoxicological research

Publicly available sequence data for copepods and for insects, the other hyper-abundant arthropod taxon, which have received far more attention in genomics studies (source: Taxonomy Browser, GenBank release 184.0, accessed July 22nd, 2011). Data include only those copepod species for which there are greater than 1000 core nucleotide or EST sequences. While data resulting from shotgun genome sequencing exist for L. salmonis (475,815 sequences) no complete genome assembly has thus far been conducted.

ISSN: 1742-9994