Thalassoma bifasciatum (bluehead wrasse) genome, fThaBif1, sequence data
The bluehead wrasse (Thalassoma bifasciatum) is a species of marine ray-finned fish, a wrasse from the family Labridae. It is native to the coral reefs of the tropical waters of the western Atlantic Ocean. Individuals are small (less than 110 mm standard length) and rarely live longer than two years. They form large schools over the reef and are important cleaner fish in the reefs they inhabit (from Wikipedia entry). This sample of a male individual found in the Florida Keys was procured by John Godwin and Katie Stennette to generate a high-quality reference genome for the Vertebrate Genomes Project (VGP). Sequencing and genome assembly were conducted at the Vertebrate Genome Lab (VGL) at the Rockefeller University, led by Erich D. Jarvis, Giulio Formenti, and Jennifer Balacco.