BioSample

The tourmaline sunangel (Heliangelus exortis) is a hummingbird species in the coquettes, subfamily Lesbiinae. It is found in Andes ranges of Colombia and south on the eastern slope to Ecuador's Morona-Santiago Province (modified from Wikipedia). Some populations exhibit a sex-limited polymorphism where females can have either a drab or variable male-like phenotype depending on the amount of iridescence on their gorgets. This sample is from a female in Fusagasuga, Cundinamarca, Colombia, collected by Andres Cuervo, vouchered at Humbolt Institute in Columbia, and coordinated by Daniel Cadena of the Universidad de Los Andes for a high-quality reference genome for the Vertebrate Genomes Project (VGP) and research on hummingbirds. Sequencing and genome assembly were conducted at the Vertebrate Genomes Lab (VGL) at the Rockefeller University, led by Olivier Fedrigo and Erich D. Jarvis.