The first insect genome (Drosophila melanogaster) was published two decades ago. Today, nuclear genome assemblies are available for a staggering 601 different insects representing 20 orders. Here, we analyzed the best assembly for each insect and provide a "state of the field" perspective, emphasizing taxonomic representation, assembly quality, gene completeness, and sequencing technology. We show that while genomic efforts have been biased towards specific groups (e.g., Diptera), assemblies

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... generally contiguous with gene regions intact. Most notable, however, has been the impact of long-read sequencing; assemblies that incorporate long-reads are ∼48x more contiguous than those that do not.