Coral reefs composed of stony corals are threatened by global marine environmental
changes. However, soft coral communities of octocorallian species, appear more resilient.
The genomes of several cnidarians species have been published, including from stony
corals, sea anemones, and hydra. To fill the phylogenetic gap for octocoral species of
cnidarians, we sequenced the octocoral, Dendronephthya gigantea, a nonsymbiotic soft
coral, commonly known as the carnation coral. The D. gigantea genome size is∼ 276 Mb. A …

Background. Coral reefs composed of stony corals are threatened by global marine
environmental changes. However, soft coral communities composed of octocorallian
species, appear more resilient. The genomes of several species of cnidarians have been
published, including stony corals, sea anemones, and hydra, but as of yet no octocoral
species. To fill this phylogenetic gap within the cnidarian, we sequenced the octocoral,
Dendronephthya gigantea, a non-symbiotic soft coral, commonly known as the carnation …