<p>This is purely arbitrary and an artifact of how well the assembly turned out. Better quality assemblies with have fewer and longer contigs.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-05-18T17:50:03.970Z
With the ideal for your example being one contig and one scaffold or each chromosome or segment of DNA.
Bioathlete
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-05-16T12:13:13.873Z
2020-05-16T12:13:13.873Z
Devon Ryan
<p>E.g. bowhead whale genome has X contigs and Y scaffolds, but couldn't these easily be different numbers?</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-05-16T06:15:56.177Z
Please edit your question to describe a snippet of the whale genomes in question with examples and consider the investigation more carefully. In context the answer is it is of course arbitary. How can it possibly have taxonomic value?
M__
<genomics>
Is the number of contigs and scaffolds an artifact of genome assembly and rather arbitrary, or is it canonical for each species?
# Is the number of contigs and scaffolds an artifact of genome assembly and rather arbitrary, or is it canonical for each species?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2020-05-16)

E.g. bowhead whale genome has X contigs and Y scaffolds, but couldn't these easily be different numbers?

**Tags:** genomics
> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Please edit your question to describe a snippet of the whale genomes in question with examples and consider the investigation more carefully. In context the answer is it is of course arbitary. How can it possibly have taxonomic value?  

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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_2 on 2020-05-16. Score: 1

This is purely arbitrary and an artifact of how well the assembly turned out. Better quality assemblies with have fewer and longer contigs.

> **Comments:**
> **username_3**: With the ideal for your example being one contig and one scaffold or each chromosome or segment of DNA.  

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