Demo: Exploring genome assemblies with the Species Selector

The Species Selector allows you to find and select all available species in Ensembl. Follow this guide to learn how to use the app. This demo was last updated in March 2026.

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Navigate to [beta.ensembl.org](https://beta.ensembl.org) and open the [[Species Selector]].

You can find the most popular vertebrate and non-vertebrate species at the bottom of the page.

Enter [[human]] or your species of interest into the text box.

Click [[Find]] to search for all available genome assemblies.

Note that your search will return all species with the term [[human]] in its name. If you want to make your search more specific, you can enter the scientific name [[Homo sapiens]] instead.

There are 566 available [[human]] genome assemblies. Though, looking through the list of results, you will notice that one of these assemblies refer to *Pediculus humanus corporis* (human body louse).

Note that you may find duplicate entries for a specific genome assembly. \[release and release type note\]

Select your genome assembly of interest. We are going to select the [[GRCh38.p14]] reference from the [[2025-02]] integrated release.

Click [[Add]] to add all selected assemblies to your species list.

The [[human]] icon is now greyed out, indicating you have selected an assembly of this species.

Your selected assembly is also available as a lozenge in the [[Species Selector]]. Click the lozenge to open the genome assembly information page.

In the assembly information page, you can find summary statistics about the genome assembly, including the number of genes, example pages and what type of genomic data Ensembl has for this assembly.

You can find further information and links to external references in the control panel on the right. Click the GCA ID to open the submission portal, where the assembly was originally deposited to. You can find more detailed information about the sequencing project there.

Annotation information is also available in the [[Right-hand]] panel. Here, you will find the annotation provider and method, when the annotation was last updated and when the annotation was first released.

[[Close]] assembly information to go back to the [[Species Selector]].

The new Ensembl Data Platform allows you to select multiple species. To add a species, repeat [[Steps 3-7]] or select a species from the Popular species list at the bottom. Let's add [[mouse]] to our list of species.

Select the [[GRCm39]] reference from the [[2025-02]] integrated release.

Click [[Add]] to add the assembly to your list of species.

The assembly is now available as an additional lozenge in the [[Species Selector]].

You can [[Manage]] your list of selected species.

You can enable/disable the assembly for use in Ensembl apps;

Or you can remove the assembly from your list of species entirely.

You can go back to the Species Selector by closing your list of selected species in the top right-hand corner.