Average simulation contig length as a function of repeat density and long-to-short insert ratio. At each level of repetitive DNA, 80% of the repeats were assumed to be SINES and 20% LINES. All simulation parameters not specified in the plots were set to default values (see Table 2). Average contig length excluded those contigs consisting of only single reads. The single-read contigs comprised only ∼0.1% of all reads.