Unlike most other mongoose species, the banded mongoose, Mungos mungo, are social and prefer to band together. They live in groups of 10-20 individuals but may live in communities as large as 40 mongooses. As they are also smaller in size than other mongoose species, these groups may provide more protection. When a group of banded mongooses are approached by a predator, they group together to try and create the appearance of a larger, singular animal to intimidate the threat [1].
Today, we release the chromosome-length assembly for the banded mongoose, Mungos mungo! This is another $1K genome assembly, with contig n50 = 61 Kb and scaffold n50 = 129 Mb. We'd like to thank Fupi, a female banded mongoose from the Houston Zoo for donating the sample used to generate is assembly! Check out the interactive JuiceBox.js session below:
If you're interested in more assemblies from the Herpestidae family, check out our chromosome-length upgrade for the meerkat, Suricata suricatta. As always, we recommend subscribing to our mailing list below to keep up to date on our latest releases! Check back weekly for more chromosome-length genomes.