Joe Hoffman (PI), Hazel Nichols and Mike Cant recently won a grant from DFG (Germany) to continue our research on the causes and consequences of inbreeding in banded mongooses.

We are currently working to set up a new ‘reverse-GPS’ animal tracking system at our study site in Mweya, based on ATLAS technology. The ATLAS system will allow us to collect simultaneous live data on all our study groups, and provide an early warning system for impending intergroup interactions.

We were recently awarded a NERC Pushing the Frontiers Grant worth £1.25M to study the evolution and maintenance of group identity in animal societies, using banded mongooses as a model system. The project will develop and test new theory to explain how and why groups evolve distinct phenotypes in social organisms, from insects to humans.