BioSample

The speckled mousebird (Colius striatus) is the largest species of mousebird, as well as one of the most common. It is found throughout most of Central, Eastern and Southern Africa. They are conspicuously social birds, feeding together and engaging in mutual preening (from Wikipedia entry). This sample from a female in the Copenhagen Zoo, in Denmark, was procured by Mads Bertelsen, and coordinated by Tom Gilbert to be used to generate a high-quality reference genome for the Vertebrate Genomes Project (VGP). Sequencing and genome assembly were conducted at the Vertebrate Genomes Lab (VGL) at the Rockefeller University, led by Olivier Fedrigo and Erich D. Jarvis, with funding support from Tom Gilbert and Jarvis.