Collective self-assessment in banded mongoose intergroup contests

Contests over resources are widespread in nature. To optimize outcomes, animals assess fighting abilities, deciding to escalate conflicts based on their own strength (self-assessment) or comparing their own strength with that of their rival (mutual assessment). While most research focuses on one-on-one (dyadic) contests, the assessment strategies employed by groups remain poorly understood, even though animal groups from ants to humans engage in intergroup conflict. Mutual assessment is frequently assumed, as more information is thought to improve decision-making; however, this assumption has rarely been tested. Here, we used a dataset spanning 21 years and 633 intergroup contests in a banded mongoose (Mungos mungo) population in Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda. Our results support a model of self-assessment: groups with many males tend to escalate conflicts regardless of the rival group's strength, thus contrasting the commonly held assumption that decisions during intergroup con..., Study Population and Data Collection
All data were collected as part of the Banded Mongoose Research Project, a long-term study on a population of banded mongooses in and around Mweya Peninsula, Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda (0°12′S, 29°54′E). This study includes data collected from 19th February 2000 to 1st April 2021, encompassing 633 intergroup contests from 39 different groups and 76 unique pairings of groups. In general, at any given time, there are approximately 250 individuals present within the population, making up 10-12 groups consisting of around 10-30 adults each (Cant, 2000; Cant et al., 2013). Every 1-3 days, researchers visited groups to record data on life-history (e.g., births, deaths), composition of each group, and details about their intergroup interactions (below).
Scoring Intergroup Contest Intensity and Escalation
Intergroup contests were recorded opportunistically as they occurred. Intergroup contests were defined as any time when at least two groups dire..., # Collective self-assessment in banded mongoose intergroup contests

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.83bk3jb62](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.83bk3jb62)

**Contact Information**

Correspondence to [[e-mail]](mailto:[e-mail]) and [[e-mail]](mailto:[e-mail])

## Description of the data and file structure

All data were collected as part of the Banded Mongoose Research Project, a long-term study on a population of banded mongooses in and around Mweya Peninsula, Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda (0°12′S, 29°54′E). This study includes data collected from 19^th^ February 2000 to 1^st^ April 2021 encompassing 633 intergroup contests from 39 different groups and 76 unique pairings of groups. Every 1-3 days, researchers visited groups to record data on life-history (e.g., births, deaths), composition of each group, and details about their intergroup interactions.

## Code/software

2025_08_20_Final_Data.R

R Version: R4.5.0 + RStudio-..., , **Changes after Sep 25, 2025:** 

Removed the ‘D:/‘ from ‘data_final <- read_csv(\"D:/2025_08_20_data_final.csv\") in the previous script.

Removed unnecessary columns from the data_final.csv file.

Added raw data used to calculate summary statistics.