Neotoma floridana (Eastern woodrat) genome, mNeoFlo1

The eastern woodrat (Neotoma floridana), also known as the Florida woodrat or bush rat, is a pack rat native to the central and Eastern United States. It constructs large dens that may serve as nests for many generations and stores food in outlying caches for the winter. While widespread and not uncommon, it has declined or disappeared in several areas (from Wikipedia entry). This sample of a male individual from Florida was procured by Mike Cove of the US Fish and Wildlife Service and Sanaz Arenivas of ViaGen Pets & Equine and coordinated by Ben Novak of Revive & Restore to generate a high-quality reference genome for the Vertebrate Genomes Project (VGP). Sequencing and genome assembly were conducted at the Vertebrate Genome Lab (VGL) at the Rockefeller University, led by Erich D. Jarvis, Giulio Formenti, and Jennifer Balacco.