Andrew Mongue

A truly great group of folks to work with!

A very cool bug! Genome coming soon from my lab!

Every reputable expert I know considers mRNA vaccine technology to be one of the most revolutionary advances in medicine in our lifetimes. Its inventors won the Nobel Prize in 2023. Shutting it down now is pointless self-harm to humanity.

This is what I've been calling the 3rd (4th?) Genomic Revolution. When I was in grad school the model was to use a few species' genomes to make generalized inferences about whole groups. Now if you want to do a genomic study of a group you just...look at the whole group, no generalizing assumption!

Also I have seen this movie fully way too many times and I swear the audio mixing is flubbed in that scene. Lex shouts "Timmy" when he blasts off but it's so loud and distorted it sounds like dino screeches.

Excited to share our new paper in #MolEcol on sex chromosome evolution in African killifish! 🐟 A great collaboration with @alexandrsember.bsky.social . We uncovered ≥4 sex chromosome turnovers across Nothobranchius spp. using cytogenetics & genomics.
👉 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Such a fun and productive trip! Be on the lookout for more on evolutionary genomics and systematics of bagworms from my lab and @dr-akito.bsky.social 's lab soon!

I love the idea of someone going through this list in order and doing a double feature of Anchorman straight into Melancholia..

A non-random sample (spatially structured) of Tree of Sex 2.0 members at the SSE Evolution conference in Athens, Georgia.

Good to see some of our US-based ToS members at #Evol2025! If you're at the meeting and interested or just curious about the project, say hi to @ajmongue.bsky.social @nicolevalenzuela.bsky.social @ideaspermatheca.bsky.social @emistasis.bsky.social, Mike White or Louise Heitzmann!

Two evergreen bagworm larvae on juniper.

Getting ready for #Evol2025. If you see me say hi!

I'll be doing a very preliminary talk on bagworm moth evolutionary genetics on Sunday at 11:45 as well!

For sure! Send me a message once you're over here!

Congratulations! Happy to have a new evolutionary genetics colleague!

Well if that's the game of the game...here's a shot of Fulgora lanternaria from a recent trip to Costa Rica.

It's finally out! This paper took quite a while but I'm so excited to share now! For anyone who studies sex chromosomes, take note: we found a rare "slower X"! (dN/dS_X < dN/dS_Autos) 👀

Re-upping this thread on PGE in mealybugs because the results are finally published in Molecular Ecology:
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

In full sincerity, now is the moment to emphasize that undoing the changes implemented by DOGE is good for America, and increasing investment into NASA, NSF, NIH and other agencies will keep Elon from profiting off taxpayers.

Brown, oval oocysts are the most visible lifestyle of the Helicoverpa-infecting Ophryocystis. Sorry for the lack of scale bar!

Sequencing places this parasite (outlined in green) as sister to the Ophryocystis that infect milkweed butterflies.

How do you differentiate species when the most visible lifestage is a featureless brown rugby ball?

You sequence it and place it with phylogenomics!

Read all about this and the evolutionary genetics of a moth-infecting apicomplexan #parasite in our pre-print here:
www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

Proposed cut to NSF Biology budget is 70%.

70%. Seventy.

Call your senators & reps nonstop. Give them numbers on NSF impact for state/district. tableau.external.nsf.gov/views/NSFbyN... explain this will decimate the economy if their districts, especially if it has a major research univ. 🧪

A mantidfly, possibly Trichocelia banksi, pointing upward

A mantidfly, Zeugomantispa compellens, seen in profile

Some more mantidfly mania for #WorldBiodiversityDay

These two were photographed in Costa Rica, where my lab is currently doing fieldwork (more on that soon)!

Officially (re-)annoucing the Tree of Sex! Read all about it in JEB below!

Love a good soft scale!

Love this! My hot take is that pokemon reproduction isn't bad (=unrealistic), just that pokemon generally are sexually reproducing with leaky paternal genome elimination haha

You can divide a hot minute by 60 and it has the same value, baffling

This is far from the most salient problem with the new "dire wolves," but while we're all dogpiling this story...they couldn't even name the female pup Arya or Sansa? They went with the title (not even name) of the war crimes dragon lady...absolute hacks

A unique, pink insect - UNC Charlotte Urban Institute Katydids, (also known as bush-crickets in Britain), are insects in the family Tettigoniidae. They are sometimes referred to as long-horned grasshoppers, but are actually more closely related to cricke...

I don't know about hoppers specifically, but you'll see similar variation in katydids: ui.charlotte.edu/story/unique...

If it's a conserved pigment pathway, similar mutants have probably evolved in your hoppers as well?

Grinding in liquid nitrogen should work. Another option is the Powermasher, basically a mini drill pestle with textured tubes. We have one and use it regularly. It WILL break up tissue...the issue is going too far and shearing DNA afterward. It's a reasonable option with a light touch.

So the omniprep protocol has a chloroform phase separation step that takes care of most lipids for us (and with all the wax scale insects make it can be A Lot)

We have tried a bit with bead based kits but ultimately we use a modified omniprep extraction most of the time (happy to pass it along). The other important consideration is tissue smooshing upstream of extraction. If don't have one, I recommend a dounce homogenizer. It's been great for us!

We have had good success with pacbio from ethanol preserved samples. Of course we prefer fresh from life or snap frozen tissue, but failing that the higher the ethanol percentage the better (100%). What's your extraction protocol?

Excited to be part of this project! Follow the starter pack for more great repro evo researchers!