Andrew Mongue

Lab milestone: My first (now graduated) student's first genome assembly is now publicly available! Well done, @tliesenfelt.bsky.social !!

You can read the companion article below!

Shout out to the weird biology of mealybugs and the folks who study it!

Trump Deals A New Immigration Blow To International Students Trump officials have proposed a new rule limiting international students to fixed periods of entry, making a U.S. education more precarious.

Trump admin planning to change student visas from lasting for duration of academic program to fixed 4-yr term, and then much harder to renew
Could destroy US ability to attract global talent, particularly those seeking advanced degrees in STEM. The median time to complete a PhD is 5.7 yrs per NSF.

Wish I could be there with the rest of the crew!

Just in time for her #eseb2025 poster on Thursday, @squarehare.bsky.social 's paper on the Poecilia bifurca sex chromosomes was published today academic.oup.com/g3journal/ad...

I tend to be the nice reviewer 😅

Nate Silver: "journalists have much better bullshit detectors [than academic reviewers]"

Me, an academic reviewer: that's a bold claim that sounds like the author's opinion. It needs either supporting citations or removal from the manuscript. Revise and resubmit.

Another paper on polyommatine blue butterflies just published in @genomebiolevol.bsky.social. Blues have high chromosome numbers associated with increased diversification and their karyotypes reveal strategies to maintain genomic integrity amidst profound karyotypic changes doi.org/10.1093/gbe/...

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