iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Wonderful! Mealybugs need more fan art!

This is the home of the famous "fish-within-a fish" fossil (pic grabbed from the Internet)! I hope they can stay open...

An awesome fossil of a fish that swallowed another fish!

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ARGs are definitely tricky. How big of a clade can you cover with one set of ancestral linkage groups? Depends on the critter. The order Lepidotera is (mostly) well behaved, but there are massive rearrangements between families in Hemiptera. Gotta go case by case across the tree of life.

Andrew Mongue @ajmongue.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

For sure, there's lots of tricky cases and weird sex determination systems, but I also feel like there's probably some well-differentiated, simple Xs and Zs that don't get labeled simply because people sequence genomes for all kinds of reasons and don't think to take the extra annotation step.

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Wow quick work from @hanliconius.bsky.social ! Thank you for confirming my suspicions. Label your sex chromosomes, folks!

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Andrew Mongue @ajmongue.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I'm running a course that's currently doing this manually at small scale, but I'd love to be know what fraction of chromosome level assemblies bother to a) label sex chromosomes b) include mitogenomes. Is there a way to easily scrape that?

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Joe Hanly @hanliconius.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I made a live dashboard of chromosome-scale genome assemblies on NCBI. hanliconius.github.io/eukaryote-ge...

hanliconius.github.io

Eukaryote Genome Watch

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Andrew Mongue @ajmongue.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Very interesting...seems like it will require some modifications for insects that don't feed as adults and/or don't have an artificial diet?

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I just realized I goofed! Let me clarify that this was co-led by David and the great @ethanbeaver.bsky.social whose encyclopedic taxonomy knowledge was crucial! Even an evolutionary genomics guy like me can understand it if Ethan breaks it down!

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Yes! I didn't mention in the quick version but we have some evidence from Australia, Japan, and elsewhere that this group probably has a pan-tropical distribution, they typically just go unnoticed because of their cryptic lifestyle!

Big thanks to all authors: David Cheng, @ethanbeaver.bsky.social @psychidae.bsky.social @tliesenfelt.bsky.social Paul Masonick, Shuhei Niitsu, Pavel Potocky, @petrnguyen.bsky.social Jerome Jia Jun Cai, Shen-Horn Yen, Victoria Twort, Lauri Kaila, and @dr-akito.bsky.social Look for the genome soon..

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This paper is a milestone in a few ways for me: the first species description I've been involved in, the first journal cover image I've gotten, and most importantly, the first paper out to come from our amazing international bagworm collaboration team!

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Caterpillars feed and grow in their cases (first pic) before emerging as winged adults (second pic). The fact that both sexes look similar as flying moths might seem obvious but they stand as an important contrast to later-diverging, highly sexually dimorphic bagworms.

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But in the cloudforests of Costa Rica, we found bagworms feeding on fungus in rotting logs and making these long, slender sawdust cases! I promise there's a caterpillar in there but it might not be as big as you think...

If you know bagworms, it's probably for cases like this one (from Abbot's bagworm) made of sticks and leaves tied together with silk as they feed on host plants.

Graham Coop @gcbias.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

What's going on here? Is that fungus? Noodles?? No, it's bagworm moth cases! In a new article led by co-advised student David Cheng, we describe two new species and a whole new subfamily of bagworm moths: Tenuipsychinae! academic.oup.com/isd/article-... Brief explainer below!

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I’m looking to hire an NIH funded postdoc to join our lab here at Davis (please RT). Ongoing areas of interest include: 1) polygenic signals of selection from time series, ARGs, GWAS, etc 2) The interpretation of GWAS, polygenic scores, & sources of confounding

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Andrew Mongue @ajmongue.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Looking for a postdoc? Consider joining an excellent lab in an amazing department! @laurarossevo.bsky.social 's group works on so many bizarre and unique genetic systems. It's an absolute dream for an evolutionary geneticist (I may be biased but it worked out well for me)!

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Andrew Mongue @ajmongue.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

It turns out Varroa mites aren't haplodiploid after all!?

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Evolution Letters @evolletters.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

How do bumblebees determine sex—and why does it matter for conservation? A new study identifies the B. terrestris sex-determination region, with major implications for managing genetic diversity. doi.org/10.1093/evle... Image credit: M. Almbauer

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Ardem Patapoutian @ardemp.bskyverified.social · 31/08/2026

NIH's Aug 2026 proposal would scrap exact scores and percentiles for three broad bins (top = top 25%). With funding rates at 5% or lower, too much then rides on administrative discretion. It devalues peer review and is a deterrent to engage. Tell NIH before Oct 13. grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

grants.nih.gov

NOT-OD-26-088: Request for Information (RFI) on Proposed Changes to Reporting Outcomes from NIH Peer Review

NIH Funding Opportunities and Notices in the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts: Request for Information (RFI) on Proposed Changes to Reporting Outcomes from NIH Peer Review NOT-OD-26-088. NIH

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We also get insights into chromosome evolution, finding a single X chromosome in the ambush bug, as opposed to the X1X2 system of other assassin bugs. Thanks to coauthors @tliesenfelt.bsky.social and Paul Masonick for their work on the molecular methods and taxonomy! 5/5

For instance, the protein composition of the saliva of blood feeding assassin bugs like the kissing bug is well characterized. By searching the genome of the ambush bug, we show that most of those proteins were likely already present in the predatory ancestor of the bloodfeeders. 4/5

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In this paper we generated a chromosome level genome assembly for Phymata mystica, a predatory outgroup to more (in)famous blood feeding assassin bugs. This evolutionary relatedness but ecological difference makes it a valuable point of comparison. 3/5

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I like to use genome notes as introductory projects that teach core concepts and coding skills in genomics. And as a lab, each new project helps us refine and optimize extraction and sequencing techniques. Our goal is to bring cutting edge techniques to important, but understudied taxa. 2/5

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 27/08/2026

New Mongue lab publication alert! The first first-author paper for master's student @ethangrebler.bsky.social who started this work as an undergraduate in the lab! The genome assembly of the ambush bug Phymata mystica! Read about it here: academic.oup.com/g3journal/ad... Highlights below 1/5

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RIP Yayoi Kusama

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Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Hey folks, this hasn’t gotten much attention, but remember those proposed OMB rule changes we all commented on recently? There’s a new attempt to sneak them just for NSF. We have three days to comment. Please don’t sleep on this!

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Neil Hall @neilhall.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Biological Databases are critical infrastructure - not projects. As so much effort is put into harnessing AI to solve all our problems, we are allowing the foundational data resources crumble. Treat biological databases as infrastructure, not projects www.nature.com/articles/d41...

nature.com

Treat biological databases as infrastructure, not projects

Letter to the Editor

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Tree of Sex @treeofsex.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

And thanks as well to every member of the Consortium who are making this whole massive undertaking possible! Don't forget, you can easily follow all of us with one click using this starter pack: go.bsky.app/QjiXdsc 3/3

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Andrew Mongue @ajmongue.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Excited that this deep dive into the semantics of reproductive terms is finally out, led by the always awesome @ideaspermatheca.bsky.social ! We have more to come on reproductive evolution with the Tree of Sex 2.0 consortium @treeofsex.bsky.social but unpacking terminology is a crucial first step!

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Caitlin E. McDonough-Goldstein @ideaspermatheca.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Building connections across components of sex allows for more nuanced evolutionary research like comparing the specific influence of sex on genetic diversity, genome architecture and phenotypic variation or how traits like sexual systems and sex determination interact to influence each other

Text at top: Components of "sex" combine to influence reproductive trait evolution
Composite with multiple figures that make connections among many different traits
Citations for figures: Ross et al. 2022, Niklas and Cobb 2014, Gourevitch et al. 2026, Pla et al. 2022, Kruger-Hadfield 2024 and Billiard et al. 2012

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Stand Up for Science! @standupforscience.net · 14/08/2026

The NSF Proposal is a not-so-sneaky attempt to implement Vought’s OMB Proposal before it’s finalized. Take action against the NSF Proposal; Leave your public comment: zurl.co/j2JCa Join us today at the NSF Rapid Response Workshop, 2-3PM ET: zurl.co/IXE9L

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Andrew Mongue @ajmongue.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Aha, that makes sense, cheers!

Andrew Mongue @ajmongue.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Stupid question but how did 80% of species ranges expand and 27% contract? Aren't those mutually exclusive outcomes (so they should sum to at most 100%)?