Andrew Mongue
University of Florida, FL·Ecology & Evolution
Males and females of the same species can look and function very differently, yet they carry nearly the same genes. How do such differences arise from a shared genetic starting point, and why are some species barely dimorphic while others are extreme?
- Fields
Ecology & Evolution
Genetics
Biology
- Topics
bagworm moths
Psychidae
sexual dimorphism
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2028
What they work on
- Construct a global phylogeny of bagworm moths from field-collected species to count how many times extreme female sexual dimorphism, including winglessness and loss of legs and eyes, evolved independently.
- Test whether larval bag structure, local climate, and related variables predict the degree of sexual dimorphism across bagworm species, using comparative analyses on the new phylogeny.
- Generate genomic resources for bagworm species spanning low to extreme dimorphism and identify the genes controlling sexually dimorphic development, asking whether species share a common molecular framework or converge independently.
- Test for positive selection in male-only and female-only expressed genes, especially those on the sex chromosomes, to assess how much adaptation drives the evolution of sex differences.
More about the research
Bagworm moths offer an unusually sharp way to ask. In every species both sexes begin as caterpillars that haul around a protective silk bag, and males always mature into winged moths. Females vary dramatically: in some species they become winged moths, in others they never grow wings and crawl larva-like to find a mate, and in still others they lack legs and eyes entirely and never leave the bag.
Why it matters
Separate sexes are nearly universal in animals, and this work supplies a concrete case for understanding how one shared genome produces two very different bodies, and how often that capacity evolves. Beyond basic evolutionary genetics, it builds a global phylogeny and genomic resources for bagworm moths, a group that includes plant-feeding insects, and informs whether sex chromosomes are special engines of adaptation.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Nathaniel Sharp
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Ecology & Evolution
Test whether yeast cells of a species' rarer type, haploid or diploid, have higher mutation rates, by measuring ploidy-specific mutation patterns in haploid- and diploid-dominant yeast species.
Daniel Barbash
Cornell University, NY·Genetics
Identify the maternal factors in D. simulans that interact with a D. melanogaster-specific satellite DNA block, a large repetitive non-coding region, to cause chromosome instability and lethality in first-generation hybrids.
Bradley Gelfand
University of Virginia, VA·Physiology
Determine how sex chromosome complement and gonadal hormones each contribute to sex differences in ADCAI, the process by which IgG1 antibodies inhibit blood-vessel growth.
The school
University of Florida: 65 labs on PI Pages, $1.3B a year on research, 795 research doctorates a year.
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