F Rosa Rubicondior: The Slug Mite - What is it FOR Exactly?

Thursday 20 October 2011

The Slug Mite - What is it FOR Exactly?

The White Slug Mite Riccardoella limacum
As a youngster I often used to look for the large garden snails which are common everywhere in England. I also use to find the larger, creamy white 'Roman' snails, also called the edible snail or escargot. These are fairly common in and around the area of north Oxfordshire where I lived.

One of the things I found fascinating was that some of them would have several tiny white creatures moving over their surfaces and very often going in and out of the hole in their side, the pneumostome, which leads to the air sack under the shell and through which snails breath.

I've since learned they are a group of mites. Mites are a group of arthropods similar to spiders but lacking the abdomen. Very many of them are microscopic - you will almost certainly have one or more living in most of your eyelash follicles. One particularly nasty little thing, Sarcoptes scabiei, sets up home in human skin and causes the intensely itchy rash called scabies.

However, the white snail mites I discovered as a child are what this is about, not the creatures that live in and on your body, in your beds, carpets, etc.

Slug mites around the pneumostome of a tawny garden slug.
These are known as slug mites and are members of the Riccardoella genus, usually R. limacum or R. oudemansi. They live on a whole range of terrestrial molluscs (slugs and snails). They were thought to be commensal, that is, just hitching a ride on their hosts and living off mucus, so doing their host no harm at all. However, recent studies have shown that they are blood feeder; that they are true parasites.

In fact it is now known that they often burrow deep into their host's skin and remain there. Despite this they appear not to do any real harm to their hosts which seem to suffer no ill effects from their activities. Certainly, they have no discernible impact on slug and snail numbers and they do not appear to be predated on by anything other than another mite - Hyoaspis miles. Slugs and snails seem to have adapted to the presence of slug mites to compensate for whatever harm they may have suffered in the past.

The only purpose for slug mites seems to be to produce more slug mites.

So a question for Creationists: what was your assumed intelligent creator's intelligent reason for designing the slug mite?

Luckily for Evolutionists such questions don't arise since there is no assumed purpose, intelligent or otherwise, in evolution theory. Evolution is an intelligently designed explanation for what we can observe in nature.





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24 comments :

  1. God created it from want. You may want to be reincarnated as a slug mite. God may want to see a slug mite's life. You thought the slug mite was interesting enough to want to write this article.
    -Christopher LaMell dualism1237.com

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  2. Christopher LaMell

    Actually, I thought the slug mite's life was UNinteresting enough to illustrate my point.

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  3. I don't know about creationists, since I'm not one. I do however find it interesting that my body is crammed full of commensal microorganisms, and that biologically speaking I'm more a colony than an individual.

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  4. Christopher LaMell...

    Reincarnation and God are from different religions...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. In christianity, there is a form of reincarnation from what is called the rapture, in which the dead are given life and substance again. Somehow, that seems just as crazy as any other reincarnation belief.

      Delete
    2. I've no idea what you think reincarnation has to do with the article. Is this just an avoidance tactic so you don't have to think about the question I asked?

      Delete
  5. Just because we don't know what purpose something serves, doesn't mean it doesn't serve a purpose. Even the manner you lauded Evolution is anti-science, as like I said, just because you don't know something, doesn't mean you stop asking the question.

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    Replies
    1. And you imagine saying we just don't know (therefore it must be my magic invisible friend) IS scientific?

      I can understand you remaining anonymous if you find actually answering direct questions embarrassing but your infantile superstition requires you to pretend you can.

      Delete
  6. Maybe it doesn't serve a purpose. This neither disproves/proves creation. Complexity doesn't always have purpose but most of the time does. It's a bit of a poor argument to imply the existence of a creator is disproved by not knowing the purpose of this tiny mite. That's like saying the designer of a kitchen knife used by a murderer proves the designer is evil.

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  7. Also, not all who believe in a creator believe in some of the nonsense taught by religions. Just because some religious people teach fallacies doesn't disprove the existence of a creator anymore than an atheist lying about evidence disproves evolution. Just poor reasoning.

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    Replies
    1. Can I suggest you read the article before you comment on it in future?

      Nowhere does it claim to either prove or disprove 'creation', nor does it argue or imply 'the existence of a creator is disproved by not knowing the purpose of this tiny mite', but I can understand why you've had to ignore the question and attack a straw man instead.

      Try again, and maybe this time find the courage to address the question actually asked, namely: what was your assumed intelligent creator's intelligent reason for designing the slug mite?

      If there are any words you have trouble with as you read it, let me know.

      Be brave! Truth isn't as frightening as you seem to think!

      Delete
  8. Of course. I Google to learn about something I saw on some slugs in my back years, and someone I thought was clever turns a perfectly good answer into a God vs evolution question at the end... Poof.. there goes the thought that this person was clever.

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    Replies
    1. I can understand you being upset that you can't think of a sensible answer. What an adult would do is wonder why that could be.

      Like a child, however, you lash out and tell yourself that you're too clever. From this we can tell that you're a creationist, full of the childish arrogance and self-importance that goes with it and feeling entitled to sit in judgement over others and grant yourself moral self-licence to abuse strangers to feel better about yourself.

      As we now know from this research, creationism is caused by a mental defect where an adult fails to develop mentally beyond the childish teleological thinking fallacy:

      https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(18)30863-7

      Delete
  9. Its purpose is to Survive...

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  10. Yeah, I'm as atheist as they come my dude but you really did go off the rails at the end there and undo all the nice work in an otherwise informative and pleasant article.
    People are on this post to read about little nasty mites feeding off molluscs. Doesn't mean people are childish because they're annoyed you turned an otherwise pleasant post into something to serve your own ego. We get it, you're a super smart atheist and everyone should bow to your massive intellect, big whoop. If anything your aggressive responces to previous posters speaks to your own immaturity. You and I believe in atheism, some dudes believe in a god that seems to relish in creating misery and others beleive in anal probing at the hands of egg headed aliens, who cares!
    There is one truth I am sure we can all agree on however, anyone who landed on this page via Google is here to read about slug mites not to prostrate in reverence to your observations on whether slug mites have a purpose within some sort of grand design...

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    Replies
    1. I'm sorry you got yourself so upset. Perhaps next time you could take a look at a blog's description before reading the posts in it. You might find that not all blogs are tailored to your personal requirements. Maybe you need to get a private Internet.

      Delete
  11. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Your obnoxious abuse has been removed. Can I suggest, if you need to try to feel better about yourself, you try to achieve something rather than sitting alone in your room posting anonymous abuse to strangers on the Internet.

      Delete
  12. Oh dear, that ending. Why does there need to be intelligent reason to design mites? You think there was an intelligent reason to create humans? Animals that destroy the planet more than any other? I agree with evolution but I think creation has to be there right at the beginning and things just carried on evolving afterwards. There was no reason for any of it.

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    Replies
    1. You appear not to have noticed the final two paragraphs.

      Delete
  13. I've just saw mites on a slug and came across your article trying to find out what they were. I enjoyed the read.
    While I've been standing here searching slug mites and writing this a spider came down from the ceiling and has been attempting to make a web from my phone back up. Amazing!

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  14. This was a great article until you brought religion into it. Which was obviously going to get the religious people arguing with you. And yes I am posting this anonymously but that's because I dont want anyone emailing me. This isnt abuse either. Well my comment isnt anyway. As a suggestion leave religion put of it. But thankyou for letting me know about these mites now I know I can put the slug outside without it suffering.

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    Replies
    1. I'm puzzled by how you can imagine it's possible to criticise Creationism without questioning the religion of Creationists.

      Delete

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