Unintelligent Designer News - The Hopeless Muddle When the Intelligent [sic] Designer Doesn't Have a Plan

Unintelligent Designer News

The Hopeless Muddle When the Intelligent [sic] Designer Doesn't Have a Plan

European Spruce bark beetle, Ips typographus

Source: Wikipedia
By Gilles San Martin - Flickr - Ips typographus
(CC BY-SA 2.0), Link

Bark Beetle galleries in wood.

Photo: Deborah Bell, Smithsonian Institution.

Symbiotic fungi transform terpenes from spruce resin into attractants for bark beetles | Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology

Whatever designed the symbiotic relationship between the European spruce bark beetle Ips typographus, the various fungi it depends on and Spruce trees, is either incompetent, severely amnesiac, or deliberately malevolent.

Briefly, the beetle grubs depend on the fungus to kill and breakdown the tissues of the spruce tree in which they live and develop into mature adults and the fungus gets carried to new trees by the beetles when they disperse. For this relationship to work, the adult beetles need to be directed to suitable new host spruces. This is achieved by the fungus producing attractive chemical known as terpenes which are detected by the beetles with a special olfactory organ. Not only that but research has shown that the fungi also produce chemicals that stimulate the beetles to burrow into the bark of the spruce hosts, so starting the infection and killing process.

All very brilliant and a triumph of 'designed', as no doubt the average Creationist will claim, even claiming that this system must have been created as a whole system, which is nonsensical, of course, as every component could have evolved gradually over time with each generation improving on the previous one, either in the sensitivity of the beetles' olfactory organ, the attractiveness of the chemicals the fungi produce or the dependence on each other for feeding and dispersal.

However, where the incompetence or malevolence of the 'designer' created by comes in is in the way the attractive chemicals are created by the fungus. A recent piece of research led by scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Jena, Germany, has shown that the fungus uses a substance produced by the spruce tree to defend itself against fungal attack!

And it gets even more complicated because some species fungi are harmful to the beetles, so the beetles have evolved the ability to distinguish between the chemicals produced by symbiont species and ignore those produced by harmful species.

Let's just run through the logic of Creationist claims of intelligent [sic] design shown here:

1. The intelligent designer created spruce trees.
2. The same designer than created the European spruce bark beetle to attack the spruce.
3. To make it batter at attacking spruce trees, the intelligent designer designed a special fungus to attack and kill the spruce trees and encourage the beetles to burrow into the bark.
4. To prevent the fungus doing what it designed it to do, the same designer than gave spruce trees the ability to produce resins to protect itself.
5. The same designer than redesigned the fungi to eat this defence substance and to produce attractive chemicals to 'call' the beetles to the tree so they could be transported to other trees and kill them too.
6. The designer gave the beetles special sense organs to detect these attractive chemicals.
7. The same designer designed different fungi to harm the beetles.
8. It then gave the beetles the ability to ignore the 'attractive' chemicals produced by harmful fungi, so preventing the fungi do what they were designed to do.

It looks almost exactly like the designer either didn't have a plan or got hopelessly muddled about what it was trying to achieve, so came up with a ludicrously complex method for making fungi and European spruce bark beetles, killing another of its creations in the process! An intelligent [sic], omniscient designer deity with acute amnesia, maybe?

So, if, as Creationists like to claim, this was designed by a supernatural designer, either the designer 'forgot' what it was trying to prevent its specially designed fungi doing to spruce trees - which itself would mean it was trying to prevent its design doing what it designed them to do - and turned this mechanism against the spruce, or it just likes watching its creation being killed by its specially designed pathogens.

In short, an intelligent [sic] design explanation for this relationship must explain the designers self-evident incompetence, amnesia and/or malevolence. Those are not mutually exclusive, of course.

Removing intent from the explanation by explaining it as the result of a mindless natural process, including evolutionary arms races, resolves this difficulty as any rational person can see, but for reasons which are never explained, Creationists would prefer us to think of their designer deity as incompetent and/or malevolent rather than have their dupes accept that evolution explains biodiversity and amoral relationships between species. Because they have to subscribe to the Abrahamic religions' dogma of only a single designer god, they can't claim this is the result of competing designers, either.

The research which revealed this relationship is explained in a Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology news release:

When metabolizing spruce bark, the insect’s fungal partners release volatile compounds that bark beetles recognize through specialized olfactory sensory neurons

FEBRUARY 21, 2023

In a new study in the journal PLOS Biology, an international research team led by the researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology demonstrates that the European spruce bark beetle Ips typographus uses volatile fungal metabolites of plant defense substances as important chemical signals in their attack on spruce trees. The researchers also show that the insects have olfactory sensory neurons specialized for detecting these volatile compounds. The fungal metabolites likely provide important clues to the beetles about the presence of beneficial fungi, the defense status of the trees, and the population density of their conspecifics. The study highlights the importance of chemical communication in maintaining symbiosis between bark beetles and their fungal partners (PLOS Biology, February 2023, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3001887).

Massive forest damage on and around the Brocken in the Harz mountain range in May 2022.

© Angela Overmeyer

The mass outbreaks of bark beetles observed in recent years have caused shocking amounts of forest damage throughout Germany. As reported by the Federal Statistical Office in July 2022, more than 80% of the trees that had to be felled in the previous year were damaged by insects. The damaged timber felled due to insect damage amounted to more than 40 million cubic meters. One of the main pests is the European spruce beetle Ips typographus. In the Thuringian Forest and the Harz Mountains, for example, the beetle, which is only a few millimeters long, encountered spruce monocultures that had already been weakened by high temperatures and extended periods of drought, which facilitated the spread of the pest and led to the death of huge forest stands within a short period of time.

Researchers have already known that chemical communication plays an important role in bark beetle mass attacks. Beetles first choose a suitable tree and then emit so-called aggregation pheromones. These pheromones attract conspecifics in the vicinity to join a mass attack that overcomes the tree’s defenses. Spruce trees whose defenses are already weakened by stresses are more readily overcome.

Bark beetles like the odor of their symbiotic fungi

European spruce bark beetle Ips typographus: The newly hatched young adult is still in the so-called pupal chamber at the end of the tunnel it created as a larva. It is surrounded by spores of a symbiotic fungus.

© Dineshkumar Kandasamy and Veit Grabe, Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology

Spruce bark beetles need fungal allies to successfully reproduce in the trees. The fungi are ectosymbionts, symbiotic partners that live outside the beetles. Each new generation of beetles must find their symbiotic fungi and carry them to a new host tree.

We had already been able to show that bark beetles are attracted to their fungal associates when these are cultured on standard fungal growth medium. Now we wanted to know what would happen if we grew fungi on a more natural medium with spruce bark powder added. Would beetles be attracted to fungi now? If so, which chemical compounds would be responsible for the attraction and what is the origin of these chemicals?

Dineshkumar Kandasamy, first author
Department of Biochemistry
Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Jena, Germany

In a new study, an international research team led by Dineshkumar Kandasamy (now at Lund University, Sweden) and Jonathan Gershenzon of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, reports that the European spruce bark beetle can find its fungal partners based on the volatile chemical compounds the fungi release when they degrade spruce resin components.

Fungi convert the chemical defenses of spruce into attractants for the beetles

European spruce bark beetles are associated with fungal partners of different genera. The fungus Grosmannia penicillata grew particularly well on the spruce bark medium and produced more volatile compounds than most of the other fungi tested. Therefore the researchers focused their investigations on this fungus. The researchers set up special experimental arenas where they could test whether the beetles were attracted to volatile compounds emitted by the fungi.

We first found that European spruce bark beetles are attracted to the volatiles emitted by their associated fungi when fungi were growing on medium with spruce bark powder. However, we also showed that fungi can transform terpene compounds from spruce resin into their oxygenated derivatives and that some of these metabolites produced by fungi are particularly attractive to bark beetles. The overall conclusion is that these volatiles serve as chemical signals that keep the symbiosis between bark beetles and their associated fungi going.

Dineshkumar Kandasamy.

The researchers found that pathogenic fungi, which are harmful to the beetles, can also metabolize spruce resin compounds. However, unlike the metabolites of the symbiotic fungi, the resulting derivatives are not attractive to bark beetles. Bark beetles can therefore use their sense of smell to distinguish whether the fungi present in the tree are good or bad for them. The scientists were particularly surprised when the behavioral observations revealed that fungal partners not only attracted the beetles but also stimulated them to tunnel.

Bark beetles have olfactory sensory cells in their antennae tuned to detect volatile compounds of fungal metabolism

By enhancing bark beetle attraction to particular trees, volatiles from the fungus could increase the intensity and success of mass attacks. Fungi may help kill the host tree, overcome its defenses, provide beetles with nutrients or protect them from pathogens. The ability of the fungus to metabolize resin components that are originally produced by the tree as a defense could indicate which fungi are virulent and could serve as good partners for the beetle.

Jonathan Gershenzon, co-corresponding author
Department of Biochemistry
Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Jena, Germany

Further evidence that fungal metabolites make spruce trees already infested by fungi even more attractive to bark beetles was provided by electrophysiological studies of the beetles' perception of these odors. This involved testing the response of individual olfactory sensilla on the beetle antennae to different odors. The researchers were able to show that the bark beetles possess certain olfactory sensory neurons housed in sensilla that are specialized in detecting oxygenated monoterpenes emitted by the fungi.

The results of this new study may help improve the control of bark beetle outbreaks. One of the most widely used strategy in the fight against these pests are pheromone traps, but these have not been effective in preventing recent outbreaks. Therefore, the researchers are now testing whether these odor traps can be optimized by adding oxygenated monoterpenes from fungal metabolism. An important goal for the research team is to learn more about the metabolism of the spruce resin compounds in the fungi and to find out whether this can be a detoxification reaction for the fungus or for the beetle.

Technical detail is provided in the abstract to their open access paper in PLOS Biology:

Abstract

Outbreaks of the Eurasian spruce bark beetle (Ips typographus) have decimated millions of hectares of conifer forests in Europe in recent years. The ability of these 4.0 to 5.5 mm long insects to kill mature trees over a short period has been sometimes ascribed to two main factors: (1) mass attacks on the host tree to overcome tree defenses and (2) the presence of fungal symbionts that support successful beetle development in the tree. While the role of pheromones in coordinating mass attacks has been well studied, the role of chemical communication in maintaining the fungal symbiosis is poorly understood. Previous evidence indicates that I. typographus can distinguish fungal symbionts of the genera Grosmannia, Endoconidiophora, and Ophiostoma by their de novo synthesized volatile compounds. Here, we hypothesize that the fungal symbionts of this bark beetle species metabolize spruce resin monoterpenes of the beetle’s host tree, Norway spruce (Picea abies), and that the volatile products are used as cues by beetles for locating breeding sites with beneficial symbionts. We show that Grosmannia penicillata and other fungal symbionts alter the profile of spruce bark volatiles by converting the major monoterpenes into an attractive blend of oxygenated derivatives. Bornyl acetate was metabolized to camphor, and α- and β-pinene to trans-4-thujanol and other oxygenated products. Electrophysiological measurements showed that I. typographus possesses dedicated olfactory sensory neurons for oxygenated metabolites. Both camphor and trans-4-thujanol attracted beetles at specific doses in walking olfactometer experiments, and the presence of symbiotic fungi enhanced attraction of females to pheromones. Another co-occurring nonbeneficial fungus (Trichoderma sp.) also produced oxygenated monoterpenes, but these were not attractive to I. typographus. Finally, we show that colonization of fungal symbionts on spruce bark diet stimulated beetles to make tunnels into the diet. Collectively, our study suggests that the blends of oxygenated metabolites of conifer monoterpenes produced by fungal symbionts are used by walking bark beetles as attractive or repellent cues to locate breeding or feeding sites containing beneficial microbial symbionts. The oxygenated metabolites may aid beetles in assessing the presence of the fungus, the defense status of the host tree and the density of conspecifics at potential feeding and breeding sites.

Kandasamy D, Zaman R, Nakamura Y, Zhao T, Hartmann H, Andersson MN, et al. (2023)
Conifer-killing bark beetles locate fungal symbionts by detecting volatile fungal metabolites of host tree resin monoterpenes.
PLoS Biol 21(2): e3001887. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3001887

Copyright: © 2023 The authors.
Published by PLoS. Open access
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

As usual, I invite intelligent [sic] design Creationists to explain why this system should not be regarded as evidence of the incompetence and/or malevolence of their favourite creative deity, or explain why they would prefer us to think of their god and an unintelligent and/or malevolent deity rather than have us accept the Theory of Evolution as the best explanation for these examples of biological arms races, and the evolution of mutualism in symbiotic relationships.

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