Asian giant hornets, Vespa velutina nigrithorax
Credit: Sandra Rojas-Nossa
Let's quickly run through the sort of thing creationists need to believe is an example of supreme intelligence, in order to retain their delusion that what their mummy and daddy told them can't possibly be wrong and they really were specially designed by the magic creator of the universe who hold them in especially high regard.
An intelligent [sic] designer (there can only be one because Abrahamic dogma insists there is only one creator - apart from something called 'sin' which somehow transformed itself from a verb to a noun and magically became a creative entity, over which their god has no power) designed the buff-tailed bumblebee to travel from flower to flower, collecting pollen and nectar and pollinating the flowers as it does so. So far, so good.
Then the same intelligent [sic] designer decided these bumblebees, along with other related species of bee, would be ideal food for a predatory giant hornet that it was designing so it created these hornets with the ability to hunt down and kill bumblebees.
Now, that solution to the problem of what to provide giant hornets with for food is now a problem for it to solve. In other words, it didn't realise its solution - killing and eating bumblebees - would be a problem for bumblebees.
Once it did realise the problem it had
I wonder how long it will take this solitary designer to realise that this is now a problem for giant hornets and set about designing a solution for that problem it intelligently [sic] created!
But it turns out that buff-tailed bumblebees’ defensive strategy probably wasn’t designed to protect it from giant hornets after all, but from some, as yet unidentified predator (which could even be extinct now). The stupidity was in designing giant hornets to try to catch them in the first place when they had already been given a defence against them!
of course, what I described there is the classic evolutionary arms race that is the cause of a considerable proportion of biodiversity as species compete with one another, seek to avoid being eaten, or try to find a way not to starve, for long enough to produce the next generation. The obvious lack of planning and foresight is how we know there was no intelligence and no plan in the process which created it.
How the buff-tailed bumblebees’ escape strategy was discovered by researchers from the University of Exter, Cornwall, UK together with colleagues at the Spanish universities of Vigo, Pontevedra, and Santiago de Compostela, A Coruña, who have published their findings in an open access paper in Communications Biology. It is explained in a news release from the University of Exeter:
Bumblebees have a remarkably successful method for fighting off Asian hornets, new research shows.The researchers findings can be read in the open access journal Communications Biology:
When attacked, buff-tailed bumblebees drop to the ground – taking the hornets down with them. This either causes the hornet to lose its grip, or the bee raises its sting and tussles until the hornet gives up.Asian hornets prey on a wide range of insects, including honey bees, but little is known about their impact on other pollinators. With honey bees, the hornets do something called ‘hawking’ – hovering outside the bees’ nest and attacking returning foragers as they fly past. We recorded hornets doing the same thing to bumblebees, but with the surprising difference that in our observations, they were entirely unsuccessful.
Thomas A. O’Shea-Wheller, lead author
Environment and Sustainability Institute
Penryn Campus
University of Exeter, Cornwall, UK.
A hornet hovering outside a nest as a bumblebee emerges.Credit: Thomas A. O’Shea-Wheller
University of Exeter scientists witnessed over 120 such attacks, and were stunned to find that bumblebees fought off the hornets every time.
Despite this, they found bumblebee colonies had reduced growth rates in areas with high numbers of Asian hornets – suggesting the hornets still had a negative impact, even if their attacks at colony entrances usually failed.
Asian hornets (also known as yellow-legged hornets) have already invaded much of mainland Europe and parts of east Asia, and have recently been reported in the US for the first time.
Sightings in the UK and continental Europe are at record levels this year – raising fears for pollinators and prompting substantial control efforts.
In the study, commercially reared bumblebee colonies were placed at 12 locations across the province of Pontevedra, Spain, with varying local Asian hornet densities.
Colonies were weighed every two days (weight change is a measure of colony growth) and those in areas with higher Asian hornet densities grew more slowly.
Buff-tailed bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) have not evolved alongside Asian hornets (Vespa velutina), so O’Shea-Wheller said their successful defensive strategy may well be an “evolutionary coincidence".We can’t say for certain why this is. It’s possible that some external factor is good for Asian hornets, allowing them to thrive, but bad for bumblebees. However, it’s perhaps more likely that the presence of Asian hornets limits the success of bumblebee colonies.
Although the attacks we witnessed at colony entrances were unsuccessful, bumblebees have been reported in the diet of Asian hornets, and the hornets are known to prey on them elsewhere. Furthermore, defending against such attacks is likely energetically costly – and when hornet abundance is high, this could be a major problem for bees out foraging. Hornets also consume nectar from flowers, meaning they compete directly with bees for food and harass them at flower patches via constant attacks.
I have seen hornets attack bumblebees of all sizes, including some that are larger than them. They are very persistent and generalist predators, so these attacks may still be worthwhile despite the high failure rate, as long as they sometimes get a kill.
While honey bees are often unable to escape the clutches of Asian hornets once grappled in the air, the bumblebees’ defensive response of dropping to the ground appears to be more successful.
Thomas A. O’Shea-Wheller
AbstractLooked at objectively, any designer of these arms races that are the inevitable result of predator-prey relationships, which are themselves the result of some species being designed to eat other species, would need to be incompetent in the extreme and entirely incapable of learning from its mistakes so destined to repeat them endlessly, or it is an obsessive sadist who enjoys watching life and death struggles and designs them for its sadistic enjoyment.
The invasive hornet Vespa velutina nigrithorax is considered a proliferating threat to pollinators in Europe and Asia. While the impact of this species on managed honey bees is well-documented, effects upon other pollinator populations remain poorly understood. Nonetheless, dietary analyses indicate that the hornets consume a diversity of prey, fuelling concerns for at-risk taxa. Here, we quantify the impact of V. velutina upon standardised commercially-reared colonies of the European bumblebee, Bombus terrestris terrestris. Using a landscape-scale experimental design, we deploy colonies across a gradient of local V. velutina densities, utilising automated tracking to non-invasively observe bee and hornet behaviour, and quantify subsequent effects upon colony outcomes. Our results demonstrate that hornets frequently hunt at B. terrestris colonies, being preferentially attracted to those with high foraging traffic, and engaging in repeated—yet entirely unsuccessful—predation attempts at nest entrances. Notably however, we show that B. terrestris colony weights are negatively associated with local V. velutina densities, indicating potential indirect effects upon colony growth. Taken together, these findings provide the first empirical insight into impacts on bumblebees at the colony level, and inform future mitigation efforts for wild and managed pollinators.
Fig. 1: Automated monitoring setup.
a Experimental colony setup. Arrows indicate (1) rangefinder markings; (2) frame calibration markings; (3) observation entrance; and (4) entrance camera. b External camera set up 1 m from colony. c Typical view from the entrance camera demonstrating automated tracking of B. terrestris workers. Arrows indicate (1) digital entrance and exit counters; (2) AI-assisted tracking locks (boxes) and trajectories (lines) of individual bumblebees. d View from the external camera showing the colony exterior and surroundings. e Heatmap detailing the time spent by bumblebees traversing the observation entrance (shorter, blue; longer, red), confirming the optimum region for tracking. f A typical interaction between the two species preceding a predation attempt. Arrows denote (1) a B. terrestris forager exiting the colony; (2) a V. velutina worker investigating the colony entrance.
O’Shea-Wheller, T.A., Curtis, R.J., Kennedy, P.J. et al.
Quantifying the impact of an invasive Hornet on Bombus terrestris Colonies. Commun Biol 6, 990 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-023-05329-5
Copyright: © 2023 The authors.
Published by Springer Nature Ltd. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)
In fact, of course, looked at objectively, these are examples, not of intelligent design, but of mindless natural design with no plan and no ability to learn and change, exactly as described by the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection.
It seems that creationists are similarly incapable of learning and understanding the folly of their superstition, or accepting the mass of evidence that there is no intelligence behind the superficial resemblance of design that disappears immediately we look below the superficial.
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