Rosa Rubicondior: Creationism Refuted

Mimicry in Butterflies Is Seen here on These Classic “Plates” Showing Four Forms of H. numata, Two Forms of H. melpomene, and the Two Corresponding Mimicking Forms of H. erato.

Source - Repeating Patterns of Mimicry. Meyer A, PLoS Biology, Vol. 4/10/2006, e341 doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0040341, CC BY 2.5, Link

Evolution has reused the same genes for 120 million years, study shows - News and events, University of York

The great day creationists have been assuring themselves is imminent — and have been doing so for at least half a century — when evolutionary biologists finally announce that they have abandoned the Theory of Evolution because it fails to explain the evidence, seems to recede even further with almost every new research paper. Instead of being replaced by creationism, complete with unproven supernatural entities, magic, “unknowable mysteries” and evidence-free Biblical folklore treated as real history, evolution remains the basic framework within which modern biology makes sense of the evidence, formulates hypotheses and interprets results.

Almost invariably, research that appears at first sight to question some aspect of evolution is doing nothing of the sort. It is refining the details. That is the case with a new paper in PLOS Biology by a team led by scientists at the University of York, the University of Sheffield and the Wellcome Sanger Institute, which suggests that, in some circumstances, evolution may be more predictable than a simple caricature of random mutation filtered by natural selection would lead us to expect.

The team analysed the genomes of seven species of Ithomiini and Heliconius butterflies, together with the day-flying moth Chetone histrio. These lineages diverged between about 1 million and 120 million years ago, yet they have evolved remarkably similar wing colour patterns as members of neotropical mimicry rings. These warning patterns signal to predators that the insects are toxic or distasteful, so different species benefit by converging on similar “do not eat me” designs.

What the researchers found was striking. In several butterfly lineages, similar colour-pattern switches were associated with the same two genes, ivory and optix. More precisely, the important changes were not usually in the protein-coding parts of those genes themselves, but in nearby regulatory regions — the genetic switches that determine when and where those genes are turned on and off during wing development. In other words, natural selection has repeatedly arrived at similar visible results by acting on the same underlying developmental toolkit.

This is not evolution being refuted; it is evolution being understood in greater detail. What looks like simple convergence from the outside turns out, at the genomic level, to be a repeated use of the same limited set of viable routes. Evolution is still contingent, still dependent on mutation, recombination, selection and inheritance, but it is not infinitely free to do anything at all. Developmental systems constrain what variations are available, and those constraints can make some evolutionary outcomes more likely than others.

One particularly awkward aspect for creationists such as Stephen Meyer, who insist that new “information” must be intelligently inserted by some unknown mechanism, is that the study shows how major changes in form and appearance can arise from changes in the regulation and arrangement of existing DNA. In the moth Chetone histrio, colour-pattern variation is associated with a large inversion — a section of DNA flipped in orientation — closely resembling the inversion-based “supergene” architecture seen in one of the co-mimetic butterflies, Heliconius numata. No designer is required; ordinary genomic processes, filtered by selection, are enough.

It is also worth noting the timescale. These same genetic routes appear to have been available to lepidopterans since deep in the Mesozoic, around the time of the dinosaurs. The predators, environments and ecological communities have changed enormously since then, but the evolutionary principle remains the same: when similar selective pressures act on organisms with similar developmental machinery, evolution can repeatedly find similar solutions.

Müllerian Mimicry — Evolution’s Shared Warning Labels. Müllerian mimicry is a form of evolutionary convergence in which two or more genuinely defended species evolve to look alike. These species may be toxic, distasteful, venomous, or otherwise unpleasant or dangerous to predators. Their bright colours and bold patterns act as warning signals — a biological equivalent of a shared “do not eat” sign.

This differs from Batesian mimicry, in which a harmless or edible species gains protection by imitating a harmful one. In Müllerian mimicry, the resemblance is not a cheat in quite the same way, because all the participating species really do carry a cost for the predator. Each species reinforces the warning signal used by the others.

The evolutionary advantage lies in predator learning. If a bird, lizard or other predator tries to eat one distasteful insect and has a bad experience, it is more likely to avoid anything with the same warning pattern in future. The cost of educating predators is therefore spread across all the species sharing that pattern, rather than being borne by each species separately. This can make shared warning colours strongly favoured by natural selection.

Over time, this can produce what are known as mimicry rings: groups of unrelated or distantly related species that come to share similar colour patterns because they live in the same area and are hunted by the same predators. Tropical butterflies, especially Heliconius and ithomiine butterflies, are among the classic examples. Their wing patterns are not just decorative; they are survival signals shaped by predator behaviour, natural selection and inherited variation.

The new study is especially interesting because it shows that this convergence can reach down to the genetic level. Several distantly related butterflies and a day-flying moth have arrived at similar warning patterns by reusing the same developmental genes, ivory and optix, or nearby regulatory switches that control them. So the resemblance is not merely superficial. It reflects the repeated use of the same evolutionary toolkit over tens of millions of years.

That is why Müllerian mimicry is such an elegant example of evolution in action. It shows natural selection acting on predators, prey, colour patterns, behaviour, genes and gene regulation at the same time. Far from being evidence of design, it is evidence of predictable evolutionary outcomes arising when similar organisms face similar ecological pressures.

The work of the team is explained in a University of York news item and again in a University of Sheffield news item.

Evolution has reused the same genes for 120 million years, study shows
Scientists have shown that evolution has been using the same genetic ‘cheat sheet’ for over 120 million years, suggesting that life on earth may be more predictable than first imagined.
The international team, led by scientists at the University of York and the Wellcome Sanger Institute, studied several distantly related South American rainforest butterfly and moth species that sport similar wing colour patterns that warn away predators, a phenomenon known as mimicry.

The aim of the study was to discover the genes controlling these similar mimicry colour patterns among seven distantly related species.

The scientists, including researchers from a number of South American countries, found that despite being very distantly related to each other, the various butterfly and moth species reused the same two genes - ivory and optix - to evolve near identical colour patterns.

Genetic trick

The genetic changes in the different butterfly species did not happen in the genes themselves, but in similar ‘switches’ that turn the genes on or off. The moth species surprisingly used an inversion mechanism - a large chunk of DNA flipped backwards - a near identical genetic trick used by one of the butterflies.

Convergent evolution, where many unrelated species independently evolve the same trait, is common across the tree of life. But we rarely have the opportunity to investigate the genetic basis of this phenomenon. Investigating seven butterfly lineages and a day-flying moth, we show that evolution can be surprisingly predictable, and that butterflies and moths have been using the exact same genetic tricks repeatedly to achieve similar colour patterns since the age of the dinosaurs.

Professor Kanchon Dasmahapatra, corresponding author
Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity
Department of Biology
University of York
York, UK.

The research, published in the journal PLoS Biology, shows that evolution isn't always a roll-of-the-dice, but can be more predictable than previously thought.

Adaptation

These distantly related butterflies and the moth are all toxic and distasteful to birds trying to eat them. They look very much alike because if birds have already learned that a specific colour pattern means “do not eat, we are toxic”, it is beneficial for other species to display the same warning colours. Here, we show that these warning colours are particularly ideal as it seems quite easy to evolve these same colour patterns due to the highly conserved genetic basis over 120 million years.

Professor Joana Meier, co-author
Tree of Life Programme
Wellcome Sanger Institute
Cambridge, UK
And Department of Zoology
University of Cambridge
Cambridge, UK.

Knowing that nature follows a particular route, and is not as ‘random’ as once thought, helps scientists predict how other species might adapt to their environments, or climate change.

Publication:
Ben Chehida Y, van der Heijden ESM, Page E, Salazar C PA, Rosser N, Córdova KGG, et al. (2026)
Genetic parallelism underpins convergent mimicry coloration in Lepidoptera across 120 million years of evolution. PLoS Biol 24(4): e3003742. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003742

Abstract
Convergent evolution, the repeated evolution of similar phenotypes, is widespread in nature, but there are few studies investigating the genetic mechanisms of convergence across wide evolutionary timescales. The extent to which the same genetic mechanisms contribute to convergent evolution could reveal whether the pathway towards these fitness optima is flexible or constrained to follow a particular route, informing us about the predictability of evolution. Wing color pattern mimicry in Lepidoptera is a well-known example of convergent evolution, but as studies are restricted to a few closely related species, it is difficult to make general inferences about the predictability of evolution in this system. Here we study convergent evolution in multiple mimetic neotropical lepidopteran lineages that diverged between ~1 and 120 Mya, including seven species of Ithomiini and Heliconius butterflies and a day-flying Chetone moth. Across butterfly lineages that diverged up to ~30 Mya, the genetic variants most strongly associated with convergent color pattern switches are located in similar noncoding regions near the genes ivory and optix. In the more distantly related moth species, color pattern variation is associated with a ~1 Mb inversion which also contains ivory, closely mirroring the supergene architecture of the co-mimetic butterfly Heliconius numata. In contrast to previous studies on Heliconius butterflies, we find limited evidence that convergence among closely related Ithomiini species results from alleles shared by hybridization. Repeated parallel evolution of regulatory switches via reuse of the same two genes suggests that convergent color pattern evolution is highly constrained and predictable even across large evolutionary timescales. Such constraints may have facilitated diverse taxa joining this species-rich mimicry ring.

Fig 1. Phylogenetic relationships and mimetic phenotypes.
(A) Geographic distributions of the three tiger sub-mimicry rings: yellow band, orange-black and striped, based on Doré and colleagues 2021 [26] together with representative mimicry ring member taxa (detailed in S1 Fig). The purple outline shows the maximum range of each sub-mimicry ring with the approximate abundance of taxa indicated via heatmap colouration. Taxa with a blue background were investigated using GWA/QTL. Additional taxa used in gene flow analyses are shown on a yellow background. Maps were generated using the “Stamen terrain lines” (https://maps.stamen.com/terrain-lines/) base map openly available through Stadia Maps (stadiamaps.com). (B) Time-calibrated phylogeny including in bold the eight lepidopteran species investigated in detail. Blue bars represent 95% confidence intervals of the node ages. Large images depict the phenotypic variation of the species investigated in this study. Smaller images also show some representative species that do not form part of the tiger mimicry ring.

Fig 2. Ivory and optix control convergent phenotypes across multiple species. Zoomed Manhattan plots of genome-wide association for wing pattern variation involving (A) ivory and (B) optix. SNPs above the Bonferroni-corrected significance threshold (orange dashed line) are colored according to the strength of correlation (ρ², squared Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient) between genotype and the phenotypes compared as shown in the wing images. Black points represent SNPs fully associated with the phenotypes. The bottom Manhattan plot shows the wider ~1 Mb region of high association in Chetone histrio around the ivory region. The results for Heliconius numata were retrieved from [28]. Heliconius pardalinus results are based on QTL mapping (S16 Fig). E230: cis-regulatory element 230 [29]; ivory pro.: ivory promoter; hyd. like: hydrolyze like; LRR1: Leucine Rich Repeat Protein 1. Association plots across the whole-genome are shown in S2 Fig. The ~ 400 kb P1 inversion (orange segment) is associated with color pattern variation in Heliconius numata [28,30] and corresponds closely in location to the Chetone histrio inversion as shown by the red segment (S24 Fig).

Ben Chehida Y, van der Heijden ESM, Page E, Salazar C PA, Rosser N, Córdova KGG, et al. (2026)
Genetic parallelism underpins convergent mimicry coloration in Lepidoptera across 120 million years of evolution. PLoS Biol 24(4): e3003742. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003742

Copyright: © 2026 The authors.
Published by PLoS. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

This research should be deeply uncomfortable for creationists because it shows evolution doing exactly what the Theory of Evolution predicts: producing similar outcomes when similar selective pressures act on organisms with similar developmental machinery. The repeated use of ivory and optix is not evidence of some supernatural planner recycling favourite design motifs; it is evidence that evolution is constrained by what already exists and can therefore be more predictable than creationist caricatures of “random chance” allow.

It also exposes the weakness of the creationist obsession with “information”. Here, strikingly different wing patterns are not conjured into existence by magic, nor inserted by an unnamed designer using an unspecified mechanism. They arise through ordinary genomic processes — changes in regulation, recombination, structural rearrangements such as inversions, and the filtering effect of natural selection. The important changes are not necessarily new protein-coding genes, but changes in when, where and how existing genes are used.

Nor is there any hint here of biology needing to abandon evolution and retreat into creationist mystery-mongering. Quite the reverse. The whole study only makes sense within an evolutionary framework: common ancestry, divergence over deep time, developmental constraint, ecological pressure, predator learning, mimicry rings, gene regulation and natural selection. Remove evolution, and the pattern becomes just another unexplained coincidence. Put evolution back, and it becomes intelligible.

So yet again, the evidence has failed to deliver the long-awaited creationist victory. Instead of biologists giving up on evolution, they are using it to ask better questions and uncover deeper patterns in nature. The result is not a problem for evolution, but a problem for those who have spent decades pretending evolution is a theory in crisis.

In reality, it is creationism that has no mechanism, no predictive framework and no research programme. Evolution, meanwhile, continues to do what science does best: explain the evidence.

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