Unintelligent Design - The Needless Complexity That Produces Orchids

Cremastra variabilis

Cremastra variabilis

Deadwood brings wild orchids to life | Kobe University News site

An interesting open-access paper, recently published in the journal, Functional Ecology, by two researchers from Kobe University, Japan, explains the complex, symbiotic relationship between an orchid and a wood-decomposing fungus, not only between the fungi and the adult plants that depend on the fungi to provide the orchid with nutrients, but also for the orchid seed to germinate.

This complex relationship appears to benefit the orchid because it can live in otherwise nutrient-poor conditions. However, from an intelligent design perspective, it makes no sense at all because an omnipotent, omniscient designer could have endowed the orchid with the genetic machinery to do what the fungus does.

The relationship between the seeds and the fungus is even more bizarre. The seeds, unlike those of other plants, are devoid of nutrients and therefore need the fungus to supply some. Orchid seeds are notoriously small, being almost invisible to the naked eye. Contrary to Jesus’s bizarre reputed claim in the Bible that the mustard seed is the smallest seed, orchid seeds are orders of magnitude smaller.

Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field: Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.

Matthew 13: 31–32

The mustard seed is not only not the smallest of seeds but also doesn’t grow into a tree!

Contrary to what creationists have been conditioned to believe, one of the hallmarks of good, intelligent design is minimal complexity because the simpler a process is, the fewer opportunities there are for it to go wrong.

The converse is true for evolved organisms and processes because there is no plan or foresight in evolution, which can only build on what is already present, and natural selection prioritises utility, based solely on what is better than what preceded it. Consequently, evolved organisms are a collection of suboptimal compromises, and there is selection pressure to minimise failures with another layer of complexity.

This has led to confusion in creationist thinking, which associates complexity with intelligent design as they try to force-fit what can be observed with their need to have a role for their particular deity — especially in their own ‘design’ — giving them a sense of importance that being ‘merely’ the product of evolution doesn’t give them.

Refuting Creationism - The Lengths Plants Will Go To Just To Get Pollinated - No Intelligence Needed

chloropid flies on a Vincetoxicum nakaianum flower.

The grass fly visiting the flowers (A) and kleptoparasiting spider hunting ant (B)

Press Releases - SCHOOL OF SCIENCE THE UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO

The driving force behind evolution is reproductive success, so in a broad sense every adaptation can be seen as a reproductive strategy. Few, however, are as peculiar as that of Vincetoxicum nakaianum, a dogbane species native to Japan. Rather than relying on nectar rewards or visual lures to attract pollinators, this plant enlists the services of kleptoparasitic chloropid flies — insects that usually home in on the scent of injured prey in order to steal a meal.

In a remarkable twist, the flowers of V. nakaianum release chemical signals that closely mimic the odour of ants under attack by predators, especially spiders. Drawn in by what they perceive as the scent of a potential victim to exploit, the flies inadvertently collect and deposit pollen as they move from flower to flower. This unusual strategy has now been documented in detail in a study led by Ko Mochizuki of the University of Tokyo, published in Current Biology, and described in a University of Tokyo School of Science press release.

What makes this particularly striking is how roundabout and intricate the mechanism is. If an intelligent designer had set out to ensure pollination, far simpler methods are available — from bright colours and nectar rewards to direct reliance on wind. Instead, V. nakaianum has evolved a convoluted route, exploiting the specialised behaviour of flies that themselves depend on the predation of ants by spiders. Such elaborate, contingent solutions are precisely what we expect from evolution by natural selection acting over countless generations, not from foresightful design.

Refuting Creationism - Observed Evolution of Plants on A Volcanic Island

P. oleracea on Nishinoshima

Nishinoshima Island

Scientists trace origins of now extinct plant population from volcanically active Nishinoshima | EurekAlert!

Scientisst have a remarkable way to verify one of the fundamental principles of evolutionary biology - the 'founder effect' and how it contributes to allopatric speciation - a process that is hotly disputed by creationists who dogmatically refuse to accept any evidence for evolutionary diversification.

The great thing about science is that its theories can be tested and verified. Even better, they are frequently shown to be correct through evidence. This is in stark contrast to faith as a means of determining truth. Faith is not based on evidence, so it cannot be independently verified; in logical terms, it is unfalsifiable.

That doesn’t mean it can’t be falsified, but rather that there are no tests which, if failed, would demonstrate it false. Take, for example, the creationist claim that “God did it.” How could such a claim ever be tested? With no objective evidence beyond subjective feelings, anecdotes, or alleged personal experiences, there is nothing to examine. And if such a claim were challenged, it could always be shielded with further untestable assertions: “God is untestable,” “God is beyond science,” and so on.

By contrast, evolutionary biology offers theories that are not only testable but also repeatedly confirmed. One such theory is the founder effect. This occurs when a new habitat is colonised by only a small sample of a parent population. Two important factors follow:

1. The new sample is unlikely to perfectly represent the genetic diversity of the parent population, so it will begin with a different allele profile.
2. For the new colony to succeed, the founding individuals must already be somewhat pre-adapted to the environment. Those less well-suited are eliminated, while those better adapted survive and reproduce. Over successive generations, this natural selection creates a population increasingly fit for its new environment. The result is a wave of adaptation and divergence from the parent stock — the essence of allopatric speciation.

The natural “laboratory” for studying this process exists in the form of Nishinoshima, a remote Japanese island subject to frequent volcanic eruptions. Each eruption wipes the island clean of vegetation, effectively resetting the ecosystem and creating opportunities for colonisation by founder populations from elsewhere.

By careful genetic analysis of the, now extinct, Nishinoshima population of Portulaca oleracea, the team were able to show that the parent population was on nearby Chichijima, another volcanic island, however, the Nishinoshima population differed markedly from the parent population, and were derived from a very small founder population. In addition, there was evidence of genetic drift, which is much more significant in a small population than in a larger one - exactly as the Theory of Evolution predicts. Genetic drift is the process where, by chance alone, a neutral allele can increase or decrease in the population. The smaller the population the more quickly an allele can progress to fixation in the population or be eliminated. (for more detail on this, see the Introduction to my book, Twenty Reasons To Reject Creationism: Understanding Evolution (ISBN 13: ISBN-13 : 979-8306548166).

Now, researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have reported the results of this natural experiment, and they align precisely with what evolutionary theory predicts.

Creationism Refuted - Complex Evolution Of The Sweet Potato

‘Tanzania’ sweetpotato variety.

Credit: Benard Yada, National Crops Resources Research Institute
(NaCRRI), Uganda.

Decoding Sweetpotato DNA: New Research Reveals Surprising Ancestry - Boyce Thompson Institute

Despite abundant evidence to the contrary, creationists often claim that mutations cannot create new genetic information.

This argument rests on a deliberate misrepresentation of Shannon information theory, developed by Claude Shannon to optimise the transmission of information. Shannon’s theory equates information with entropy (a measure of uncertainty), not with “meaning”, and it draws on mathematical principles that can be related to thermodynamics. In thermodynamics, energy is conserved—neither created nor destroyed.

Creationists then assume, incorrectly, that this means the “information” in a genome cannot be created. They also tend to overlook the fact that, if their analogy with energy held true, it should also be impossible to destroy genetic information—yet they have no difficulty accepting the latter.

How Evolution Works - Co-opting Old Genes For New Functions

Liverworts lacking a gene called RLF have severe deformations in various organs (three plants pictured right and bottom), demonstrating that RLF is involved in organ development in these basic land plants as well.

© FUKAKI Hidehiro (CC BY)

Molecular phylogenetic tree of the REDUCED LATERAL ROOT FORMATION (RLF) protein family. The unrooted molecular phylogenetic tree was constructed based on amino acid sequences of RLF and CB5A, B, C, D, E, and LP from various plant species.

Iwata, K.P., Shimizu, T., Sakai, Y.,et al(2025)

A root development gene that’s older than root development | Kobe University News site

One common way creationist apologists attempt to mislead the scientifically uninformed is by claiming that the Laws of Thermodynamics are somehow relevant to the evolution of information within a species' genome. They argue that any increase in genetic information would violate both the Second and Third Laws of Thermodynamics—asserting that increased biological complexity equates to a decrease in entropy (disorder), and that new information is akin to energy and thus cannot increase due to the Law of Conservation.

This argument is fundamentally flawed on several levels but continues to be repeated despite being repeatedly refuted by both biologists and physicists. First, it completely ignores the fact that Earth is not a closed system. The input of energy from the Sun, for example, allows local decreases in entropy (such as in the formation of complex biological structures) while the total entropy of the universe still increases, fully complying with the Second Law. The Third Law, which relates to the entropy of systems at absolute zero, is entirely irrelevant to biological evolution.

Second, the idea that genetic information is conserved like energy is a misrepresentation. Genetic information can and does change in multiple ways through mutation. A mutation can involve the loss of information (e.g. deletion of a DNA segment), a change in information (e.g. substitution of one or more nucleotides), or an increase in information (e.g. insertion of additional sequences, or the movement of transposable elements—“jumping genes”—to new locations in the genome). None of these processes require a change in the total amount of matter or energy; they simply involve the rearrangement of existing molecular components. Any local increase in biological order is offset by energy expenditure elsewhere, typically via the hydrolysis of ATP to ADP and phosphate within metabolic pathways.

Moreover, these objections rest on the false assumption that evolution is about the quantity of information. In reality, it is the function and meaning of genetic information that drives evolutionary change. A sequence of DNA that once encoded a protein with one function can, through mutation and natural selection, take on a new function entirely—a process known as exaptation.

A well-known example is the evolution of the mammalian middle ear bones. In ancestral fish, certain jawbones played a structural role in the jaw joint. Over time, in early synapsids, these bones were repurposed and miniaturised to become part of the auditory system, transmitting sound vibrations from the eardrum to the cochlea.

Refuting Creationism - Common Ancestry Of Mosses and Algae - 600 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'.

The star-shaped algae Zygnema circumcarinatum shows similar stress reactions to the moss

Photo: Tatyana Darienko

The branching moss Physcomitrium patens, which the researchers used to study stress reactions and compare them to algae.

Photo: Tatyana Darienko.

600 million years of stress: plants retain shared gene hubs - Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

Like animals, plant life originated in the sea and only colonized land once they evolved the necessary adaptations. For animals, this meant developing mechanisms for breathing air and terrestrial locomotion. For plants, the primary challenge was desiccation, creating strong selection pressure for traits that mitigated water loss. This led to the evolution of a highly connected network of genes, known as a 'hub,' that regulates responses to environmental stress.

So fundamental is this genetic hub to plant survival that it has remained highly conserved throughout evolutionary history.

What information do you have on the evidence for the evolution of land plants and their divergence from marine algae? The evolution of land plants from their algal ancestors is one of the most significant transitions in Earth's history. Multiple lines of evidence, including molecular phylogenetics, comparative genomics, palaeobotany, and developmental biology, support the hypothesis that land plants (embryophytes) evolved from a group of green algae, specifically within the Charophyte clade. Below is a summary of the key evidence:

1. Molecular and Phylogenetic Evidence
   • Shared Genetic Markers: Molecular phylogenetic studies show that land plants are most closely related to charophyte algae, such as Chara and Klebsormidium.
   • Chloroplast DNA Similarities: Land plants and charophytes share specific gene arrangements in their chloroplast DNA, supporting common ancestry.
   • Cellulose Synthase Genes: The enzyme responsible for cellulose biosynthesis (CesA) has similar genetic sequences in charophytes and land plants.
   • Regulatory Genes: Some transcription factors crucial for land plant development, such as KNOX and BELL genes, have homologs in charophyte algae.
2. Morphological and Structural Evidence
   • Cell Division Similarities: Charophyte algae and land plants share a phragmoplast-based cell division mechanism, distinct from other algal groups.
   • Sporopollenin Protection: Spores of early land plants and some charophytes are encased in sporopollenin, a tough biopolymer that protects against desiccation.
   • Plasmodesmata: Both groups have plasmodesmata, cell-to-cell communication channels that enable coordinated growth.
   • Branching Growth: Some charophyte algae, such as Coleochaete, show apical growth similar to land plants.
3. Fossil Evidence
   • Ordovician and Silurian Microfossils (470-440 Ma): Fossilized spores with sporopollenin coatings appear before macroscopic land plant fossils, indicating early adaptation to terrestrial environments.
   • Rhynie Chert (Early Devonian, ~407 Ma): Preserves some of the earliest land plants (Rhynia, Aglaophyton), showing vascular tissue development.
   • Cooksonia (Silurian-Devonian Transition, ~430-410 Ma): One of the earliest known vascular plants, showing transition from bryophyte-like ancestors to tracheophytes.
4. Biochemical and Physiological Adaptations
   • Desiccation Tolerance: Early land plants and some charophytes can survive drying out, an adaptation to terrestrial life.
   • Hormonal Pathways: Land plants and charophytes use similar hormones, such as auxin and abscisic acid, for growth and stress response.
   • Symbiosis with Fungi: Fossil evidence and molecular studies suggest that early land plants formed mutualistic associations with mycorrhizal fungi (Glomeromycota) to obtain nutrients.
5. Transitional Forms
   • Zygnematophyceae as a Key Group: Recent genomic studies suggest that the Zygnematophyceae, a subgroup of charophyte algae, are the closest relatives of land plants. These algae lack complex multicellularity but share stress tolerance genes with land plants.
   • From Simple Algae to Complex Embryophytes: Gradual increase in structural complexity, from filamentous and parenchymatous algae to early non-vascular land plants, suggests a stepwise transition to terrestrial life.

Conclusion

The divergence of land plants from marine algae is well-supported by multiple independent lines of evidence. The transition was driven by adaptations to terrestrial challenges such as desiccation, nutrient acquisition, and reproduction. The evolutionary path likely involved early colonization by freshwater charophyte algae, which evolved desiccation tolerance, protective spores, and symbiotic relationships that facilitated the transition to permanent land-based life.

Now a team of researchers from Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen, Germany, led by Professor Jan de Vries, Göttingen University, who led the research, explains: has shown that this same 'hub' is present in both mosses and algae, even though they diverged 600 million years ago, the mosses having evolved out of simple algae.

Refuting Creationism - A Mass Extinction of Plants Due To Climate Change - 5,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

Flora and fauna in Siberia at the last glacial maximum

AI-generated image (ChatGPT4o)

Image of Lake Ilirney during field work in Chukotka, Russia

Photo: Alfred Wegener Institute / Luise Schulte.

Single view - AWI

10,000 years or so before creationism's little god created the small flat planet with a dome over it, thinking it was a universe, as described in the creation myth in the Bible, there was a mass extinction due to global climate change. In addition to the loss of the Ice Age megafauna, such as the woolly mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, cave lions, etc. over most of Eurasia and North America when temperatures rose at the end of the last glaciation, we also lost a lot of the Ice Age-adapted plants.

But, because plants tend not to fossilise so readily as the bones of large mammals, we didn't know until now, just how extensive this loss was, and more importantly, what a similar rise in temperatures is going to mean for the extant flora.

To redress this gap, a team of researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), Germany, have analysed DNA recovered from plant remains in the sediment of lakes in Siberia and Alaska. In doing so, they have discovered how the temperature affects the way plants interact, tending to support one another in cold weather and competing with one another in warm weather. A rise in ambient temperature meant increasing competition and loss of mutual support.

Unintelligent Design - How Evolution Rescued an Unintelligent Heath-Robinson Design Blunder

A WashU researcher hand pollinates Arabidopsis.

Photo: Joe Angeles/WashU

How plants evolved multiple ways to override genetic instructions - The Source - Washington University in St. Louis

The thing about evolution that distinguishes it from intelligent design is that evolution is utilitarian. It settles for something that works better than what preceded it, which is different from designing a perfect solution to a problem. Near enough is good enough because anything which is an improvement gets pushed up the frequency listing in the gene pool. So, organisms over time have accumulated sub-optimal systems that sometimes fail and cause other problems.

One of those systems is the way DNA is replicated - which is so error prone that error correction mechanisms have evolved over time, but they don't always work either, so we have the phenomenon of the 'jumping genes' that get inserted in the wrong place in the genome, sometime in the middle of a functional gene or in a control section adjacent to a functional gene, causing genetic defects.

So, in the best Heath-Robinson approach to design, rather than abandoning that design and starting again, the way any intelligent designer would do, another layer of complexity is needed to try to mitigate the occasion when the system fails.

So, what organisms have evolved over the years is a process for neutralising these 'jumping genes' by attaching methyl groups to one of the bases which prevents it being transcribed. This is a part of the epigenetic system by which the specialised cells of multicellular organisms turn of unwanted genes and only allow the genes for their speciality to be active - a layer of complexity needed because the way cells replicate was inherited from their single-celled ancestors where the whole genome needs to be included in every daughter cell.

Animals, such as mammals have two enzymes which attach this methyl group depending on the DNA 'context', but plants have multiple enzymes for doing the same thing. The question is why do plants need these multiple enzymes?

Refuting Creationism - How A Beetle Evolved To Eat Toxic Plants

Red milkweed beetle, Tetraopes tetrophthalmus

CC BY 2.5, Link

Red milkweed beetle, Tetraopes tetrophthalmus

Red milkweed beetle genome sequence offers plant-insect co-evolutionary insights

We are continually being assurd by gullible cretionists that the Theory of Evolution (TOE) is 'a theory in crisis' becase a growing body of biologisdts have abandonned it in favour of the creationists superstition of intelligent [sic] design.

This has been a creationist fantasy for at least the last 50 years since when it is supposedly about to happen, any day now, real soon (a bit like The Second Coming of Christ - something which, despite regular announcements that it will happen next Wednesday at noon, never happens - but its gunna, you see!)

However, when we read the scientific publications of these biologists who are allegedly abandoning the TOE, we see no signs whatever of any abandonment; quite the opposite. We see the TOE as firmly embedded in biological science as the Laws of Thermodynamics and the Theory of Gravity are embedded in physics, Atomic Theory is embedded in chemistry and Germ Theory is embedded in epidemiology. It forms the bedrock of the science, without which very little makes any sense.

For example, when a bunch of entomologists wanted to understand how a species of herbivorous beetle can eat a toxic plant, they compared it genomically with a related species that doesn't eat the toxic plant to see how the ability to proccess the toxins evolved.

Of course, being scientists, they reject the idea that the beetle was magically created that way by an unproven supernatural entity because none of that can be falsified and the existence of such an entity can't be established, so there is no logical reason to include one in any answer. The fact that their mummies and daddies might have believed in it is irrelevent to their science, because belief doesn't create facts.

Refuting Creationism - Wind Dispersal of Seeds - 370 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'.

A fossil of the winged-seed, Alasemenia, sourced from the Jianchuan mine in Xinhang Town, China.

Image credit: Deming Wang (CC BY 4.0)

Figure 1

Fertile branches and seeds of Alasemenia tria gen. et sp. nov.
(a) Thrice dichotomous branch with a terminal ovule. Arrow indicating boundary between ovule and ultimate axis (PKUB21721a). (b, f, g, i) Once dichotomous branch with a terminal ovule (PKUB21781, PKUB23132, PKUB19338a, PKUB17899). (c) Twice dichotomous branch with a terminal ovule (PKUB19713a). (d, e) Ovule with three integumentary wings (PKUB19321, PKUB19316). (h) Ovule showing two integumentary wings (PKUB19282). (j, k) Ovule terminating short ultimate axis (PKUB23114, PKUB23129). Scale bars, 1 cm (a–c, h), 5 mm (d–g, i–k).

New seed fossil sheds light on wind dispersal in plants | For the press | eLife The problem creationists have is that so much of Earth's history happened before their cult's dogma says it was created by magic just 10,000 years ago.

In fact, 99.9975% of Earth's history occurred during that long pre-'Creation Week' period, that just about any scientific paper dealing with fossils casually refutes creationism.

In fact the entire fossil record refutes creationism because nowhere in it are fossils found without ancestors and the geological column simply doesn't contain the evidence of a whole range of modern species suddenly appearing. It shows exactly the opposite - species evolving and diverging from common ancestors with modern forms having intermediate forms between them and common ancestors with other species in the same clade.

There is a clear progression in the fossil record of plants, for example, from simple single-celled algae, through primitive terrestrial mosses and liverworts followed by ferns, and eventually the angiosperms with their flowers and seeds.

Within the angiosperms there is again a fossil record or two main functions:

1. Ferilisation of seeds, which included co-evolution between flowers and pollinators - bees, moths, birds, etc. - or wind pollination.
2. Dispersal of seeds - wind, birds, mammals, etc.

And each of those fossil records is matched by the co-evolution of the pollinators and the seed dispersers.

Tell me about wind seed dispersal in plants, when it evolved, etc. Wind seed dispersal, also known as anemochory, is a widespread adaptation in plants to ensure the spread of their seeds over large distances, increasing their chances of finding suitable environments for growth. This dispersal mechanism relies on wind to transport seeds that are often lightweight and have specialized structures to aid their movement through the air.

Key Features of Wind-Dispersed Seeds:

1. Lightweight: Wind-dispersed seeds are typically small and light, allowing them to be carried long distances.
2. Structures for Flight: Many of these seeds have adaptations like wings, hairs, or other structures that catch the wind. Examples include:
   • Pappus: In species like dandelions (Taraxacum), the seed has a parachute-like structure called a pappus.
   • Wings: In trees like maples (Acer), seeds have wing-like structures called samaras.
   • Tumbleweeds: Some plants, like Salsola spp., disperse seeds by breaking off entirely and rolling in the wind.

Evolution of Wind Seed Dispersal:
Wind dispersal is a relatively ancient mechanism in plants, evolving as plants colonized terrestrial habitats. The earliest land plants likely relied on wind to disperse spores before the evolution of seeds. Once seeds evolved, various adaptations for wind dispersal followed. This trait has evolved independently across many plant lineages, making it an example of convergent evolution. Some key evolutionary timelines include:

• Early Seed Plants: The gymnosperms, which appeared around 350 million years ago, often use wind for seed dispersal, as seen in conifers with winged seeds.
• Angiosperms: Flowering plants, which diversified during the Cretaceous (about 125 million years ago), also show multiple independent evolutions of wind dispersal traits. Many families of angiosperms, such as Asteraceae (the daisy family) and Poaceae (the grasses), have specialized wind-dispersal mechanisms.

Factors Driving the Evolution of Wind Dispersal:

• Open Habitats: Wind dispersal is particularly advantageous in open, windy environments such as grasslands, deserts, and mountainous regions.
• Resource Efficiency: Wind dispersal doesn't require the plant to invest energy in producing fleshy fruit to attract animals for seed dispersal, making it resource-efficient.
• Competition and Colonization: It allows plants to colonize new areas and reduce competition by spreading seeds far from the parent plant.

In conclusion, wind seed dispersal has evolved multiple times in both ancient and modern plant lineages, driven by the need to disperse seeds efficiently in open or windy environments. Its prevalence in diverse plant families highlights its evolutionary success.

And now a group of researchers have found the second-earliest known record of wind dispersal of seeds from roughly 360–385 million years ago, during the Late Devonian. The fossils were found in the Jianchuan mine in Xinhang Town, Anhui Province, China.

The team were led by Professor Deming Wang of the Key Laboratory of Orogenic Belts and Crustal Evolution, Department of Geology, Peking University, Beijing, China. Their findings are the subject of a paper in the on-line, open access journal, eLife, and are explained in an eLife press release:

New seed fossil sheds light on wind dispersal in plants

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Scientists have discovered one of the earliest examples of a winged seed, granting insight into the origin and early evolution of wind dispersal strategies in plants.

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The study, published today as the final Version of Record after previously appearing as a Reviewed Preprint in eLife, details the second-earliest known winged seed – Alasemenia – from the Late Devonian epoch, roughly 360–385 million years ago. The authors use what the editors call solid mathematical analysis to demonstrate that Alasemenia’s three-winged seeds are more adapted to wind dispersal than one, two and four-winged seeds.

Wind dispersal in plant seeds is a natural mechanism that allows plants to spread their seeds through the air to new areas. This helps reduce competition for resources, increasing the plant’s chances of survival. Examples of wind dispersal strategies include tumbleweeds, parachutes such as dandelions and milkweeds, and winged seeds like those of the maple tree, often called ‘helicopter’ seeds.

The earliest-known plant seeds date back to the Late Devonian epoch.

This period marks a significant evolutionary milestone in plant history, as they transitioned from spore-based reproduction, as with ferns and mosses, to seed-based reproduction. However, little is known about wind dispersal in seeds during this time, as most fossils lack wings and are typically surrounded by a protective cupule.

Professor Deming Wang, lead author
Key Laboratory of Orogenic Belts and Crustal Evolution
Department of Geology
Peking University, Beijing, China.

Cupules are cup-shaped structures that partly enclose seeds, much like in acorns or chestnuts (although the Devonian cupules do not share the same origin with these modern ones), and could be associated with other dispersal methods, such as water transport.

To better understand early wind dispersal mechanism, Wang and colleagues studied several seed fossils from the Late Devonian, sourced from the Jianchuan mine in Xinhang Town, Anhui Province, China. From this, they identified a new fossil seed, Alasemenia.

They first described the characteristics of Alasemenia by carefully analysing the fossil samples, including making slices to view the seed’s internal structures. They found that Alasemenia seeds are about 25–33 mm long and clearly lack a cupule, unlike most other seeds of the period. In fact, this is one of the oldest-known records of a seed without a cupule, 40 million years earlier than previously believed. Each seed is covered by a layer of integument, or seed coat, which radiates outwards to form three wing-like lobes. These wings taper toward the tips and curve outward, creating broad, flattened structures that would have helped the seeds catch the wind.

The team then compared Alasemenia to the other known winged seeds from the Late Devonian: Warstenia and Guazia. Both of these seeds have four wings – Guazia’s being broad and flat, and Warstenia’s being short and straight. They performed a quantitative mathematical analysis to determine which seed had the most effective wind dispersal. This revealed that having an odd number of wings, as in Alasemenia, grants a more stable, high spin rate as the seeds descend from their branches, allowing them to catch the wind more effectively and therefore disperse further from the parent plant.

Our discovery of Alasemenia adds to our knowledge of the origins of wind dispersal strategies in early land plants. Combined with our previous knowledge of Guazia and Warsteinia, we conclude that winged seeds as a result of integument outgrowth emerged as the first form of wind dispersal strategy during the Late Devonian, before other methods such as parachutes or plumes.

Pu Huang, senior author
Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology
Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China.

The three-winged seeds seen in Alasemenia during the Late Devonian would have subsequently been followed by two-winged seeds during the Carboniferous period, and then single-winged seeds during the Permian.

Professor Deming Wang.

Abstract
The ovules or seeds (fertilized ovules) with wings are widespread and especially important for wind dispersal. However, the earliest ovules in the Famennian of the Late Devonian are rarely known about the dispersal syndrome and usually surrounded by a cupule. From Xinhang, Anhui, China, we now report a new taxon of Famennian ovules, Alasemenia tria gen. et sp. nov. Each ovule of this taxon possesses three integumentary wings evidently extending outwards, folding inwards along abaxial side and enclosing most part of nucellus. The ovule is borne terminally on smooth dichotomous branches and lacks a cupule. Alasemenia suggests that the integuments of the earliest ovules without a cupule evolved functions in probable photosynthetic nutrition and wind dispersal. It indicates that the seed wing originated earlier than other wind dispersal mechanisms such as seed plume and pappus, and that three- or four-winged seeds were followed by seeds with less wings. Mathematical analysis shows that three-winged seeds are more adapted to wind dispersal than seeds with one, two or four wings under the same condition.

eLife assessment This useful study describes the second earliest known winged ovule without a capule in the Famennian of Late Devonian. Using solid mathematical analysis, the authors demonstrate that three-winged seeds are more adapted to wind dispersal than one-, two- and four-winged seeds. The manuscript will help the scientific community to understand the origin and early evolutionary history of wind dispersal strategy of early land plants.

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.92962.3.sa0

eLife digest
Many plants need seeds to reproduce. Seeds come in all shapes and sizes and often have extra features that help them disperse in the environment. For example, some seeds develop wings from seed coat as an outer layer, similar to fruits of sycamore trees that have two wings to help them glide in the wind.

The first seeds are thought to have evolved around 372-359 million years ago in a period known as the Famennian (belonging to the Late Devonian). Fossil records indicate that almost all these seeds were surrounded by an additional protective structure known as the cupule and did not have wings. To date, only two groups of Famennian seeds have been reported to bear wings or wing-like structures, and one of these groups did not have cupules. These Famennian seeds all had four wings.

Wang et al. examined fossils of seed plants collected in Anhui province, China, which date to the Famennian period. The team identified a new group of seed plants named the Alasemenia genus. The seeds of these plants each had three wings but no cupules. The seeds formed on branches that did not have any leaves, which indicates the seeds may have performed photosynthesis (the process by which plants generate energy from sunlight). Mathematical modelling suggested that these three-winged seeds were better adapted to being dispersed by the wind than other seeds with one, two or four wings. These findings suggest that during the Famennian the outer layer of some seeds that lacked cupules evolved wings to help the seeds disperse in the wind. It also indicates that seeds with four or three wings evolved first, followed by other groups of seed plants with fewer seed wings. Future studies may find more winged seeds and further our understanding of their evolutionary roles in the early history of seed plants.

Introduction
Since plants colonized the land, wind dispersal (anemochory) became common with the seed wing representing a key dispersal strategy through geological history (Taylor et al., 2009; Ma, 2009.1; McLoughlin and Pott, 2019). Winged seeds evolved numerous times in many lineages of extinct and extant seed plants (spermatophytes) (Schenk, 2013; Stevenson et al., 2015). Lacking wings as integumentary outgrowths, the earliest ovules in the Famennian (372–359 million years ago [Ma], Late Devonian) rarely played a role in wind dispersal (Rowe, 1997). Furthermore, nearly all Famennian ovules are cupulate, i.e., borne in a protecting and pollinating cupule (Prestianni et al., 2013.1; Meyer-Berthaud et al., 2018).

Warsteinia was a Famennian ovule with four integumentary wings, but its attachment and cupule remain unknown (Rowe, 1997). Guazia was a Famennian ovule with four wings and it is terminally borne and acupulate (devoid of cupule) (Wang et al., 2022). This paper documents a new Famennian seed plant with ovule, Alasemenia tria gen. et sp. nov. It occurs in Jianchuan mine of China, where Xinhang fossil forest was discovered to comprise in situ lycopsid trees of Guangdedendron (Wang et al., 2019.1). The terminally borne ovules are three-winged and clearly acupulate, thus implying additional or novel functions of integument. Based on current fossil evidence and mathematical analysis, we discuss the evolution of winged seeds and compare the wind dispersal of seeds with different number of wings.

Figure 2

Fertile branches and seeds of Alasemenia tria gen. et sp. nov.
(a–c) Once dichotomous branch with a terminal ovule (PKUB16876a, b, PKUB17767). a, b, Part and counterpart. (d, e) Part and counterpart, arrow showing the third integumentary wing (PKUB19322a, b). (f) Ovule on ultimate axis (PKUB21752). (g, h, k–m) Ovules lacking ultimate axis (PKUB16788, PKUB21631, PKUB16522, PKUB21647, PKUB21656). (i, j) Part and counterpart, showing limit (arrows) between nucellus and integument (PKUB19339a, b). (n) Four detached ovules (arrows 1–4) (PKUB19331). (o) Enlarged ovule in n (arrow 2), showing three integumentary wings (arrows). Scale bars, 1 cm (n), 5 mm (a–h, k–m, o), 2 mm (i, j).

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Figure 3

Seeds of Alasemenia tria gen. et sp. nov.
(a, b) Part and counterpart, enlarged ovule in Figure 1a (PKUB21721a, b). (c) Enlarged ovule in Figure 1c. (d) Counterpart of ovule in c (PKUB19713b). (e) Dégagement of ovule in d, exposing the base of the third integumentary wing (arrow). (f) Enlarged ovule in Figure 1d. (g, h) Enlarged ovule in Figure 2i and j, respectively. Scale bars, 5 mm (a–e), 2 mm (f–h).

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Figure 4 with 5 supplements

Transverse sections of seeds of Alasemenia tria gen. et sp. nov.
(a, b) Part and counterpart. (c–e) Sections of seed in a and b (at three lines, in ascending orders). Arrow in d indicating probable nucellar tip (Slide PKUBC17913-12b, 10a, 9b). (f, g) Part and counterpart. (h–k) Sections of seed in f and g (at four lines, in ascending orders) (Slide PKUBC19798-8b, 6b, 4a, 4b). (l, m) Part and counterpart. (n–r) Sections of seed in l and m (at five lines, in ascending orders), showing three wings departing centrifugally (Slide PKUBC17835-5a, 7b, 8b, 9a, 10a). (s, v, A), One seed sectioned. (t, u) Sections of seed in s (at two lines, in ascending orders) (Slide PKUBC18716-8b, 7a). (w–z) Sections of seed in v (at four lines, in ascending orders) (Slide PKUBC20774-7a, 6b, 3a, 3b). (B–E) Sections of seed in A (at four lines, in ascending orders), showing three wings departing centrifugally (Slide PKUB17904-5b, 4a, 4b, 3b). Scale bars, 2 mm (a, b, f, g, l, m, s, v, A), 1 mm (c–e, h–k, n–r, t, u, w–z, B–E).

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Figure 5

Reconstruction of two acupulate ovules with integumentary wings.
(a) Alasemenia tria with three wings distally extending outwards. (b), A. tria with one of three wings partly removed to show nucellar tip. (c) Guazia dongzhiensis with four wings distally extending inwards (Wang et al., 2022). Scale bars, 5 mm.

Deming Wang, Jiangnan Yang, Le Liu, Yi Zhou, Peng Xu, Min Qin, Pu Huang (2024)
Alasemenia, the earliest ovule with three wings and without cupule
eLife 13: RP92962. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.92962.3

Copyright: © 2024 The authors.
Published by eLife Sciences Publications Ltd. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

And yet, despite this this daily refutation of creationism, the cult manages to stagger on, albeit shedding members as they reach the age of reason and realize they've neem fooled, and parasitic frauds like Ham and Kovind still cream off millions of dollars from their gullible and scientifically illiterate following in a desperate attempt to prove their inherited superstation gives them a better insight into the workings of the world around them than those clever-dicky, elitists scientists with their big words have.

Who needs facts and evidence, and all that bothersome learning when you have a mummy and daddy, and a preacher in a pulpit to tell you what to believe?

Unintelligent Design - How Creationism's 'Designer' Needs Plan B For When Plan A Fails To Mend Its Previous Design Blunder

Plants like Arabidopsis, seen here, have two options to ensure accurate chromosome division—a molecule called DDM1 and a process known as RNAi. If Arabidopsis loses one of these, it’s fine. But if it loses both, it’s in trouble.

Developmental defects of double, triple and quadruple mutants in RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (rdr1, rdr2, rdr6) and DNA methylation (ddm1) in floral organ identity, leaf shape and fertility (silique length).

Shimada, A., et al (2024)

Plants have a backup plan | Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

The secret to being a good designer or planner is to always have a Plan B. I say that as a former emergency operations centre manager where the future is unpredictable, so I needed to keep as many options open as possible because, as I used to joke, my Plan B was to tear up Plan A and start again.

Now, you can play the percentages game, for example, I could be fairly sure town centres would be fairly busy around 11 pm, especially on a Friday and Saturday night, when in the UK the pubs close, or as we call it, 'chucking out time', and a lot of inebriated people would be out on the streets, fighting over available taxis, over girl/boyfriends or who had got served at the bar out of turn (queue-jumping is a big no-no in the UK).

I also knew from 17 years operational experience that most of the calls would require little more than smoothing ruffled feathers, running checks to exclude underlying medical problems and sending them on their way, so turnover time would be relatively short, and I would get a crew back fairly quickly.

Another peak would be around 1 am when the nightclubs closed, but with a few exceptions such as those the rest of the week would resemble a system in chaos where medical emergencies, traffic accidents and every other imaginable emergency occurred more or less randomly, with statistical patterns only being noticeable over time with a sufficiently large database.

Later on, I became the data analyst who looked for those patterns and used them to devise deployment plans to minimise average emergency response times, but that's another story.

Juggling acts were the daily routine for an emergency operations centre like mine, as we tried to maintain as much emergency cover as possible while getting help to people who needed it as quickly as possible. And you never knew you had made the right decision until it turned out not to have been the wrong one.

Our major handicap was of course being unable to accurately forecast the future, not just weeks or days ahead but hours and minutes. What we singularly lacked was omniscience for which educated guesses were a poor substitute.

So, to a creationist it might come as something of a shock to learn that their putative designer behaves like a designer/planner who can't foretell the future because, if nothing else, it is allegedly omniscient, and its designs are perfect. As such it shouldn't need a Plan B because Plan A will be perfectly designed for the precise future needs of the species. There should never be an occasion where it needs to tear up Plan A and starts again; it shouldn’t need to consult a large database to look for patterns then work out the probability of that pattern repeating itself and planning its responses accordingly, never knowing if it was the right plan until it turned out not to be.

And yet a team of researchers from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York, USA has found that the plant, Arabidopsis has a Plan B for when Plan A fails. Plan A is all about making the ramshackle, Heath Robinson process for ensuring mistakes in DNA replication get attended to. In a design which seems to be a characteristic of creationism putative intelligent [sic] designer, a shoddy process needs another layer of complexity to try to make it works, but even that fix breaks and the result of growth defects, sterility and, in many cases in animals, cancers or developmental disorders.

Unintelligent Design - Doing The Same Thing In Two Different Ways

Brassica fruticulosa

Photo: Sílvia Busoms, UAB.

Brassica fruticulosa

Photo: Sílvia Busoms, UAB.

Different adaptation strategies to saline soils identified in neighbouring populations of the same plant species - Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona - UAB Barcelona

Imagine you're a design engineer tasked to design part of a manufacturing process to be used in two different factories. You produce a solution which works in one factory, so what do you do for the second factory?

If you're creationism putative designer, you forget all about the solution that works, and you design a completely different method for the second factory. It would be far too simple to use the first method you designed for the second factory, obviously. It would be as though there is no communication between the two factories and no sharing of ideas or testing to see which method was the most efficient in terms of time, materials and labor. Each factory would work to its own methods, oblivious of anywhere else or any better solutions.

And that just what creationism's alleged creator appears to have done with two populations of a common coastal plant in Catalonia - a wild member of the cabbage family, Brassica fruticulosa - where different populations have adapted to soil salinity in two different ways.

What can you tell me about the plant Brassica fruticulosa, its distribution and adaptation to different soil conditions? Brassica fruticulosa, commonly known as Mediterranean cabbage, is a wild species within the Brassicaceae family. It is native to the Mediterranean region, where it thrives in a variety of habitats, including rocky, disturbed, and coastal areas. The species is highly adapted to different environmental conditions, including poor, dry, and calcareous soils, which is a key feature of its resilience.

Distribution:
Brassica fruticulosa is primarily found in Southern Europe, North Africa, and parts of the Middle East. Its distribution spans countries like Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, and Algeria, extending into coastal regions with Mediterranean climates.

Adaptation to Soil Conditions:

1. Drought Resistance: The plant is well-suited to dry and nutrient-poor soils, a characteristic of Mediterranean ecosystems. Its deep root system allows it to access water in arid environments, contributing to its drought tolerance.
2. Calcareous Soils: The species is adapted to alkaline soils, often thriving in limestone-rich areas. It can tolerate high pH levels, which would limit the growth of less adapted species.
3. Disturbed and Rocky Soils: Brassica fruticulosa also thrives in disturbed habitats, such as roadsides and rocky outcrops. Its ability to grow in these challenging environments shows its resilience to various soil types and disturbances.

This adaptation to different soil conditions is likely linked to its ecological strategy of thriving in marginal habitats, where competition from other plants is less intense.

This was discovered by three researchers from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) Plant Physiology Lab, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Nottingham (UK), the Max Planck Institute for Biology (Germany), and Charles University in Prague (Czech Republic).

Their findings are the subject of a recent open access research paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) and a UAB news release.

Different adaptation strategies to saline soils identified in neighbouring populations of the same plant species

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Researchers from the Faculty of Biosciences have identified two divergent adaptive responses to soil salinity in populations of the same wild species found in the Catalonia’s coastal area, the Brassica fruticulosa, and have pinpointed the genes involved. The study will help to investigate the ways to improve resilience in agricultural species of the same plant family, such as rapeseed and mustard, in the face of a globally relevant stressor as is soil salinization.

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The study was recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and is signed by researchers Sílvia Busoms, Glòria Escolà and Charlotte Poschenrieder from the UAB Plant Physiology Lab, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Nottingham (UK), the Max Planck Institute for Biology (Germany), and Charles University in Prague (Czech Republic).

Over the past few years, UAB researchers have worked in close collaboration with members of the University of Nottingham to develop a study model along the Catalan coast to understand the interaction between environmental factors such as salinity and the adaptation of wild populations of the Brassicaceae family. They developed several studies focused on populations of Arabidopsis thaliana, a model organism for biological research, but in this case, they focused on Brassica fruticulosa, a species genetically and morphologically closer to cultivated brassicas such as rapeseed (Brassica napus) and mustard (Sinapis alba).

This research has allowed them to demonstrate that in Catalonia coastal populations of B. fruticulosa use two different strategies to tolerate soil salinity: those from the north (Cap de Creus region) are able to restrict root-to-shoot sodium transport, preventing the damage of the aerial parts. In contrast, those from the centre accumulate sodium in the leaves, but they use efficient mechanisms of osmotic adjustment and compartmentalisation that allow them to tolerate high concentrations of this compound.

The fact that two populations of the same plant species located so close geographically have evolved differently under the same environmental conditions surprised the researchers.

“In general, in all organisms it is expected that species adapting to similar stressors also evolve in a similar way. In our case, however, although in the coastal habitats of the Catalan coast soil salinity can be considered the main selective agent, there must be other factors that have altered the recent evolutionary process of this Brassicaceae species.

Sílvia Busoms, lead author
Department of Plant Physiology
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

This divergence in plant populations so close to each other has rarely been described, not so much because it is an exception, but because in many cases the studies are carried out at the macro-scale.

The Tramontane wind may explain this divergence

In their study, researchers examined in detail the characteristics of the soils and the climatology of all the populations’ location. The only parameter that showed significant differences was evapotranspiration, which was higher in the north due to the Tramontane wind that regularly blows there.

When there is high evapotranspiration, plants absorb more water and at the same time more sodium if they do not have mechanisms to exclude it. Therefore, the strategies used by the plants of the central coastal areas may be insufficient in the conditions of the northern coast. In the study we hypothesise that although they are neighbouring populations, the northern B. fruticulosa evolved differently in order to tolerate both high salinity levels and high evapotranspiration.

Charlotte Poschenrieder, co-author Department of Plant Physiology
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

To characterise the genetic basis of the two adaptive strategies identified, researchers first created the reference genome of B. fruticulosa, which will contribute to the expansion of the catalogue of reference genomes of eukaryotic species from the Catalan-speaking territories (within the Earth Biogenome Project) and will allow further research with this species. Subsequently, the sequencing of 18 populations and the subsequent genetic and transcriptomic analyses validated the two strategies observed and allowed researchers to propose candidate genes involved in the mechanisms of salinity tolerance.

Salinity is a threat to the planet's agricultural soils and its consequences are greater when it affects impoverished soils such as those found in the Mediterranean basin. A better understanding of the mechanisms of salt tolerance used by plants living there and which have adapted to these conditions is essential to improve the resilience of cultivars that must adapt to the new environmental conditions. “This study, therefore, establishes B. fruticulosa as a promising source of desirable alleles, and the population diversity present in Catalonia as a powerful model for the study of adaptations to saline soils,” researchers conclude.

Original article:

Silvia Busoms, Ana C. da Silva, Glòria Escolà and Levi Yant.
Local cryptic diversity in salinity adaptation mechanisms in the wild outcrossing Brassica fruticulosa.
September 24, 2024. Proc Natl Acad Sci. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2407821121

Significance
One might expect that closely related populations of a given species should adapt to the same environmental stressor in the same way due to genetic or physiological constraints. However, this is not commonly tested due to practical limitations. Here, we show that, even at the level of neighboring populations, contrasting adaptive strategies control adaptive responses to high coastal salinity in Brassica fruticulosa, a close wild relative of many crops of worldwide importance. This indicates multiple options for engineering an agriculturally crucial adaptation: soil salinization. These results will be of interest to not only those studying fundamental mechanisms of adaptation, but also resilience improvement in Brassica species.

Abstract
It is normally supposed that populations of the same species should evolve shared mechanisms of adaptation to common stressors due to evolutionary constraint. Here, we describe a system of within-species local adaptation to coastal habitats, Brassica fruticulosa, and detail surprising strategic variability in adaptive responses to high salinity. These different adaptive responses in neighboring populations are evidenced by transcriptomes, diverse physiological outputs, and distinct genomic selective landscapes. In response to high salinity Northern Catalonian populations restrict root-to-shoot Na⁺ transport, favoring K⁺ uptake. Contrastingly, Central Catalonian populations accumulate Na⁺ in leaves and compensate for the osmotic imbalance with compatible solutes such as proline. Despite contrasting responses, both metapopulations were salinity tolerant relative to all inland accessions. To characterize the genomic basis of these divergent adaptive strategies in an otherwise non-saline-tolerant species, we generate a long-read-based genome and population sequencing of 18 populations (nine inland, nine coastal) across the B. fruticulosa species range. Results of genomic and transcriptomic approaches support the physiological observations of distinct underlying mechanisms of adaptation to high salinity and reveal potential genetic targets of these two very recently evolved salinity adaptations. We therefore provide a model of within-species salinity adaptation and reveal cryptic variation in neighboring plant populations in the mechanisms of adaptation to an important natural stressor highly relevant to agriculture.

Today’s accumulation of high-profile cases detailing repeated evolution capture the fascination of biologists. Independently evolved adaptive coloring shifts in mammals and insects, defensive armor in fish, and serpentine and altitude adaptation in plants: these all present not only additional evidence for candidate mechanisms underlying adaptations, but also an optimistic outlook toward “predicting” the course of evolution and inspiring expositions for the public (1–6). Given these iconic cases, an expectation may arise that even at the functional level, neighboring populations of the same species should, due to genetic or developmental constraints and mutation limitation, share evolved strategies of adaptation to the same stressors (7). The logical extension is that natural selection might be expected to predictably drive the origin and maintenance of adaptations at strategic or mechanistic levels. However, this idea has not been sufficiently tested due to restraints on study systems, sampling, resolution, and scale (8). We thus lack a clear understanding of how often an expectation of uniform or repeatable species-wide adaptation strategies is violated in favor of diversity even within single species.

Here, we test this expectation by taking a “hyperlocal” approach in the study of plant adaptation to coastal stressors, focusing on adaptation to high coastal salinity in a strip of coastline in Catalunya, Northern Spain. Previous work on local adaptation of Arabidopsis thaliana in this region detailed geographically and temporally fine-scale adaptive variation in fitness-related traits across environmental salinity gradients, even at the scale of a few kilometers (9, 10). This region is characterized by a positive gradient of soil salinity from inland to the coast, shaping plant species communities and driving the evolution of salinity tolerance mechanisms at the local population- (deme-) level (11). Plant evolutionary responses to these conditions have been observed even in the selfer A. thaliana at fine (3 to 5 km) scale, resulting in functionally adaptive variation (12). Functional confirmation of this is evidenced by selective sweep of a hypomorphic ion transporter HKT1;1, which modulates Na+ leaf concentrations in response to rapid (monthly) temporal and spatial variation in rainfall and soil salinity (9).

Unfortunately, work in A. thaliana has two major limitations: first, due to its overwhelmingly selfing reproductive mode, relative to its outcrossing relatives A. thaliana has 10-fold lower genetic diversity and high rates of spontaneous, population-specific mutations (13). This low diversity also has important consequences in respect to increased homozygosity and effective population size, resulting in genetic drift, reduced effective recombination rates, genomic background effects, and the fixation of maladaptive alleles (reviewed in ref. 14). Second, Arabidopsis is substantially divergent from important Brassica crops, limiting the translational potential of discoveries in this otherwise convenient lab model. Wild outcrossing Brassicas, on the other hand, harbor higher levels of genetic diversity, directly facilitating studies of adaptation (15). Motivated by these considerations, we searched for wild Brassicaceae species with contrasting, recently evolved (within-species) phenotypes in complex coastal adaptations, focusing specifically on salinity tolerance. This resulted here in the identification of a model for local adaptation to coastal salinity, Brassica fruticulosa, and allows us to test hypotheses regarding the scale of local adaptation to high coastal salinity.

The genus Brassica belongs to the Brassicaceae (mustard) family and contains nearly 100 species, many of which are grown globally as vegetables like cabbage, broccoli, kale, and radish, as mustards, as oil crops (placing 3rd after palm and soy), and as fodder for animal feed (16). Brassicas are widely proficient at adapting to new habitats due to recent and recurrent polyploidy events, hybridization, and plastic genomes. These characteristics also make them great targets for genetic manipulation to further enhance resilience (17).

Here, we first perform a large-scale, genus-wide natural variation survey of diverse, wild outcrossing Brassicas in coastal Northeast Spain, eventually testing six candidate species for within-species adaptation to high salinity. From these, we identify and develop one particularly promising model of within-species variation in adaptation to extreme salinity and complex coastal stressors, B. fruticulosa. First described in 1792 by Cirillo (18), B. fruticulosa has not yet been recognized as harboring population-specific salinity adaptation. This has been a missed opportunity, as B. fruticulosa is closely related to Brassica rapa (19, 20) and shares many affinities with this global crop. We then assemble the B. fruticulosa genome using Oxford Nanopore long read sequencing polished with Illumina short reads, and sequence 90 individuals from 18 populations (nine coastal, nine inland) contrasting in salinity and soil parameters defined by ionome levels in leaves and soil in the root space of every individually sequenced wild plant. Using transcriptome data of leaves and roots, we reveal divergent adaptive strategies in response to high salinity in neighboring plant populations. We then perform common garden, physiological, and ion homeostasis experiments to detail these different strategies that evolved in closely neighboring adapted plant populations. Finally, we perform environmental association analysis (EAA) (with soil ionome as phenotype) and genome scans by ecotype to seek a genomic basis of divergent adaptative strategies to high salinity in neighboring B. fruticulosa populations. Taken together, these experiments reveal contrasting adaptive responses to extreme salinity, at the local scale, differing mechanistically at the scale of kilometers.

Fig 6.

Overview of the contrasting salinity tolerance strategies of the North and Central B. fruticulosa coastal metapopulations. Hypothetical model of genes, ion transport, and signaling pathways involved in salinity tolerance mechanisms. Gene symbols are shown in bold letters. Ion fluxes are indicated with black arrows. Gene activation/repression and molecule increase/decrease are indicated with red arrows. Star-framed symbols denote signaling pathways and hormone molecules are circled in green. “ST” = Salt tolerant.

Silvia Busoms, Ana C. da Silva, Glòria Escolà and Levi Yant.
Local cryptic diversity in salinity adaptation mechanisms in the wild outcrossing Brassica fruticulosa.
September 24, 2024. Proc Natl Acad Sci. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2407821121

Copyright: © 2024 The authors.
Published by National Academy of Science. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

This example is interesting in that it shows the process of allopatric speciation in progress even though the two populations are still regarded as the same species. It's not clear from this paper whether the two population can or do interbreed, but if they do, what would be the consequences for the hybrids? Depending on the mode of inheritance, the offspring's genes could express in three different ways:

1. Adapted like the northern population.
2. Adapted like the southern population.
3. Adapted like both populations.

In the case pf 1 and 2, 50% of the offspring would be maladapted for the local conditions and in the case of 3, it would be adapted for neither and could be non-viable. We can exclude any advantage from being adapted for both locations otherwise there would not be two different populations since they would both carry the same dual adaptation.

So, hybridization would be wasteful with reduced survival of the hybrids. This is environmental pressure to establish barriers to hybridization because plants that don't hybridize will tend to produce more successful offspring than those which do.

From an intelligent [sic] design perspective, this example of doing the same thing in two different ways makes no sense as the work of the same designer. However, given that there is no mechanism for isolated populations to share information and make informed decisions about the best way to adapt to local conditions, then ensure they evolved that way, this makes perfect sense from an evolutionary perspective.

Again, the detail behind a superficial appearance of designs reveals that there was no intelligence involved in the process; instead, the process was a mindless utilitarian process that produced two different solutions to the same problem.

Refuting Creationism - Evolutionary History of the Grape is Enough to Make Creationists Wine

Nekemias mucronata sp. nov. Complete leaflet
Scale bar: 1 cm.

Tosal, A. Vicente, A. & Denk, T. (2024)

Nekemias mucronata fossil lateral leaflets from the collection of the Natural Science Museum of Barcelona.

Reconstructing the evolutionary history of the grape family

For today's refutation of creationism, we have the history of the grape, stretching back to between 40 and 23 million years before creationists think Earth was created.

Like almost everything else about the history of life in Earth, the evolution of the modern grape took place in the 99.9975% of time that preceded 'Creation Week' when creationism's little god made a small, flat planet with a dome over it in the Middle East.

This history has now been reconstructed by a team of three palaeontologists led by Aixa Tosal, from the Faculty of Earth Sciences and the Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio) of the University of Barcelona, with Alba Vicente, also from the University of Barcelona, and Thomas Denk from the Swedish Museum of Natural History (Stockholm).

Refuting Creationism - How Daisies Speciated On Isolated Islands

Top: Pleurophyllum speciosum
Bottom: Pulicaria canariensis

Top: Bidens mooreensis
Bottom: Argyroxiphium sandwicense

Pleurophyllum speciosum - Campbell Island.

Credit Phil Garnock-Jones.

Isolated daisies have the greatest diversity | Naturalis

Creationists try to get round the absurdity of the Bible myth which has two (or seven) of every species being packed into a wooden boat small enough to survive turbulent seas for a year, by introducing a new element to the myth that their god forgot to include - that there were just two (or seven) of each 'kind' and all of them underwent a period of warp-speed evolution (that non-one seemed to have noted) with several new species popping into existence each generation to give the many millions of known terrestrial species we have today.

Understandably, creationists are reticent to put any numbers on their claim. They won't say how many different 'kinds' there were on the boat, how many new species arose at each generation and for how long this period of fantastical speciation lasted. Nor will they define 'kind' in any meaningful way that matches any recognisable taxon. I have even been told it can mean 'animal kind' and 'plant kind'. It seems to vary according to the needs of the argument.

And they won't say why some 'kinds' have just one or two species while others have hundreds, or in the case of the Asteraceae family of plants, some 34,000 distinct species, so some must have been speciating much faster then other while some hardly bothered if at all.

In the later case, we now have a substantial database compiled by a team at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Leiden, The Netherlands which catalogues all 34,000 different species with their geographical distribution, showing how they radiated and diversified into new species, colonising isolated islands and, like Darwin's finches, radiating into different species on each island in an archipelago.