Creationist Failure News - How White Clover is Unlucky for Creationists

White Clover, Trifolium repens

White clover’s toxic tricks traced to its hybridization | The Source | Washington University in St. Louis

If there is one thing that Creationists are good at, it is ignoring the facts that show their dogma to be wrong, so here is yet another research finding for them to ignore.

This time, the research concerns the ubiquitous white clover, Trifolium repens, which is abundant throughout temperate zones of the world to the extent that there can scarcely be a patch of grass anywhere that doesn't have its population of white clover, unless specifically treated with a herbicide.

Refuting Creationism - New Genetic Information by Gene Duplication

Cycads, such as this sago palm, have bulbous, egglike roots that harbor nitrogen-fixing bacteria. Since nitrogen can be a limited nutrient in many terrestrial ecosystems, this gives cycads a competitive advantage over the plants that grow around them.

Photo: Forest and Kim Starr, CC BY 2.0

DNA duplication linked to the origin and evolution of pine trees and their relatives – Florida Museum Science

Somehow, creationist frauds have managed to convince their dupes that new genetic information can only arise if created by a magic man in the sky who can suspend the laws of physics and make the impossible happen, because it is impossible for new information to arise. This is supposedly due to some law of physics which is always poorly defined, but somehow has something to do with thermodynamics and a thing called 'information theory'. 'Thermodynamics' and 'Information theory' are nice, sciencey-sounding words that give Creationist dupes a cosy warm feeling when they use them, because they imagine it makes them sound as though they understand science, just like real scientists.

And there are few things a science-denying Creationist likes more than thinking his/her superstitions have a sound scientific basis.

The facts however, refute this notion, as can be seen with this new study, which shows how new genetic information can arise perfectly naturally, without magic. So using 'thermodynamics' and 'information theory' to argue that science can't explain how new genetic information arises, makes Creationist dupes sound exactly like scientifically illiterate, science-denying idiots and the willing dupes of frauds.

This new study shows how frequent gene duplication and the subsequent evolution of these 'spare' genes was responsible for the evolution of the large and diverse group of plants known as gymnosperms that includes pines, cypresses, sequoias, ginkgos and cycads.

As the Florida Museum news release explains:

Evolution News - Refuting More Creationist Dogmas With Real-World Evidence

Illustration of a tree representing the legume family tree with branches representing the six subfamilies. On each branch are flowers or pods of species belonging to the subfamilies.The lines extending from the nutrient bag on the upper left corner indicate the positions of some of the proposed whole-genome duplications.

Credit: Yiyong Zhao, Chien-Hsun Huang, and Hong Ma

Massive molecular study uncovers clues to the evolution and diversification of essential plant family | Eberly College of Science

Every so often a piece of research is published that so devastates yet another Creationist dogma that it's difficult to think it wasn't through a deliberate attempt to refute Creationism.

Yet here we have another one which does that comprehensively without the least effort or intention on the part of the research team. It does it of course by revealing real-world evidence that could not exist if Creationist dogmas were based on real-world evidence.

This time it was a group of researchers from Penn State University Eberly College of science, and the Department of Biology, The Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, PA, USA, the Center of Evolutionary Biology, School of Life Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai, China, and the Germplasm Bank of Wild Species, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, China, who did the work. Their findings were published last February in Molecular Plant sadly behind a paywall. However the article by Sam Sholtis in Penn State Eberly College of Science News has the details:

Evolution News - Rapid Evolution in Foxgloves

Common foxglove, Digitalis purpurea, pollinated by bumblebees

Study finds rapid evolution in foxgloves pollinated by hummingbirds - British Ecological Society

Researchers from the University of Sussex, Universidad de Los Andes (Colombia) and Universidad de Costa Rica have shown how a change of environment and the presence of new pollinator species can induce rapid evolutionary change in flowers.

The common foxglove, Digitalis purpurea, is a native plant of Europe where it is normally pollinated by bumblebees. The markings on the inside of the corolla tube and the length of the tube are adaptations to facilitate these pollinators. However, in Costa Rica and Columbia, there were two independent introduction events about 200 years ago. These populations are pollinated by different bumblebee species and also hummingbirds, which are absent from Europe.

The researchers have shown that in these introduced populations, the corolla tube is significantly longer; a clear adaptation to new pollinator species. The British Ecological Society News release, explains:

Evolution News - And Today's 'Non-Existent' Missing Link Is...

A computer model of the novel protein structure in the cryptophyte's antenna that traps sunlight energy.

Picture: UNSW

Mystery of photosynthetic algae evolution finally solved | UNSW Newsroom

A 'missing link' protein that shows the transition between two ancient species of algae, red algae and cryptophytes.

This was a mystery that had been eluding molecular biologists for decades and it was only found because of the stay-at-home regulations to mitigate the Covid-19 pandemic and because of international cooperation. The discovery was made by biologists based at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD, Australia and the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada. There findings were published a few days ago, open access in Nature Communications.

The University of New South Wales news release by Lachlan Gilbert tells the story:

Evolution News - Solving Darwin's "Abominable Mystery"

Research into the flower preferences of pollinating moths may have delivered a vital clue to the simple factors needed for the emergence of new species.

Pioneering pollinator study offers clues to Darwin’s “abominable mystery”

With characteristic intellectual honesty, Charles Darwin was always quick to acknowledge difficulties for his theory of evolution by natural selection, one of which he called an 'abominable mystery' in a letter to his close friend, botanist and explorer Dr Joseph Hooker in 1879. He wrote:

The rapid development as far as we can judge of all the higher plants within recent geological times is an abominable mystery... Nothing is more extraordinary in the history of the Vegetable Kingdom, as it seems to me, than the apparently very sudden or abrupt development of the higher plants. I have sometimes speculated whether there did not exist somewhere during long ages an extremely isolated continent perhaps near the South Pole.

This 'mystery' had been used by Scottish botanist William Carruthers, keeper of botany at the British Museum, to argue for divine intervention in a 1876 lecture to the Geologists Association.

Now researchers Kelsey J. R. P. Byers and H. D. Bradshaw Jr., working at the Department of Biology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA think they have gone some way to solving this mystery. The press release by the John Innes Centre explains:

Evolution News - Another 'Non-Existent' Transitional Form

Reconstruction of the crown of Paratingia wuhaia sp. nov

'Pompeii of prehistoric plants' unlocks evolutionary secret - study

The debunking of Creationist dogma, by scientists who merely need to uncover the evidence to do so, continues unabated.

Today we have news of a spectacular collection of primitive plants discovered preserved beneath layers of volcanic ash, like the remains at Pompeii. These were discovered in China at Wuda, Inner Mongolia. The ash forms a layer 66cm thick and covered plants growing in a bog, preserving them in microscopic detail. Among those preserved as a species of tree fern bearing primitive, cone-like flowers, the beginnings of the flowering plants that dominate today.

The research team was led by Professor Jun Wang, Professor of Palaeobotany at Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology and included scientists from the University of Birmingham, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang Normal University, the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Prague, the Centre of Palaeobiodiversity, Plzeň, Czech Republic, the University of Vienna, Indiana Geological and Water Survey, USA and Indiana University, USA.

From the Birmingham University Press release:

Spectacular fossil plants preserved within a volcanic ash fall in China have shed light on an evolutionary race 300 million years ago, which was eventually won by the seed-bearing plants that dominate so much of the Earth today.

New research into fossils found at the ‘Pompeii of prehistoric plants’, in Wuda, Inner Mongolia, reveals that the plants, called Noeggerathiales, were highly-evolved members of the lineage from which came seed plants.

Noeggerathiales were important peat-forming plants that lived around 325 to 251 million years ago. Understanding their relationships to other plant groups has been limited by poorly preserved examples until now.

The fossils found in China have allowed experts to work out that Noeggerathiales are more closely related to seed plants than to other fern groups.

Noeggerathiales were recognized as early as the 1930s, but scientists have treated them as a ‘taxonomic football’, endlessly kicked around without anyone identifying their place in the Story of Life.

The spectacular fossil plants found in China are becoming renowned as the plant equivalent of Pompeii. Thanks to this slice of life preserved in volcanic ash, we were able to reconstruct a new species of Noeggerathiales that finally settles the group’s affinity and evolutionary importance.

The fate of the Noeggerathiales is a stark reminder of what can happen when even very advanced life forms are faced with rapid environmental change.

Dr. Jason Hilton, Co-author
Reader in Palaeobiology
Insitute of Forest Research
University of Birmingham

No longer considered an evolutionary dead-end, they are now recognized as advanced tree-ferns that evolved complex cone-like structures from modified leaves. Despite their sophistication, Noeggerathiales fell victim to the profound environmental and climate changes of 251 million years ago that destroyed swamp ecosystems globally.

Co-author Dr. Jason Hilton, Reader in Palaeobiology at the University of Birmingham’s Institute of Forest Research, commented: “Noeggerathiales were recognized as early as the 1930s, but scientists have treated them as a ‘taxonomic football’, endlessly kicked around without anyone identifying their place in the Story of Life. “The spectacular fossil plants found in China are becoming renowned as the plant equivalent of Pompeii. Thanks to this slice of life preserved in volcanic ash, we were able to reconstruct a new species of Noeggerathiales that finally settles the group’s affinity and evolutionary importance.

[...]

“The fate of the Noeggerathiales is a stark reminder of what can happen when even very advanced life forms are faced with rapid environmental change.”

Many specimens were identified in excavations in 2006-2007 when a few leaves were visible on the surface of the ash. It looked they might be connected to each other and a stem below - we revealed the crown on site, but then extracted the specimens complete to take them back to the lab.

It has taken many years to study these fully and the additional specimens we have found more recently. The complete trees are the most impressive fossil plants I have seen and because of our careful work they are also some of the most important to science.

Professor Jun Wang, Lead author
Professor of Palaeobotany
Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology

The researchers studied complete Noeggerathiales preserved in a bed of volcanic ash 66 cm thick formed 298 million years ago, smothering all the plants growing in a nearby swamp.

The ash stopped the fossils from rotting or being consumed, and preserved many complete individuals in microscopic detail.

Lead-Author Jun Wang, Professor of Palaeobotany at Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, commented: “Many specimens were identified in excavations in 2006-2007 when a few leaves were visible on the surface of the ash. It looked they might be connected to each other and a stem below - we revealed the crown on site, but then extracted the specimens complete to take them back to the lab.

“It has taken many years to study these fully and the additional specimens we have found more recently. The complete trees are the most impressive fossil plants I have seen and because of our careful work they are also some of the most important to science.”

The researchers also deduced that that the ancestral lineage from which seed plants evolved diversified alongside the earliest seed plant radiation during the Devonian, Carboniferous and Permian periods, and did not rapidly die out as previously thought.

The research findings are published open access today in PNAS:

Significance

There were two heterosporous lignophyte lineages of which only one, the seed plants, survived the Permian–Triassic mass extinction. Based on exceptionally complete fossil trees from a 300-My-old volcanic ash, the enigmatic Noeggerathiales are now recognized as belonging to the other lineage. They diversified alongside the primary seed plant radiation and constitute seed plants’ closest relatives. Noeggerathiales are reconstructed as members of a plexus of free-sporing woody plants called progymnosperms, extending their age range by 60 My. Following the origin of seed plants, progymnosperms were previously thought to have become gradually less abundant before dying out in Carboniferous. We show they diversified and evolved complex morphologies including cone-like structures from modified leaves before going extinct at the Permian–Triassic extinction.

Abstract

Noeggerathiales are enigmatic plants that existed during Carboniferous and Permian times, ∼323 to 252 Mya. Although their morphology, diversity, and distribution are well known, their systematic affinity remained enigmatic because their anatomy was unknown. Here, we report from a 298-My-old volcanic ash deposit, an in situ, complete, anatomically preserved noeggerathialean. The plant resolves the group’s affinity and places it in a key evolutionary position within the seed plant sister group. Paratingia wuhaia sp. nov. is a small tree producing gymnospermous wood with a crown of pinnate, compound megaphyllous leaves and fertile shoots each with Ω-shaped vascular bundles. The heterosporous (containing both microspores and megaspores), bisporangiate fertile shoots appear cylindrical and cone-like, but their bilateral vasculature demonstrates that they are complex, three-dimensional sporophylls, representing leaf homologs that are unique to Noeggerathiales. The combination of heterospory and gymnospermous wood confirms that Paratingia, and thus the Noeggerathiales, are progymnosperms. Progymnosperms constitute the seed plant stem group, and Paratingia extends their range 60 My, to the end of the Permian. Cladistic analysis resolves the position of the Noeggerathiales as the most derived members of a heterosporous progymnosperm clade that are the seed plant sister group, altering our understanding of the relationships within the seed plant stem lineage and the transition from pteridophytic spore-based reproduction to the seed. Permian Noeggerathiales show that the heterosporous progymnosperm sister group to seed plants diversified alongside the primary radiation of seed plants for ∼110 My, independently evolving sophisticated cone-like fertile organs from modified leaves.

Wang, Jun; Hilton, Jason; Pfefferkorn, Hermann W.; Wang, Shijun; Zhang, Yi; Bek, Jiri; Pšenička, Josef; Seyfullah, Leyla J.; Dilcher, David
Ancient noeggerathialean reveals the seed plant sister group diversified alongside the primary seed plant radiation
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)>; March 16, 2021 118 (11) e2013442118; doi: 10.1073/pnas.2013442118

Copyright: © 2021 The authors. Published by The National Academy of Sciences
Open access Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND).

And... once again we have one of those transitional species that creationist frauds tell their scientifically illiterate dupes don't exist and that their absence from the fossil record proves Darwin was wrong and predicted the downfall of his own theory by implying that it depended on the discovery of transitional forms for it's validity.

And these discoveries are made with such regularity that they could be the basis of an entire book. The only problem with that is that, as every evolutionary biologist understands, every fossil is transitional between the previous generation and the next because evolution is a process, not an event.

Where does one colour end and the next start?

As species evolve over time, there is no one time or place where one species turns into another and never a point where it is not the same species as its parents.

Evolution is a PROCESS not an event!

All fossils are transitional!

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Evolution News - How a Medicinal Plant Evolved to Hide from Humans

Fritillaria delavayi in populations with high harvest pressure.

Photo credit: Yang Niu

Research news - Plant evolves to become less visible to humans - University of Exeter

Researchers from Exeter University and the Chinese Academy of Science Kunming Institute of Botany, have discovered that a plant, Fritillaria delavayi, used in Chinese medicine, has evolved to become harder to find and harvest.

They have shown how this example of cryptic camouflage is more prevalent in areas more heavily harvested than in areas where it is less likely to be picked.

The plant has leaves that naturally vary from grey through brown to green and only flowers when at least five years old, after which it produces a single flower each year. The bulbs are used in Chinese medicine and are harvested in the wild. Their price has escalated in recent years, increasing the selection pressure on them from human collectors.

Malevolent Designer News - How Parasitic Plants Got Better At Parasitism

Common Broomrape, Orobanche minor

Illustration: Catherine Hounslow-Webber
From The Malevolent Designer: Why Nature's God is not Good
© Catherine Hounslow-Webber.

Planting Parasites: Unveiling Common Molecular Mechanisms of Parasitism and Grafting | Nagoya University Research Achievements

Good news for intelligent [sic] design advocates!

Researchers at Nagoya University, Japan, have worked out how parasitic plants have been modified to make it easier for them to parasitise other plants. They secrete an enzyme known as β-1,4-glucanase (GH9B3). They showed that the process of attaching the haustorium (the organ through which a parasitic plant extracts water and nutrients from its victim is very similar to the way a graft unites the tissues of the scion and the stock. The press release from Nagoya University explains:

Plant parasitism is a phenomenon by which the parasite plant latches onto and absorbs water and nutrients from a second host plant, with the help of a specialized organ called the "haustorium." Once the haustorium forms, specific enzymes then help in forming a connection between the tissues of the parasite and host plants, known as a "xylem bridge," which facilitates the transport of water and nutrients from the host to the parasite.

Malevolent Designer News - How Dodder Eavesdrops on its Host

Dodder, Cuscuta australis, on a soybean host plant: The parasite is flowering and has already produced seed capsules. It uses its host’s flowering signal for flower formation.

Photo credit: Jingxiong Zhang,
Kunming Institute of Botany,
Chinese Academy of Sciences

Dodder uses the flowering signal of its host plant to flower | Max Planck Institute
for Chemical Ecology.

Not content with designing a parasitic plant that steals nutrients and water from its host, Creationism's putative intelligent [sic] designer has designed dodder to steal their hormones too!

To the embarrassment of creationists this redesign appears to have involved a loss of genetic information too - something they say can't result in an increase in information or be beneficial to the organism. The latest dictat from the Discovery Institute, following the abysmal failure of the Intelligent Design hoax, is that all genetic change must be presented as 'genetic entropy' and 'devolution' from an initial perfect creation, so it can be presented as consistent with the Bible and Michael J. Behe's latest book.

Evolution News - Yet Another Transitional Species

In this image of one of the new ancient species’ reproductive structures, elliptical impressions of sporangia can be seen in one row, while on the right, another row displays preserved carbonized spore masses.

Image credit: Andrew Leslie

New ancient plant captures snapshot of evolution | Stanford University.

What with their problem explaining why evolution is the only explanation for Covid-19 that doesn't leave their putative designer god looking like a malevolent, genocidal psychopath, the last thing creationists needed was another one of those annoying transitional species that so bedevil their precious dogma.

But here we are, with another one, announced just yesterday. This time an extinct plant showing evidence of transition from spores to seeds - an essential step in the evolution of the flowering plants, or angiosperms.

And once again without any effort or intent, science has again refuted creationism with evidence.

One of the major advances in plant evolution was when the gymnosperms (cone-bearing) and angiosperms (flowering) plants broke free from the constraints of the reproductive methods used by the ferns and club mosses, which required moist conditions to allow their motile male gametes to reach the sedentary female gametes.

Evolution in Just Six Generations

Rape, Brassica rapa, pollinated by bumblebees has more attractive flowers.

Image: Florian Schiestl, UZH

Interplay of pollinators and pests influences plant evolution

Evolution is a dynamic process in which a species responds to competing selection pressures in its environment. Some of these might push the species in one direction and others in the opposite direction. Changing environmental factors effectively redefine the term 'fitness' as it applies to relevant characteristics.

Brassica plants, for example, have large attractive flowers which attract insect pollinators. They are also monoecious or hermaphrodite and, like many plants, have both male and female parts in the same flower, so are capable of 'selfing' or self-pollination.

Pollination by pollen from other flowers, carried by pollinating insects, increases genetic mixing, so reducing the change of deleterious mutations occurring in the same individual. This pressure pushes the species towards the evolution of larger, more attractive flowers.

However, there is a price to pay in that large attractive flowers also attract herbivores that eat brassica leaves, so wasting the plant's resources and reducing their vigor. This pressure pushes the species towards less attractive flowers. This in turn reduces the likelihood of cross pollination, which pushes the species toward selfing and characteristic that make that more, not less likely.

Sticking It To Creationists With An Early Tree

World's oldest and most complex trees - News - Cardiff University

Another scientific paper which quite incidentally and without effort or intent, refutes a key creationist claim, was published yesterday.

It was nothing more sensational from a biology perspective than the discovery that the earliest trees were much more complex in the structure of their trunks and in their growth patterns than modern trees.

100 Million Year-Old Flower

[left caption]

[Right caption/credit]

The ancestral flower was bisexual with multiple whorls (concentric cycles) of petal-like organs, in sets of threes.

Copyright: Hervé Sauquet/Jürg Schönenberger.

What flowers looked like 100 million years ago.

Flowering plants are by far the most diverse group of plants comprising some 300,000 different species. They were, however, late on the scene in evolutionary terms, only evolving some 140 million years ago.

This puts their evolution towards the end of the age of dinosaurs in the Cretaceous when the ancestors of mammals were still mammaliaform synapsids. The evolution of the first flowering plants is one of those enduring mysteries for evolution to explains, Darwin himself referring to it as "an abominable mystery".

Now a new study coordinated by Juerg Schoenenberger from the University of Vienna and Hervé Sauquet of the Université Paris-Sud has shed more than a little light on what the first flowers looked like. The same study has also reconstructed what flowers at the key divergence point looked like.