Creationism in Crisis - How Rusty Patched Bumblebee Genes Show Evidence of Evolution Under Intense Selection Pressure

The rusty-patched bumblebee, Bombus affinis

Photo by Jay Watson

The rusty-patched bumblebee, once common in the United States, has declined from about 90% of its former range.

Photo by Jay Watson

Rusty-patched bumblebee’s struggle for survival found in its genes - Warner College of Natural Resources

Evolution, or more precisely change in allele frequency over time, inevitably records selection pressures on a species resulting in a genome which, when correctly read and compared to predecessors, should tell the story of changes in the species environment.

This principle is illustrated by the threatened species of bumblebee, the rusty patch bumblebee, Bombus affinis, which has recently declined by about 90% in the USA and is now considered an endangered species. If this rate of decline continues the species will probably be extinct within 20 years. This level of intense selection pressure has inevitably left its mark on the genome of the species.

On of the problems facing the species is the result of the way bees breed. The queen can normally produce two sorts of egg - a fertilised, diploid egg which will develop into a female and a haploid, unfertilised egg which will develop into a male or drone. The problem arises when there is a high level of inbreeding, due, for example, to a small population - which the bee is now facing. In that situation, the female can produce diploid males because both sets of chromosomes can be identical. Diploid males are normally sterile so reducing the breeding success of the local species.

Creationism in Crisis - How Batesian Mimicry In The Female Diadem Butterfly Evolved - Convergently

Female Diadem Butterfly, Hypolimnas misippus

Photograph: A Coetzer

The female Diadem (bottom left) mimics the African Queen (top left). The male Diadem (right) keeps a distinct pattern to attract mates

Scientists discover how Diadem butterfly mimics African Queen - News

This is the second in a sudden spate of research papers that casually and unintentionally refute creationism without even trying, simply by revealing the facts. It deals with the evolution of Batesian mimicry in a species of butterfly.

Scientists working at the universities of Exeter, Edinburgh and Cambridge, and Mpala Research Centre in Kenya have discovered the genetic basis for the clear example of Batesian mimicry to be found in the female of the pantropical species of butterfly, the Diadem butterfly, Hypolimnas misippus, which closely resembles the toxic African queen butterfly, Danaus chrysippus.

Batesian mimicry is the natural phenomenon where an otherwise harmless species evolves to resemble a harmful or distasteful species as a defence mechanism. The prerequisite for Batesian mimicry to evolve is that a prey species is predated upon by the predator of a harmful species which coexists in the same locality. The predator learns to avoid the dangerous or distasteful species so any other species that comes to resemble the harmful or distasteful species might be mistaken for it and avoided. The more closely it comes to resemble the avoided species, the more likely it is to survive and reproduce.

Creationism in Crisis - Damselflies Evolved Their Colours At Least 5 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

The common bluetail damselfly Ischnura elegans

Photo: Erik Svensson

Common bluetail damselflies, Ischnura elegans

Credit: Quartl, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Scientists have solved the damselfly colour mystery | Lund University

So much history, especially the evolutionary history of life on Earth, occurred before the mythical Creation Week, when creationists believe a magic man who existed when nothing existed made the universe out of that nothing, that it’s difficult to keep up with it all.

Here, for example, is a scientific account of how damselflies evolved their colours at least 5 million years before Creation Week, by an evolutionary process guaranteed to have creationists going into abject denialism and lying to one another about it in their echo chambers, if not throwing a tantrum, stamping their feet and shouting abuse at the facts to make them go away, or at the scientists who discovered the facts.

The bluetail damselfly, like many other damsel flies is sexually dimorphic with males being brightly coloured and the females more drab, usually brown. Females of the common bluetail occur in three color forms, one of which mimics the male, and the mystery was how, why and when did this evolve? Note here how a creationist would simply declare they were designed that way by a god whose purpose in doing so is unknowable, whilst science looks for the how and why, and so discovers a much more satisfying answer than the creationist one which makes them satisfied with not knowing.

By comparing the genome of the common bluetail, Ischnura elegans with that of a close tropical relative, Ischnura senegalensis, the scientists were able to show that the colour differences are due to mutations in a specific genetic region on chromosome 13 that arose at least 5 million years ago, so the question resolves down to why was it retained? In other words, what were the environmental selectors that spread the mutations in the population then conserved them for 5 million years?

The research was conducted by scientists at Lund University, Sweden, under biologist Professor Erik Svensson with colleagues at Stockholm University, Sweden, Institut Pasteur, Université Paris Cité, Paris, France, the University of Rennes, France and Tohoku and Chiba Universities, Japan. Their findings are published, open access, in Nature Ecology & Evolution and its significance is explained in a Lund University press release:

Malevolent Designer News - 16 More Nasties For Devotees of the Divine Sadist To Enjoy

Figure 1.16 new species of endoparasitic wasps have been added to the group, Loboscelidia, based on their unique physical characteristics. Scale bar = 0.5 mmc

Credit: Yu Hisasue et al. (2023)
European Journal of Taxonomy

Male wasp of the Loboscelidia genus, a relative of the 16 newly-described Vietnamese species or endoparasitic wasps.

16 strange new parasitoid wasp species discovered in Vietnam | Research Results | KYUSHU UNIVERSITY

Creationist devotees of the divine sadist whom they believe creates all the parasites that increase the suffering in the world, will be thrilled to learn that 16 more endoparasitic wasps have been discovered.

These are all endoparasitic on other insects and lay their eggs inside their victims' eggs where their grubs can then consume the growing embryo. Their strange appearance is thought to be because they have evolved from a myrmecophilous species that mimicked the appearance or ants.

All these were discovered in Vietnam by entomologists from Kyushu University, Japan, and Vietnam’s National Museum of Nature. Their discovery is described in a Kyushu University news release:

Malevolent Design - Another Dangerous Tick That Can Kill Cattle Is Spreading Fast

Nymph

Adult

Asian longhorned tick, Haemaphysalis longicornis

Asian longhorned tick, Haemaphysalis longicornis, (ventral view)

Photo: Risa Pesapane

An exotic tick that can kill cattle is spreading across Ohio

In what creationists should see as a triumph for their favourite sadist if they were true to their professed belief and weren't selective in its application, the Asian longhorned tick, Haemaphysalis longicornis which they believe it designed, which feeds by sucking the blood of its victims and which was first detected in the USA in 2017 and in Ohio in 2021, is now present in such vast numbers that it is believed to have killed three cattle in southeastern Ohio, simply through blood loss.

One of the cattle was a healthy, 5-year-old bull. It would have taken about 10,000 ticks to kill it by exsanguination. that number of ticks were recovered in 90 minutes on one Ohio farm alone.

Ticks, like other parasites, if we accept the intelligent [sic] design argument for a moment, can only be ascribed to the work of a pestilential malevolence because creationists also insist that the putative designer is omnipotent and omniscience, therefore it knows exactly what its designs will do, and designs them to do exactly that.

And ticks appear to be designed to do only two things:

1. Produce more ticks.
2. Act as vectors for disease-causing organisms, in this case Anaplasma phagocytophilium and Theileria orientalis.

And, in a brilliant piece of malevolence, what gives these nasties their great power to spread and colonise new territories in vast numbers, all the adults are females that breed parthenogenically. In favourable conditions a newly-hatched tick can reach sexual maturity in a few weeks to a few months. Each female can lay up to 2,000 eggs which, if they all hatch and breed, will produce 4 million breeding ticks in two generations and 8 billion ticks in three, in favourable conditions.

As an introduced species in the USA, the Asian longhorned tick has few natural predators that can keep their numbers in check. In parts of their native range in Asia, guinea fowl are used to keep them in check, but the breeding rate of the tick is so high that natural predation has negligible impact on their numbers. This fantastic rate of reproduction means that a single female colonising a fresh territory can, if the conditions are right, produce tens of trillions of offspring within a year or two.

Creationism in Crisis - How Mutations, not Magic, Have Helped Killer Hornets Spread

Creationism in Crisis

How Mutations, not Magic, Have Helped Killer Hornets Spread

Asian Yellow-legged hornet, Vespa velutina

Newly sequenced hornet genomes could help explain invasion success | UCL News - UCL – University College London

Today's bad news for Creationists is that scientists have analysed the genomes of both the European common hornet and the Asian yellow-legged hornet and found a number of genetic mutations that contribute to the ability of the latter to quickly adapt to new locations, and so become an invasive species in several parts of the world.

The study was led by Dr. Emeline Favreau and Professor Seirian Sumner of the Centre for Biodiversity and Environmental Research, Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment, University College London (UCL), London, UK and included scientists from UCL, Spain, Italy, Austria, and New Zealand. Their findings are published, open access, in the journal Scientific Reports. The scientists did not report finding a magical reason for their success or need one to explain how the new genetic information entered the genome; it was those things creationists dread - gene duplication and mutation. Creationist dogma states that no new information can arise without magic and all mutations are deleterious and so can't convey an advantage. Those idiotic and demonstrably false dogmas are both comprehensively refuted by the study, so will almost certainly be ignored, dismissed or misrepresented by creationists.

First a little about the European common hornet, Vespa crabro and the Asian yellow-legged hornet, Vespa velutina:

Creationism in Crisis - Jewel Beetles Evolved by Gene Duplication

Creationism in Crisis

Jewel Beetles Evolved by Gene Duplication

Jewel Beetle, Chrysochroa raja

Source: Mounted specimens at Prague Museum. Wikipedia

Jewel beetles evolve to see new colors by duplicating their genes | University of Minnesota

Jewel Beetle, Chrysochroa rajah.

Credit: Nathan Lord, Louisiana State University

The beautiful Jewel beetle is about as devastating to Creationism as it would be if Michael J Behe announced that he was a secret evolutionary biologist all along, taking part in an elaborate experiment to test how gullible the average American fundamentalist is.

Recent research has shown that these beetles get their color from gene duplication. This is the process where a mistake in the duplication of DNA leads to genes being duplicated, creating a second, spare, copy. This copy is then free to mutate without any loss of function because the original is still functioning, creating new genetic information by mutation.

This is a problem for Creationists for two reasons:

The Humble Earwig - Not a Pest But a Kind And Caring Insect

The Humble Earwig

Not a Pest But A Kind and Caring Insect

Forficula auricularia

Credit: Pudding4brains/Wikipedia

Earwigs are the hero single mothers of the insect world – and good for your garden too

Of the more than 1000 species worldwide, only four are native to the UK, with a further three introduced species.

Earwigs are often regarded as garden pests because they can and sometimes do, damage growing plants and soft fruits such as strawberries, but what is not generally recognised is that they are predators on much more destructive pests such as aphids.

But there are a few things about these fascinating insects that mean they should command our respect and protection by leaving them undisturbed.