Monday, December 4, 2006 | Science : Evolution and Biology | print version

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Intelligent Design: The Clincher. A butterfly explodes the theory

by Jack Woodall

Reposted from: The Scientist
http://www.the-scientist.com/2006/12/1/53/1/

At first sight, nothing could seem less intelligent than the design of a flying insect. From an egg laid in or on a food supply, it hatches into a slow-moving eating machine that keeps outgrowing its skin, so that it has to molt every few days. At the moment of molting, it is extremely vulnerable to predators and parasites. Then, inexplicably, it stops moving and grows a hard shell, inside which it completely redesigns its body from square one, to emerge into a thing with wings that launches itself into hundreds of cubic miles of atmosphere in search of a mate, and a food plant, with nothing to guide it but a few stray molecules - pheromones and plant odors - blowing in the wind.

The fact is, however, that this is a very efficient system for spreading the genes of that species around the landscape, and for locating food plants that would take an Earth-bound caterpillar days to find by dint of much hard crawling. The proof is that there are more species of insect than any other class of animal, and their biomass outweighs the mammals, even though the latter include all the elephants on earth and close to a billion overweight humans as well.

OK, that complicated life cycle seems an intelligent creation in the end. But what can we make of the further complications that led the Large Blue butterfly (Maculinea arion) to extinction in Britain? It entrusts a critical stage in its life cycle to the tender care of a single species of red ant that is particularly finicky about where it nests.

The story goes like this: The Large Blue lays its eggs in the buds of thyme - the culinary herb that grows wild in Europe - in the tight-bud stage. If the butterfly is ready to lay its eggs before the buds appear, or not until after they have started to open, the brood is lost. The eggs hatch after one or two weeks, depending on the weather; warm weather speeds hatching. The young caterpillars feed on thyme flowers for about two weeks during late July and early August, then fall to the ground where they are "adopted" by red ants (Myrmica sabuleti) attracted by a sugary substance secreted from a dorsal gland. The ants carry the caterpillar back to their nest, where it then gorges on ant larvae. While hidden from its own predators, the caterpillar spends 10 months as a predator in the ant nest, and then pupates there. After three weeks pupation the butterfly emerges during the four weeks mid-June to mid-July.

M. sabuleti is a warmth-loving ant that thrives only in short, dry grassland on hot south-facing slopes that are heavily grazed. If the grass grows higher than 3-4 cm and shades the ground, cooling it, this ant dies out and other species of ant take over - ants that are not interested in providing free food and lodging for Large Blue caterpillars. Taller grass also crowds out thyme.

What happened in Britain was a constellation of events that conspired to spell disaster for the Large Blue. One was the increased use of chemical fertilizers that promote vigorous grass growth, which kills off small wild flowers such as thyme. Then, sheep were pulled off the land by a change in livestock farming. For a few years, rabbits spread and kept the grass short in habitats favored by the butterfly, but in the 1950s myxomatosis (a viral disease of rabbits) was introduced and eliminated them. Pastures also were previously burned over, which kept the grass short, but this is no longer done.

So here you have an insect that depends for its very existence on a fragile chain of circumstances that is easily broken by bad weather, changes in exposure to grazing due to human intervention and disease, loss of its unique food plant, and loss of its protector ant species. If I were to design such a silly system I'd at least choose the most abundant, hardy species of ant to host my caterpillars, and ensure that they could feed on other plants beside thyme, and at other stages than the bud. To me, the case of the Large Blue is conclusive disproof of the theory of intelligent design.

Jack Woodall is director of the Nucleus for the Investigation of Emerging Infectious Diseases in the Institute of Medical Biochemistry at Brazil's Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

Source: TheScientist
http://www.the-scientist.com/2006/12/1/53/1/

Posted: Monday, December 4, 2006 | Permalink

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1. Comment #11457 by Yorker on December 4, 2006 at 7:50 pm

A good article and very interesting even for a non-biologist like myself.

Another nail in the ID coffin, but I fear a few more will be needed before burial or cremation can commence.

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2. Comment #11460 by Yorker on December 4, 2006 at 7:53 pm

I'm Scottish, but England's collapse in the second test is keeping me awake. Completely off-topic I know, but I just want to offer my sympathy to English cricket supporters here.

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3. Comment #11465 by derwent on December 4, 2006 at 8:57 pm

Playing Devil's Advocate:

1) In the case of this particular butterfly, how is evolution any more believable than creation? How could such a delicate and fraglie system of interdependencehave come about without some sort of intervention? If evolution favours organisms / genes that are better suited to survival, why would a relationship like this have evolved at all?

2) Quote: "If I were to design such a silly system I'd at least choose the most abundant, hardy species of ant to host my caterpillars, and ensure that they could feed on other plants beside thyme, and at other stages than the bud."

The case could be put that this system worked quite well until humans interfered. It didn't matter that it was so fragile, until humans started messing around with the butterfly's environment.

I really don't feel that this article puts a "nail in the ID coffin" at all. I'm sure it had potential, but it failed in the execution, at least for me. Perhaps a word limit prevented the author from making a more thorough - and convincing - argument? I don't know... it just doesn't do it for me. I see too many holes for a creationist to drive their "this-doesn't-PROVE-anything" truck through.

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4. Comment #11467 by rossi on December 4, 2006 at 9:18 pm

I agree with you derwent.

I just don't see 'the clincher' here.

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5. Comment #11470 by Sri on December 4, 2006 at 10:45 pm

@ Yorker: LOL....no poms here i think. They shouldn't have declared that early.

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6. Comment #11471 by Roy on December 4, 2006 at 10:49 pm

A Classic example of creatures that do not appear to be intelligently designed are the so called flatfishes, as was indeed pointed out by Richard in both his books and The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures he gave one year. I refer to creatures such as the Plaice, Turbot and Halibut, where the fish starts its life "normally" as it were, looking just like say a minnow or herring, then as it matures, something odd seems to happen. One eye migrates to one side of its head, the mouth becomes almost hideously distorted,ending up opening sideways, as opposed to up and down, the body becomes flattened.The animal then spends the rest of its life on it's side. (These adaptations are for living at the bottom of the sea). The quirky awkward "Run over by a steam roller" look certainly does not look like the work of an Intelligent Designer. More information may be found in the following website http://www.answers.com/topic/pleuronectiformes-flatfishes-biological-family By the way, the new look forum looks intelligently designed. The password log-in system should help to keep out those that have not quite "finished evolving"

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7. Comment #11477 by myxoma on December 5, 2006 at 12:29 am

I have only one question here:

What the hell did the ant get out of that arrangement?

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8. Comment #11479 by derwent on December 5, 2006 at 12:54 am

> "...where they are "adopted" by red ants (Myrmica sabuleti) attracted by a sugary substance secreted from a dorsal gland."

Looks like a symbiotic relationship, though it appears somewhat skewed in favour of the butterfly. "Here's some sugar, now I'm going to eat your children. Bwahahahahah!"

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9. Comment #11481 by myxoma on December 5, 2006 at 12:59 am

>Looks like a symbiotic relationship, though it appears somewhat skewed in favour of the butterfly. "Here's some sugar, now I'm going to eat your children. Bwahahahahah!"

Exactly! I can't see how the ants GET anything out of having their offspring eaten and converted into sugar.

Certainly the process by which the larvae are converted into sugar expends energy and therefore the ants are getting negative profits from this.

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10. Comment #11483 by Skeptic Jim on December 5, 2006 at 1:06 am

I agree with others in that this isn't a solid refutation. It annoys me more than a bit to see it presented as one because it offers credibility to the Intelligent Designists argument that there's a global conspiracy against ID preventing them from being published. This is counter-productive to say the least.

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11. Comment #11516 by Jack Rawlinson on December 5, 2006 at 7:37 am

I'd be interested to read Richard's take on this.

I suspect that the sort of symbiotic relationship described here is actually not all that surprising from an evolutionary standpoint. I think there are lots of similar cases where a particular set of environmental conjunctions survive long enough for this sort of relationship to evolve. The fact that such conjunctions may consist of several crucial individual elements doesn't mean that they won't coexist for a long time.

Perhaps many such relationships were able to develop before man's recent, huge technological advances and hyperbolic population explosion caused such environmental upheavals. The side effects of this have caused all sorts of fragile interdependencies to be broken and many extinctions have resulted.

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12. Comment #11525 by FitzRoy on December 5, 2006 at 9:36 am

I wish to register a complaint.

> > > We're closin' for lunch.

Never mind that, my lad. I wish to complain about this butterfly what I purchased not half an hour ago from this very boutique.

> > > Oh yes, the, uh, the Large Blue . . . What's, uh . . . What's wrong with it?

I'll tell you what's wrong with it, my lad. 'E's dead, that's what's wrong with it!

> > > No, no, 'e's uh, . . . he's resting..

Look, matey, I know a dead Lepidopteran when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.

> > > No no he's not dead, he's, he's restin'! Remarkable insect, the Large Blue, idn'it, ay?
> > > Beautiful plumage!

The plumage don't enter into it. It's stone dead!

> > > No no no no, no, no! 'E's resting!

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13. Comment #11526 by Riley on December 5, 2006 at 9:40 am

It may not be a clear refutation of Inteligent Design, this observation does at least say something about the nature of that designer.

--Riley

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14. Comment #11550 by Martha on December 5, 2006 at 1:27 pm

The following is a "history" collected by teachers throughout the United States, from eighth grade through college level. Read carefully, and you will learn a lot of incorrect information.

The inhabitants of ancient Egypt were called mummies. They lived in the Sarah Dessert and traveled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere, so areas of the dessert are cultivated by irritation. The Egyptians built the Pyramids in the shape of a huge triangular cube. The Pyramids are a range of mountains between France and Spain.

The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible, Guinesses, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. On of their children, Cain, once asked, "Am I my brother's son?" God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on Mount Montezuma. Jacob, son of Isaac, stole his brother's birth mark. Jacob was a patriarch who brought up his twelve sons to be patriarchs, but they did not take it. One of Jacob's sons, Joseph, gave refuse to the Israelites.

Pharaoh forced the Hebrew slaves to make bread without straw. Moses led them to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients. Afterwards, Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the ten commandments. David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the liar. He fought with the Philatelists, a race of people who lived in the Biblical times. Soloman, one of David's sons, had 500 wives and 500 porcupines.

Without the Greeks we wouldn't have history. The Greeks invented three kinds of columns - Corinthian, Doric, and Ironic. They also had myths. A myth is a female moth. One myth says that the mother of Achilles dipped him in the River Stynx until he became intollerable. Achilles appears in The Iliad, by Homer. Homer also wrote The Oddity, in which Penelope was the last hardship that Ulysses endured on his journey. Actually, Homer was not written by Homer but by another man of that name.

Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock.

In the Olympic games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled the biscuits, the threw the java. The reward to the victor was a coral wreath. The government of Athens was democratic because people took the law into their own hands. There were no wars in Greece, as the mountains were so high that they couldn't climb over to see what their neighbors were doing. When they fought with the Persians, the Greeks were outnumbered because the Persians had more men.

Eventually, the Ramons conquered the Greeks. History calls people Romans because they never stayed in one place for very long. At Roman banquets, the guests wore garlic in their hair. Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March murdered him because they thought he was going to be made king. Nero was a cruel tyranny who would turture his poor subjects by playing the fiddle to them.

Then came the Middle Ages. King Alfred conquered the Dames. King Arthur lived in the Age of Shivery, King Harold mustarded his troops before the Battle of Hastings, Joan of Arc was canonized by Bernard Shaw, and victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their necks. Finally, Magna Carta provided that no free man should be hanged twice for the same offense.

In medevil time most of the people were alliterate. The greatest writer of the time was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and versus and also wrote literature. Another tale tells of William Tell, who shot an arrow through an apple while standing on his son's head.

The Renaissance was an age in which more individuals felt the value of their human being. Martin Luther was nailed to the church door at Wittenberg for selling papal indulgences. He died a horrible death, being excommunicated by a bull. It was the painter Donatello's interes in the female nude that made him the father of the Renaissance. It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented the Bible. Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes. Another important invention was the circulation of blood. Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100 foot clipper.

The government of England was a limited mockery. Henry VIII found walking difficult because he had an abbess on his knee. Queen Elizabeth was the "Virgin Queen." As a queen she was a success. When Elizabeth exposed herself before her troops, they all shouted, "hurrah." Then her navy went out and defeated the Spanish Armadillo.

The greatest write of the Renaissance was William Shakespear. Shakespear never made much money and is only famous because of his plays. He lived at Windsor with his merry wives, writing tragedies, comedies and errors. In one of Shakespear's famous plays, Hamlet rations out his situation by relieving himself in a long soliloquy. In another, Lady Macbeth tried to convince Macbeth to kill the Kind by attack his manhood. Romeo and Juliet are an example of a heroic couplet. Writing at the same time as Shakespear was Miguel Cervantes. He wrote Donkey Hote. The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote Paradise Lost. Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise Regained.

During the Renaissance America began. Christopher Columbus was a great navigator who discovered America while cursing about the Atlantic. His ships were called the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Fe. Later, the Pilgrims crossed the Ocean, and this was known as Pilgrims Progress. When they landed at Plymouth Rock, they were greeted by the Indians, who came down the hill rolling their war hoops before them. The Indian squabs carried porpoises on their back. Many of the Indian heroes were killed, along with their cabooses, which proved very fatal for them. The winter of 1620 was a hard one for the settlers. Many people died and many babies were born. Captain John Smith was responsible for all this.

One of the causes of the Revolutionary Wars was the English put tacks in their tea. Also, the colonists would send their parcels through the post without stamps. During the War, the Red Coats and Paul Revere was throwing balls over stone walls. The dogs were barking and the peacocks crowing. Finally, the colonists won the War and no longer had to pay for taxis.

Delegates from the original thirteen states formed the Contented Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin had gone to Boston carrying all his clothes in his pocket and a loaf of bread under each arm. He invented electricity by rubbing two cats backwards and declared, "A horse devided against itself cannot stand." Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.

George Washington married Martha Curtis and in due time became the Father of Our Country. Then the Constitution of the United States was adopted to secure domestic hostility. Under the Constitution the people enjoyed the right to keep bare arms.

Abraham Lincoln became America's greatest president. Lincoln's mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands. When Lincoln was President, he wore only a tall silk hat. He said, "In onion there is strength." Abraham Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg address while traveling from Washington to Gettysburg on the back of an envelope. He also freed the slaves by signing the Emasculation Proclamation, and the Fourteenth Amendment gave the ex-Negroes citizenship. But the Clue Clux Clan would torcher and lynch the ex-Negroes and other innocent victims. It claimed it represented law and odor. On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. The believed assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a supposingly insane actor. This ruined Booth's career.

Meanwhile in Europe, the enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltare invented electricity and also wrote a book called Candy. Graity was invented by Isaac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the Autumn, when the apples are falling off trees.

Bach was the most famous composer in the world, and so was Handel. Handel was half German, half Italian, and half English. He was very large. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this.

France was in a very serious state. The French Revolution was accomplished before it happened. The Marseillaise was the theme song of the French Revolution, and it catapulted into Napoleon. During the Napoleonic Wars, the crowned heads of Europe were trembling in their shoes. The the Spanish gorillas came down from the hills and nipped at Napoleon's flanks. Napoleon became ill with bladder problems and was very tense and unrestrained. He wanted an heir to inherit his power, but since Josephine was a baroness, she couldn't bear children.

The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is in the East and the sun sets in the West. Queen Victoria was the longest queen. She sat on a thorn for 63 years. Her reclining years and finally the end of her life were exemplary of a great personality. Her death was the final event which ended her reign.

The nineteenth century was a time of many great inventions and thoughts. The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to spring up. Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick raper, which did the work of hundred men. Samuel Morse invented a code of telepathy. Louis Pasteur discovered a cure for rabbis. Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the Organ of the Species.

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15. Comment #11569 by adlards on December 5, 2006 at 3:08 pm

Dear Yorker (11460)

I think the English cricket team is proof against the theory of intelligent design too!

Go Aussies

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16. Comment #11586 by RobS on December 5, 2006 at 6:02 pm

Conclusive disproof? You call yourself a scientist? Sheesh. It's bad enough "they" can't come up with a coherent, consistent theory. "We" shouldn't help them out by making unprovable statements akin to "This conclusively disproves God's existence."

The burden of proof is on the asserter of the theory. We only have to determine if the theory is consistent, coherent and if the evidence supports it.

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17. Comment #11598 by Yorker on December 5, 2006 at 10:14 pm

20. Comment #11569 by adlards

Ha,Ha!

Yes, a pathetic English performance, they should've had me playing for them...well at least the "me" of 30 years ago!

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18. Comment #11599 by Aussie on December 5, 2006 at 10:15 pm

What "intelligent design" lacks is Intelligent Discussion.

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19. Comment #11619 by PrimoTurbo on December 6, 2006 at 1:47 am

On the question of intelligent design, I would like to say that it seems there is definitely a system which all matter, life, etc obey at some level. It's no coincidence that things end up the way they do, there is definitely some utility that allows life to exist. However on the aspect of it being actually self-aware or intelligent is another question, systems emerge due to various negative and positive forces.

Evolution is clearly not guided by some intelligent god, there is far too much evidence to support that it the result of random play. However the whole essence of existence is another question, no one can answer that and I'm quite sure everyone is wrong.

Also doesn't DNA & RNA pretty much conclude that ID doesn't exist. Why is there a need to argue or prove anything, there is already an enormous amount of evidence.

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20. Comment #11621 by Hyrax on December 6, 2006 at 2:56 am

It's true this is not the 'clincher' but it is part of it - a massive body of evidence. I'd like to offer up some more examples:

1.In laboratory conditions 2 species of frog, Physalemus pustulosus and P.coloradorum both show a female preference for a mating call that includes a 'chuck' sound, produced artificially. However in the wild male P. coloradorum do not issue make this sound as it is suppressed by other selection pressures but the females still show an innate preference for the 'chuck' sound in the lab which suggests that P. coloradorum evolved from a species that, like P.pustulosus, did make the 'chuck' sound

2. Females of 2 species of Xiphophorus fish, the Platyfish and the swordtails both show preference for elongated 'sword like' tails in laboratory conditions. However only swordtail males have 'sword tails' in the wild again suggesting that Platyfish evolved from fish that did have sword tails which is now suppressed by other selection pressures but the innate preference is still there, an evolutionary relic if you will.

3. Biologists discovered a species of amphibian that spends it's entire life cycle as a tadpole, it reaches sexual maturity as a tadpole, breeds as a tadpole and dies as a tadpole. The tadpoles were given developemental hormones which gave a startling result - they developed into salamanders, salamanders that presumably had not been seen for perhaps millions of years. The latter end of the lifecycle had been cut of as it no longer served a purpose but they still reatain the genes for the adult salamander from.

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21. Comment #11627 by Hyrax on December 6, 2006 at 4:45 am

Hi Billy,
Basolo, A.L. (1990) Female preference predates evolution of the sword in sword tail fish. Science 250, 808-810.

Don't have the references to hand for the other 2 but they should be easy to find on google scholar, heres another useful one on the topic as a whole:

Ryan & Rand (1993) Sexual selection and signal evolution: The ghost of biases past - sorry I didn't write down what it was published in, school boy error!

Thanks for the fossil DNA link had not heard of it, I did hear about the 4 finned dolphin and I think you're right - the DNA for the second pair of fins is simply suppressed rather than eradicated and a mutation in this individual prevented that suppression and hey presto! a 4 finned dolphin!

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22. Comment #11639 by Yorker on December 6, 2006 at 7:21 am

26. Comment #11621 by Hyrax

Thanks Hyrax,

You evidently know more biology than I do, that's why I said it was "only a nail" in the first post on this topic.

But tell me, are you a rock hyrax or an opera one?

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23. Comment #11643 by Yorker on December 6, 2006 at 7:30 am

25. Comment #11619 by PrimoTurbo

>>Also doesn't DNA & RNA pretty much conclude that ID doesn't exist. Why is there a need to argue or prove anything, there is already an enormous amount of evidence.<<

Indeed so. I'm reminded of a short talk given by Jim Watson a few years ago, where he stated that evolution could now be seen at DNA level because of fossil genes. However, there are still some people with apparent biological knowledge who think the silly ID idea needs combatting. I hope they're not doing it just for the sake of it.

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24. Comment #11645 by Yorker on December 6, 2006 at 7:51 am

18. Comment #11550 by Martha

That was a lot of writing for zero feedback Martha, I hope you just copied and pasted it. I found it humorous so you didn't waste your time. More talkers than listeners frequent this place, I think.

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25. Comment #11647 by Kevin Ronayne on December 6, 2006 at 8:35 am

Re:

32. Comment #11645 by Yorker on December 6, 2006 at 7:51 am

"18. Comment #11550 by Martha

That was a lot of writing for zero feedback Martha, I hope you just copied and pasted it. I found it humorous so you didn't waste your time. More talkers than listeners frequent this place, I think."

Don't worry Yorker. I think we can go with the copy-and-paste, as this comes straight from a well-known list of student bloopers:

http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~beej/bloopers.html

How much of this stuff is real, how much is urban myth, and how much is just plain made up is open to question. I wouldn't be surprised if almost all of it was real.

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26. Comment #11658 by Hyrax on December 6, 2006 at 11:13 am

A rock hyrax my friend, fell in love with them on the slopes of Mt. Kenya last summer, very romantic!

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27. Comment #11691 by Seti on December 6, 2006 at 2:39 pm

The ultimate clincher against intelligent design is the toe-nail. Only a total idiot could have designed that.

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28. Comment #12588 by Joadist on December 12, 2006 at 4:43 pm

I have designed a Time-Travel machine. It is flawless in concept and theory.

Now all I have to do is design a universe which has a different set of laws.

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