Articles

Have a ROTFL Good Time with Evolutionism Bugginess

“By” Karl C. Priest January 17, 2020

At BWAH HAH HAH HAAAA! I usually add bold font to indicate the laughter triggers. For the following, I urge you to print it out and use a highlighter to have a ROTFL good time with the True Believers in Evolutionism hallucinations and hypocrisies. They are bountifully buggy!

Animals reduce the symmetry of their markings to improve camouflage

Some forms of camouflage have evolved in animals to exploit a loophole in the way predators perceive their symmetrical markings. The University of Bristol findings, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B today [15 Jan], describe how animals have evolved to mitigate this defensive disadvantage in their colouration... To test the theory whether evolution has led animals to reduce the symmetry found in their camouflage to overcome this, researchers combined field and lab experiments and then conducted a 'natural pattern analysis' to investigate whether evolution has led animals to reduce this…The analysis enabled the team to measure distances of markings from the midline point of the wings of 36 species of moth and butterfly using real specimens from museums, field guides and photographs.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200114224453.htm

Dung beetle discovery revises biologists' understanding of how nature innovates

The discovery that thoracic horns in dung beetles emerge from the same gene network as wings could revise how biologists understand 'innovation' in nature. When studying how organisms evolve, biologists consider most traits, or features, as derived from some earlier version already present in their ancestors. Few traits are regarded as truly "novel." Insects were wingless, then winged. Animals were blind, then had eyes…However, some experts argue this creates a problem since it means novelty must seemingly arise from nothing. It must "pop up out of the blue" in evolutionary time. Now evidence has emerged -- in a study published Nov. 21 in the journal Science -- that illuminates how new things can evolve. Moreover, this evidence has come from an unexpected source: the small, yet charismatic dung beetle. "Dung beetles are fascinating creatures," said Armin Moczek, the study's senior author and a professor in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences' Department of Biology…The new IU-led study, which is featured on the journal's cover, provides evidence that the formation of the thoracic horn is instructed by the same core network of genes that led to the evolution of insect wings: flight structures that exist on neighboring thoracic segments. In fact, this ancient gene network predates not just wings and horns; it already existed before there were insects, and in every segment along the entire body…They also showed that they could manipulate other genes and force the horns to transform into "ectopic" wings -- or extra wings on the wrong part of the body…"This new evidence is profound since it suggests that all of this vast diversity, all these novelties, could in fact be enabled by a single gene network that was used millions of years ago to form the flight wings on other body segments."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191121141409.htm

New fossil pushes back physical evidence of insect pollination to 99 million years ago

A new study co-led by researchers in the U.S. and China has pushed back the first-known physical evidence of insect flower pollination to 99 million years ago, during the mid-Cretaceous period. The revelation is based upon a tumbling flower beetle with pollen on its legs discovered preserved in amber deep inside a mine in northern Myanmar…"Aside from the significance as earliest known direct evidence of insect pollination of flowering plants, this specimen perfectly illustrates the cooperative evolution of plants and animals during this time period, during which a true exposition of flowering plants occurred."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191111154150.htm

Glimpse into ancient hunting strategies of dragonflies and damselflies

Dragonflies and damselflies are animals that may appear gentle but are, in fact, ancient hunters. The closely related insects shared an ancestor over 250 million years ago -- long before dinosaurs -- and provide a glimpse into how an ancient neural system controlled precise and swift aerial assaults. A paper recently published in Current Biology, led by University of Minnesota researchers, shows that despite the distinct hunting strategies of dragonflies and damselflies, the two groups share key neurons in the circuit that drives the hunting flight. These neurons are so similar, researchers believe the insects inherited them from their shared ancestor and that the neurons haven't changed mucha ining insight into their ability to quickly process images could inform technological advancements. These findings could inform where to mount cameras on drones and autonomous vehicles, and how to process the incoming information quickly and efficiently…Dragonflies and damselflies are interesting from an evolutionary point of view because they give us a window into ancient neural system…n dragonflies with eyes that merge at the top, the eyes work as if they were two screens of an extended display (i.e. the image of the prey, which would be equivalent to the mouse pointer, can fall on either the left or the right, but never in both screens at the same time); damselflies eyes work as duplicated screens, where the prey image is seen by both eyes at once (i.e. they have binocular vision); both designs have pros and cons, and their presence correlates with the type of prey and the environment…Researchers are now looking to understand how the extended versus duplicated images are calculated in the brain, and how the information is implemented into muscle movements. "There is still a lot we do not understand," said Jack Supple, first author and a recent PhD graduate from Gonzalez-Bellidos laboratory. "We do not know how these neurons coordinate all the different muscles in the body during flight. If we tried to build a realistic robotic damselfly or dragonfly tomorrow we would have a difficult time."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200116121845.htm