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Friday, 6 January 2023

A heavenly witness against design deniers?

 Animals Tune Behavior by Lunar Cycle; but How?

David Coppedge

Tonight’s moon will be full, so here is a timely question. Many unrelated animals tune their behavior by the lunar cycle. How do they do it, given that sunlight overpowers moonlight?

Researchers in Austria think they have found a clue: a cryptochrome protein that appears to respond to the lunar cycle. Cryptochrome proteins are also implicated in the geomagnetic sense in birds. Whatever they found, it surely must represent only a piece of a biological puzzle. Let them explain in this from the University of Wien:

Many marine organisms, including brown algae, fish, corals, turtles and bristle worms, synchronize their behavior and reproduction with the lunar cycle. For some species, such as the bristle worm Platynereiis dumerilii, lab experiments have shown that moonlight exerts its timing function by entraining an inner monthly calendar, also called circalunar clock. Under these laboratory conditions, mimicking the duration of the full moon is sufficient to entrain these circalunar clocks. However, in natural habitats light conditions can vary considerably. Even the regular interplay of sun- and moon creates highly complex patterns. Organisms using the lunar light for their timing thus need to discriminate between specific moon phases and between sun and moonlight. This ability is not well understood. 

The first statement should alarm evolutionists. Circalunar clocks are found in very unrelated animals (evolutionarily speaking): vertebrates like fish and turtles and invertebrates like worms and corals. Each of these must have hit upon lunar tuning independently.

 The researcher’s paper in Nature Communications points out that we humans have connections to the lunar cycle, too:

In addition, lunar timing effects have also been documented outside the marine environment, and recently uncovered correlations of human sleep and menstrual cycle properties with moon phases have re-initiated the discussion of an impact of the moon even on human biology. As recently documented for corals, desynchronization of these reproductively critical rhythms by anthropogenic impacts poses a threat to species survival.

The Bristle Worm as a Test Case

P. dumerilii, the so-called bristle worm is a polychaete (“much-haired) worm in phylum Annelida. Smithsonian Magazine lists 14 Fun Facts about these polychaetes, an “amazingly diverse family” of marine organisms:

Unbeknownst to most landlubbers, polychaetes rule the seas. There are at least 10,000 species of these swimming bristly worms, some of which pop with brilliant colors or light up with a bioluminescent glow. They’ve adapted to every imaginable marine habitat, from deep hydrothermal vents to crowded coral reefs to the open ocean—and many have found ways to survive that are definitely bizarre.

Interested readers can browse through Smithsonian’s list of facts and look at the pictures. A short horror movie shows a lionfish learning too late not to mess with a bobbit worm (Eunice aphroditois), a different species of bristle worm in the Atlantic. It’s a creature of nightmares, so be forewarned. The poisonous lionfish can’t use its defensive weapons against this lightning-fast monster: a worm! It’s a terrifying creature right out of the movie Tremors. More about bobbit worms can be found at ARCReef.com. Do not read this: some bobbit worms grow up to ten feet long! Fortunately, attacks on humans are rare, limited to “nasty bites” (Daily Mail).

Evolutionary Challenges 

Back to P. dumerilii, a much more benign polychaete only 2-4 cm long. A type of ragworm, this species is found worldwide. Wikipedia calls it a living fossil. Although it’s an invertebrate, “it has an axochord, a paired longitudinal muscle that displays striking similarities to the notochord regarding position, developmental origin, and expression profile.” It swims with a coordinated system of cilia on its surface. “Whole-body coordination of ciliary locomotion is performed by a ‘stop-and-go pacemaker system’,” the article says. That’s not the only pacemaker in this amazing little worm. Despite having “a pair of the simplest eyes in the animal kingdom,” it can “see” the phases of the moon. Those little eyes do not help the evolutionary story:

The ciliary photoreceptor cells are located in the deep brain of the larva. They are not shaded by pigment and thus perceive non-directional light. The ciliary photoreceptor cells resemble molecularly and morphologically the rods and cones of the human eye. Additional [sic], they express an ciliary opsin that is more similar to the visual ciliary opsins of vertebrate rods and cones than to the visual rhabdomeric opsins of invertebrates.

The bristle worm’s genome also challenges Darwinism:

The genome of Platynereis dumerilii … contains approximately 1 Gbp (giga base pairs) or 109 base pairs. This genome size is close to the average observed for other animals. However, compared to many classical invertebrate molecular model organisms, this genome size is rather large and therefore it is a challenge to identify gene regulatory elements that can be far away from the corresponding promoter. But it is intron rich unlike those of Drosophila melanogaster and Caenorhabditis elegans and thus closer to vertebrate genomes including the human genome.

Wikipedia prudently abstains from speculating on how these worms evolved.

Possible Lunar Oscillator Found in P. dumerilii 

In the introduction to the paper, the authors say, “Despite the importance and widespread occurrence of lunar rhythms, functional mechanistic insight is lacking.” They found a cryptochome protein they call L-Cry that appears to keep time to the full moon. Its asymmetric dimer appears to have two monomers with very different light sensitivities, which “provides the molecular basis to sense and interpret light intensities across five orders of magnitude.” 

This is important because full sunlight swamps moonlight, so the worm brain must be able to discriminate the smaller peaks of illumination from larger ones. Additionally, L-Cry must be able to avoid being tricked by artificial light that can also outshine full moonlight. It must also be robust against darkness on cloudy full-moon nights and by “natural acute light disturbances, such as lightning.” 

Experiments in the “worm room” under controlled simulations of sun and moon illumination cycles demonstrated this ability. “L-Cry’s major role could be that of a gatekeeper controlling which ambient light is interpreted as full-moonlight stimulus for circalunar clock entrainment,” they say. If an organism can set its lunar clock to a full moon, it can also discriminate other lunar phases.

The full moon is unique in having the longest duration of light at night, followed by sunrise. A circalunar clock presupposes, therefore, the ability to measure the duration as well as intensity of light. L-Cry may do this with a ratchet mechanism: as the protein accumulates photons, it reaches higher quantum levels that photoreduce parts of the low-sensitivity monomer. The authors also observed L-Cry accumulating in the nucleus and diminishing in the cytoplasm during the simulated moonlight exposure time. “This suggests that different cellular compartments convey the different light messages to different downstream pathways.”

Even so, this cryptochrome discovery only delivers “the first molecular entry point into the mechanisms underlying a moonlight-entrained monthly oscillator.” The photoreceptor for L-Cry is unknown. Additionally, L-Cry must cooperate with the circadian clock genes, adding to the regulatory complexity. How these proteins signal a cascade of physiological behaviors when it’s time to spawn remains curious. “Certainly, more extensive mechanistic studies are required to further verify our models.”

Convergent Functionality

Finally, an evolutionary consideration: Monthly synchronization by the moon has been documented for a wide range of organisms– including brown and green algae, corals, crustaceans, worms, but also vertebrates… Furthermore, recent reports also provide increasing evidence that the lunar cycle influences human behavior… Are the lunar effects mediated by conserved or different mechanisms?

Since L-Cry is not known in these other species, the authors speculate that either conservation of other proteins will be discovered, or that other proteins with analogous functions will be found. 

Last, but not least the molecular mechanisms underlying the circalunar oscillator also await identification, and it is possible that conservation exists on this level. Examples are known from circadian biology and it will now require further work to reach a similar level of understanding for moon-controlled monthly rhythms and clocks.

Surely, though, conservation of function using entirely different molecular mechanisms poses a severe challenge to Darwinism. It would seem to require entirely different sets of mutations to be selected for a common function. In design theory, intelligence starts with the concept and can use different instruments to play the same tune. 

The Palolo Worm

We end with a spectacular case of circalunar time tuning. Another polychaete, the Palolo Worm of the South Pacific, undergoes a remarkable reproductive cycle timed to both lunar and annual cycles. Britannica explains its life cycle:

The palolo worm of the South Pacific (Palolo siciliensis [P. viridis or Eunice viridis]) inhabits crevices and cavities in coral reefs. As the breeding season approaches, the tail end of the body undergoes a radical change.The muscles and most of the organs degenerate, and the reproductive organs rapidly increase in size. The limbs on the posterior segment become more paddlelike. After the animal backs part way out of its tubelike burrow, the posterior section breaks free and swims to the surface as a separate animal, complete with eyes. The anterior end, still attached to its tube, regenerates a new posterior end. 

The free-swimming half-worms contains sperm and eggs. Tens of thousands of these half-worms swim to the surface as if on cue, and release their reproductive cells always at the same time of year and at a particular phase of the moon.

The free-swimming section always makes its appearance in the early morning for two days during the last quarter of the Moon in October. Twenty-eight days later, it appears in even greater numbers in the final quarter of the November Moon. At the surface of the sea the sperm and eggs are discharged, and fertilization occurs. Palolo tails, considered a delicacy by the Polynesians, are gathered in vast numbers during swarming.

Worms. Such simple, lowly creatures. But what wonders await the biologists who delve into their mechanisms. Like everything else in biology, design-inspired awe explodes in the details.


























The fossil record continues to be a bomb thrower for Darwinism

Fossil Friday: Fossil Golden Moles and the Abrupt Origin of Afrosoricida

Günter Bechly  

Last week we looked into the fossil history of elephant shrews. This first Fossil Friday in the new year we will move on in our series on placental mammal origins to another group of mainly insectivorous afrotherians: the order Afrosoricida, which comprises golden moles (Chrysochloridae), otter shrews (Potamogalidae), and the iconic tenrecs (Tenrecidae) from Madagascar. As in other small mammals their fossil record mostly consists of isolated jaw fragments and teeth, just like the featured fossil of the golden mole Diamantochloris inconsessus from the Eocene of Namibia (Pickford 2018).

Mainly based on molecular data (Springer et al. 2003) it has been suggested that the Afrosoricida originated 65 million years ago, right after the K/Pg impact event or even before (Tabuce et al. 2007: fig. 5, Poux et al. 2008: fig. 3, Everson et al. 2016: fig. 4). Of course, the fossil record does not at all support such a view (Sargis & Dagosto 2008: fig. 5.17, Asher 2010: fig. 9.1), so that some authors decided within a year to simply place the assumed origin 10 million years later (Tabuce et al. 2008: fig. 1). Isn’t evolutionary biology a wonderful science? Here is a brief list of the oldest known fossil genera in each group of Afrosoricida with their estimated stratigraphic range (based on PaleoDB and Seiffert 2010):

Afrosoricida (48.60–0 mya)


            Chrysochloridae (48.6–0 mya)


                        Damarachloris Pickford, 2019b (48.6–40.4 mya)


                        Diamantochloris Pickford, 2015a (48.6–40.4 mya, primitive Chrysochloridae acc. to Pickford 2018)


                        Namachloris Pickford, 2015c (40.4–37.2 mya)


                        Prochrysochloris Butler & Hopwood, 1957 (20.43–15.97 mya)


            Tenrecoidea (= Tenrecomorpha) (48.6–0 mya)


                        Dilambdogale Seiffert, 2010 (37.2–33.9 mya, rather about 37)


                        Eochrysochloris Seiffert et al. 2007 (33.9–28.4 mya, rather about 33)


                        Jawharia Seiffert et al. 2007 (33.9–28.4 mya, rather about 33)


                        Nanogale Pickford, 2019a (48.6-40.4 mya)


                        Plesiorycteropus Filhol, 1895 (0.012–0.0 mya)


                        Qatranilestes Seiffert, 2010 (33.9–28.4 mya, rather about 30)


                        Widanelfarasia Seiffert & Simons, 2000 (33.9–28.4 mya, rather 33.9)          


                        Potamogalidae (40.4–0 mya)


                                    Namagale Pickford, 2015b (40.4–37.2 mya)

Tenrecidae (40.4–0 mya)


                                    Arenagale Pickford, 2015b (40.4–37.2 mya)


                                    Erythrozootes Butler & Hopwood, 1957 (24-16 mya)


                                    Parageogale Butler, 1984 (= Butleriella) (24-16 mya)


                                    Protenrec Butler & Hopwood, 1957 (23.03–11.608 mya)


                                    Sperrgale Pickford, 2015b (40.4–37.2 mya)


Golden Moles (Chrysochloridae)

Golden moles are small, burrowing mammals endemic to sub-Saharan Africa with 21 living species (Asher et al. 2010). The oldest and most primitive fossil golden moles, Diamantochloris and Damarachloris, were discovered in Middle Eocene (Lutetian) sediments from Black Crow in Namibia, which are maximally 48.6 million years old (Pickford 2015a, 2018, 2019b). Together with the tenrecomorph Nanogale (see below) they also represent the earliest fossil record of Afrosoricida known so far. The best known but slightly younger genus is Namachloris, of which about 120 remains from almost the complete skeleton have been found (Pickford 2015c). They show that even these early representatives already had the burrowing adaptations of their living descendants. Another very old alleged chrysochlorid is Eochrysochloris from Fayum in Egypt (Seiffert et al. 2007, Seiffert 2010). However, Pickford (2015a, 2015c, 2018) suggested that Eochrysochloris “is probably not a chysrochlorid” but rather a tenrecid.

Tenrecoidea

The oldest representative of Tenrecoidea or Tenrecomorpha is Nanogale fragilis from the Eocene freshwater limestone of Black Crow in Namibia that can be dated to maximally 48.6 million years (Pickford 2019a). There is only a single mandible fragment known, which represents the smallest mammal from the fossil record in Africa. It has some characteristics resembling tenrecs and others rather resembling otter shrews, so that it may belong to their common ancestral lineage. Other very old tenrecoids were found in Eocene/Oligocene (37-30 mya) outcrops of the Jebel Qatrani Formation in the Fayum region of northern Egypt (Seiffert 2006), and include the genera Dilambdogale, Eochrysochloris, Jawharia, Widanelfarasia, and Qatranilestes (Seiffert & Simons 2000, Seiffert et al. 2007, Seiffert 2010).

Otter Shrews

Otter shrews (Potamogalidae) only include two living genera with three species of nocturnal and amphibious mammals, feeding off crustaceans and fish. They are believed to be closely related to the Malagasy tenrecs but only occur in Western and Central Africa. According to molecular clock studies their lineage should at least date to the Lower Eocene (Everson et al. 2016), but the possible fossil record is very sparse and controversial. Van Valen (1967) thought that the genera Erythrozootes and Protenrec might be fossil otter shrews, but most other and later workers rather attributed them to the genuine tenrecs. Seiffert (2007) again found the Miocene Protenrec as sister group of Potamogale instead on tenrecs, but subsequent studies did not accept this position. The only unequivocal fossil record of otter shrews is Namagale described by Pickford (2015b) from the Late Eocene (Bartonian) Eocliff in Namibia, which is 40.4-37.3 million years old.

Tenrecs

Living tenrecs are hedgehog-like mammals endemic to Madagascar with 31 living species classified in 8 genera and 3 subfamilies. Until recently the oldest fossil tenrecs were the three genera Erythrozootes, Parageogale, and Protenrec from the Miocene of Kenya and Namibia (Butler & Hopwood 1957, Butler 1984, Poduschka & Poduschka 1985, McKenna & Bell 1997, Mein & Pickford 2003, 2008, Asher & Hofreiter 2006, Seiffert et al. 2007, Pickford et al. 2008, Poux et al. 2008, Asher & Seiffert 2010). Strangely, these genera seem to be most closely related to the Malagasy tenrec genus Geogale (Asher & Hofreiter 2006). Poduschka & Poduschka (1985) disputed the relationship of Parageogale, which they had invalidly named Butleriella, with the living genus Geogale, but this very relationship was vindicated by new material and further studies (see Asher & Seiffert 2010). This relationship arguably would imply a back dispersal event from Madagascar to Eastern Africa more than 267 miles across the Mozambique Channel of the Indian Ocean (Douady et al. 2002, Poux et al. 2008, Everson et al. 2016). This is a quite daring hypothesis to say the least (see Bechly 2018). Apart from this anomaly the general colonization of Madagascar by tenrecs has been dated with molecular evidence to have happened between 55 mya and 37 mya by Douady et al. (2002) or between 56-30 mya by Everson et al. (2016), which falls well within the range of the oldest African fossil stem tenrecs and well after the separation of Madagascar from mainland Africa about 165-120 mya. 

These oldest putative stem tenrecs are the two species Arenagale calcareus and Sperrgale minutus described by Pickford (2015b) from the Late Eocene (Bartonian) Eocliff in Namibia, dated to about 40 million years ago.

We should also briefly mention the Malagasy Aardvark Plesiorycteropus, which is known from two subfossil species. Apparently, these animals went extinct just a few hundred years ago, likely due to anthropogenic causes like overhunting and deforestation. They were long believed to be related to Xenarthra or Tubulidentata, and even assigned to its own distinct mammal order Bibymalagasia. However, a molecular study of ancient collagen revealed that they represent another major branch of Tenrecoidea (Buckley 2013), though no older fossils are known yet.

But, we have not yet exhausted the potential candidates for the oldest Afrosoricida. There are two obscure fossil mammals from the Late Paleocene of Morocco that may qualify: Todralestes variabilis was originally described as an insectivoran of the polyphyletic waste basket taxon “Proteutheria” (Gheerbrant 1991, 1994, Gheerbrant et al. 1998), while Afrodon chleuhi was described from the same outcrops as an insectivoran of the extinct family Adapisoriculidae (Gheerbrant 1988, Gheerbrant & Russell 1989, Gheerbrant et al. 1998).

Both Todralestes and Afrodon share dental similarities with supposed early afrosoricids like Widanelfarasia, Protenrec, and Dilambdogale (Seiffert & Simons 2000, Seiffert et al. 2007). Asher & Seiffert (2010) and Seiffert (2010) even recovered these two genera as most basal stem Afrosoricida in their cladogram. If this should be correct, it would place the origin of the afrosoricid lineage into the Late Paleocene, right in the brief window of time when most of the placental mammal orders first appear in the fossil record. Of course, as always there is considerable disagreement about the phylogenetic affinities of these taxa: Tabuce et al. (2008: fig. 1) put a question mark at the alleged Late Paleocene occurrence of stem afrosoricids suggested by Seiffert et al. (2007), without explicitly listing the concerning genera. Pickford et al. (2008) considered Todralestes as a member of the unrelated extinct mammal order Cimolesta, and Afrodon still as an adapisoriculid insectivoran of the living mammal order Lipotyphla. The consensus tree of Halliday et al. (2015) did neither support a relationship of Todralestes nor of Widanelfarasia and Dilambdogale with Afrosoricida or even Afrotheria.

Like in all the other groups of afrotherian mammals, the modern consensus of attributing Afrosoricida to the African mammal clade Afrotheria is almost exclusively based on molecular data (Nishihara et al. 2005, Seiffert 2003, 2007, Tabuce et al. 2007, 2008, Asher & Seiffert 2010, Heritage et al. 2020), while anatomical similarities were universally interpreted as evidence for a relationship with insectivorans (e.g., Van Valen 1967, Butler 1984, Novacek et al. 1985, McKenna & Bell 1997) and even explicitly rejected an afrotherian clade (Asher 1999). Pickford (2019a) mentioned that “many recent phylogenetic analyses of Afrotheria seem to be incompatible with each other.”

A Repeating Pattern

Again and again we find the same pattern:

Darwinism predicts gradual accumulation of small changes over long periods of time but the empirical data of the fossil record point to rapid bursts of biological novelty.

Darwinism predicts that anatomical similarities should align with genetic similarities but the actual trees and/or classifications generated from these data conflict with each other.

Darwinism predicts that molecular clock estimates should agree with the stratigraphic appearance of taxa in the fossil record but they don’t.

Should we draw any conclusions from such consistent empirical failures of a theory? Maybe we should instead modify a popular dictum by the famous evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky into “Nothing makes sense in biology in the light of (Darwinian) evolution” to align it better with reality.

Next Fossil Friday we will have a look at the early fossil record of hyraxes, another afrotherian group with an interesting history.














A hill to die on?

Astrophysicist Bijan Nemati: Why Intelligent Design Matters

Evolution news 

On a new episode of ID the Future, astrophysicist and intelligent design proponent Bijan Nemati shares the first part of his story of science and faith. Those who follow Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture may know Nemati from his appearance in the popular ID documentary The Privileged Planet. Born and raised in Iran, he moved to the United States shortly before the Iranian revolution, became an atheist in college, but eventually found his way to a strong religious faith, in part through his exposure to the scientific evidence for intelligent design, first in biology and then in cosmology. Along the way he landed a high-level job with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and became a leading expert in space interferometer telescopes and the science and technology of detecting earth-like planets. Here he shares with host Eric Anderson his journey of discovery. Download or listen to the podcast here