https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(23)01441-0?dgcid=raven_jbs_aip...

"Hearing has evolved independently many times in the animal kingdom and is prominent in various insects and vertebrates for conspecific communication and predator detection. Among insects, katydid (Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae) ears are unique, as they have evolved outer, middle, and inner ear components, analogous in their biophysical principles to the mammalian ear. The katydid ear consists of two paired tympana located in each foreleg. These tympana receive sound externally on the tympanum surface (usually via pinnae) or internally via an ear canal (EC). The EC functions to capture conspecific calls and low frequencies, while the pinnae passively amplify higher-frequency ultrasounds including bat echolocation. Together, these outer ear components provide enhanced hearing sensitivity across a dynamic range of over 100 kHz. However, despite a growing understanding of the biophysics and function of the katydid ear, its precise emergence and evolutionary history remains elusive. Here, using microcomputed tomography (μCT) scanning, we recovered geometries of the outer ear components and wings of an exceptionally well-preserved katydid fossilized in Baltic amber (∼44 million years [Ma]). Using numerical and theoretical modeling of the wings, we show that this species was communicating at a peak frequency of 31.62 (± 2.27) kHz, and we demonstrate that the ear was biophysically tuned to this signal and to providing hearing at higher-frequency ultrasounds (>80 kHz), likely for enhanced predator detection. The results indicate that the evolution of the unique ear of the katydid, with its broadband ultrasonic sensitivity and analogous biophysical properties to the ears of mammals, emerged in the Eocene.

***

"In light of recent evidence supporting a theory of an arms race between the ancestral katydid lineage and mammalian acoustics, it seems increasingly likely that there have been unique long acoustic interactions between orthopteran and mammalian lineages through time. This arms race may have started through katydids increasing their acoustic signal frequencies beyond the predator upper hearing limit and the predators evolving ears that are more capable of higher-frequency eavesdropping.

***

"This fossil supports these predictions of bat echolocation frequency, as E. handlirschi shows no acoustic pinnae adaptations to bat detection above 80 kHz, but it could certainly detect this modern bat common ancestor through its ECs [ear canals]. Importantly, this early bat predator could also hear E. handlirschi for predation. The sophisticated katydid ear with its cochlea-like anatomy was established at this time (as evidenced in this report, indicating that discrimination between conspecific and predator ultrasounds occurred through tonotopically organized auditory sensilla and traveling waves for frequency mapping."

Comment: more evidence that evolution always reaches the same solutions in design, in this case ultrasounds and echolocation. again, evidence for a designing mind.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/fin-whale-eat-choke-baleen-oral-plug-muscle-fat

"Some of the world’s largest whales feed by lunging through the water with mouths wide open. Scientists have long wondered how the animals withstand the tremendous pressure of water rushing into their throats without choking and drowning.

"A plug made of muscle and fat found at the back of fin whales’ mouths might offer a clue. The plug blocks the channel between a fin whale’s mouth and its pharynx, the entrance to the respiratory and digestive tracts. The plug appears to prevent water from rushing into the whale’s lungs and stomach while it lunges and could explain how all lunge-feeding whale eat without choking, researchers report January 20 in Current Biology.

“'Think of [the plug] as a trapdoor,” says Kelsey Gil, a marine biologist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. “It’s always closed unless muscular activity pulls it out of the way.”

***

"When a whale gulps water, the pressure leads to the plug creating a tight seal over the whale’s pharynx. Then, with a mouth full of water and prey, a fin whale pushes the water out through its baleen plates before it swallows. The swallow reflex probably activates the muscle that pulls the plug up to the top of its throat, blocking the upper airways and letting prey slide into its digestive tract. The plug, which appears to be unique among mammals, may explain how other lunge-feeders eat without choking on water, the scientists say.

“'The discovery of the ‘oral plug’ answers a long-standing question about how whales can simultaneously protect their respiratory tract while opening their mouths wide to engulf prey-laden water,” says Sarah Fortune, an expert in large whales at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia,..."

Comment: An obvious arrangement designed when these whales first appeared in evolution. They could not plunge/gulp feed without it. Imagine trying to gulp feed without it.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/11/201123085322.htm

"Palaeontologists at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) and the University of Calgary in Canada have provided new proof of parallel evolution: conodonts, early vertebrates from the Permian period, adapted to new habitats in almost identical ways despite living in different geographical regions. The researchers were able to prove that this was the case using fossil teeth found in different geographical locations.

***

"Emilia Jarochowska's research focuses on evolution in different ecosystems, but rather than studying animals which are still alive today she concentrates on conodonts, organisms which lived in the sea approximately 500 to 200 million years ago and were one of the first vertebrates. The cone-shaped teeth of the eel-like organisms can still be found as micro fossils in sedimentary rocks across the globe. Scientists estimate that there were roughly 3000 different species of conodonts. 'Scientists have suspected for several years now that a certain subspecies known as Conodont Sweetognathus developed several parallel evolutionary adaptations,'

***

"'As we now have such a good knowledge of tectonics over the history of the Earth, we can rule out the possibility that organisms from these regions were ever in contact with each other.'

***

"The painstaking analysis of the morphologies in the dental elements confirmed what scientists have suspected for years: Conodont Sweetognathus adapted repeatedly in response to different food sources after emigrating to new habitats in an almost identical fashion in spite of these habitats being isolated from each other. Comparing samples from a large number of fossils over a number of years has now allowed researchers to confirm without a doubt that the teeth found in Bolivia and Russia come from organisms with a common ancestor. 'We were able to prove that two lineages of Sweetognathus in two different parts of the world followed the same developmental pattern,' Emilia Jarochowska explains. 'That is further proof for the theory of evolution -- and for the effectiveness of international collaboration.'"

Comment: I'm not sure the conclusion is correct. Plate tectonics say they were separated on different plates. Shouldn't this be simple convergence, that is parallel similar development in separate places? Conway-Morris uses convergence to point to God as the designer.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/what-butterflies-colorful-wing-p...

"Wings start out as wing disks towards the end of the caterpillar stage of metamorphosis. Pre-patterning genes like wntA activate and communicate with different molecules and genes, more or less outlining the master plan for wing pattern. Eventually, these signals determine the identity and position of each wing scale, which develop colorless in the chrysalis at first before pigments get made. (Yellow, white and red are the first colors to emerge; black and darker pigments appear later.)

***

"By disrupting the wntA gene in the mutant butterflies, researchers wanted to see how wing pattern changed. If two different species with mirror-image wings under normal conditions both had the gene knocked out, would the mutated patterns look similar across species, or would the genetic mutation lead to different end results for separate species?

"As it turned out, diverse species responded differently to the deactivated gene. Scientists noticed what Concha describes as “a boundary shifting,” often color bleeding into areas that had previously been black. Normally, Heliconius hewitsoni and Heliconius pachinus, whose habitats overlap in western Costa Rica and Panama, share three yellowish-white stripes and a central flare of red. But in the wntA mutants, H. hewitsoni had off-white coloring spread almost throughout its forewing and developed a patch of gray in its hindwing. H. pachinus, in contrast, still had a bold black stripe through its forewing and no gray.

"The discrepancy told the scientists that wntA has evolved to act differently in these distantly related species. If evolution is a maze where the exit is optimal survival, it’s like the species figured out two separate twisting-turning pathways through the genetic labyrinth to arrive at the same color pattern—a result Concha calls “a bit unexpected.” “People would more frequently expect that they would share a common pathway,” she says, especially because these creative genetic pathways cropped up in a relatively short time span; the species diverged between 14 and 10 million years ago.

"The researchers then zoomed in, using a microscope that creates close-ups 15,000 times bigger than their actual size, to look at the texture of individual scales. Different color scales have unique topography, and this closer look confirmed, Concha says, “the gene is controlling the identity of that scale.”

"In these particular butterflies, evolution had happened more speedily and less predictably than scientists tend to expect. In the Current Biology paper, Concha and her co-authors note that evolution is too complicated for generalizations. Still, she says, if evolution took two starkly different paths to pattern near-identical butterfly wings, “It could happen more than we think.”

Comment: In convergence different genes can be used to cause the same result. It must be in how the individual butterfly type expresses the gene. Perhaps a designer is at work?

DAVID: My snipe is at the current Darwinists who try to support his theories.

You actually wrote: “Not by Darwin”, but thank you for this correction. It is a constant source of irritation that both atheists and theists try to distort (not support) the theories of the agnostic Darwin!

DAVID: Appears to have developed many times in different lines of organisms:
https://phys.org/news/2019-08-biominerals-nature-recipe-evolved.html

DAVID: Another example of God using patterns of development in managing evolution.

dhw: Or another example of intelligent cells working things out in their own way, simultaneously coming up with similar solutions to similar problems, but each with their own variations to suit their particular conditions.

DAVID: You left out your theory that God made those intelligent cells to do his work.

dhw: That is not my theory. Do I have to keep repeating that I am an agnostic? The intelligent cell represents Chapter One in the history of life, and if God exists, then he designed it. The theory applies to Chapter Two, which is the history of evolution once life evolves into multicellularity, and the focus is on the work of the mechanism and not its origin.

Thank you for the other articles you have posted. As usual, I agree that chance is a very unsatisfactory explanation for the origin of such complex mechanisms. And as usual, you offer a snipe at Darwin. What a pity he never thought of the intelligent cell as a more likely source of innovation than random mutations, but 160 years ago they simply didn’t know about all the complexities of the cell, did they? However, he did forecast the opening of “a grand and almost untrodden field of inquiry…”!

My snipe is at the current Darwinists who try to support his theories.

DAVID: Another example of God using patterns of development in managing evolution.

dhw: Or another example of intelligent cells working things out in their own way, simultaneously coming up with similar solutions to similar problems, but each with their own variations to suit their particular conditions.

DAVID: You left out your theory that God made those intelligent cells to do his work.

That is not my theory. Do I have to keep repeating that I am an agnostic? The intelligent cell represents Chapter One in the history of life, and if God exists, then he designed it. The theory applies to Chapter Two, which is the history of evolution once life evolves into multicellularity, and the focus is on the work of the mechanism and not its origin.

Thank you for the other articles you have posted. As usual, I agree that chance is a very unsatisfactory explanation for the origin of such complex mechanisms. And as usual, you offer a snipe at Darwin. What a pity he never thought of the intelligent cell as a more likely source of innovation than random mutations, but 160 years ago they simply didn’t know about all the complexities of the cell, did they? However, he did forecast the opening of “a grand and almost untrodden field of inquiry…”!

DAVID: Appears to have developed many times in different lines of organisms:
https://phys.org/news/2019-08-biominerals-nature-recipe-evolved.html

DAVID: Another example of God using patterns of development in managing evolution.

dhw: Or another example of intelligent cells working things out in their own way, simultaneously coming up with similar solutions to similar problems, but each with their own variations to suit their particular conditions.

You left out your theory that God made those intelligent cells to do his work.

DAVID: Another example of God using patterns of development in managing evolution.

Or another example of intelligent cells working things out in their own way, simultaneously coming up with similar solutions to similar problems, but each with their own variations to suit their particular conditions.

https://phys.org/news/2019-08-biominerals-nature-recipe-evolved.html

"The materials that animals make from scratch to build protective shells, razor sharp teeth, load-bearing bones and needlelike spines are some of the hardest and most durable substances known. The recipe for making those materials was one of nature's closely held secrets, but powerful new analytical tools and microscopes have peeled back much of the mystery, showing, at the nanoscale, exactly how a wide array of animals use precisely the same mechanisms and starter chemicals to make the biomineral structures they depend on.

"Now, in a report published today (Aug. 19, 2019) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a team led by Pupa Gilbert, a University of Wisconsin–Madison professor of physics, shows that the recipe for making shells, spines, and coral skeletons is not only the same across many modern animal lineages, but is ancient—dating back 550 million years—and evolved independently more than once.

"The findings are important because they help stitch together an evolutionary narrative of biomineralization. The fuller picture of a process ubiquitous to animal life on our planet not only tells us something important about our world, but the details may one day be harnessed by humans to produce harder, lighter, more durable materials; tools that never need sharpening; more faithful biomedical implants; and the possibility of human intervention in things like rebuilding the world's coral reefs.

"'The finding that biomineralization evolved independently multiple times, using the same mechanism, tells us that there is a strong physical or chemical reason for doing so," says Gilbert, a world expert on the process of biomineralization. "If one organism starts making its biomineral that way, it outcompetes all others that either don't make biomineral or make them differently, it doesn't get eaten, and gets to transmit that good idea down the lineage.'"

"The new PNAS report builds on a series of seminal discoveries by Gilbert and her colleagues. In past studies, the Wisconsin physicist has shown that the process of biomineralizations works the same in vastly different classes of animals, ranging from mollusks like abalone, to echinoderms such as sea urchins, and to cnidaria, a large group of animals that includes corals, jellyfish, and sea anemones. These phyla, or broad groups of animals, have no common ancestor that was already biomineralizing, thus they must have evolved biomineralization mechanisms independently. Therefore, Gilbert says, "it is extremely surprising that when they started biomineralizing in the Cambrian (more than 500 million years ago) these three phyla started doing it in precisely the same way: using attachment of amorphous nanoparticles.'"

Comment: Another example of God using patterns of development in managing evolution

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2013/09/bats-and-dolphins-evolved-echolocation-same-way

"Dolphins and bats don't have much in common, but they share a superpower: Both hunt their prey by emitting high-pitched sounds and listening for the echoes. Now, a study shows that this ability arose independently in each group of mammals from the same genetic mutations. The work suggests that evolution sometimes arrives at new traits through the same sequence of steps, even in very different animals. The research also implies that this convergent evolution is common—and hidden—within genomes, potentially complicating the task of deciphering some evolutionary relationships between organisms.

***

" in 2010, Stephen Rossiter, an evolutionary biologist at Queen Mary, University of London, and his colleagues determined that both types of echolocating bats, as well as dolphins, had the same mutations in a particular protein called prestin, which affects the sensitivity of hearing. Looking at other genes known to be involved in hearing, they and other researchers found several others whose proteins were similarly changed in these mammals.

***

"The analysis revealed that 200 genes had independently changed in the same ways, Parker, Rossiter and their colleagues report today in Nature. Several of the genes are involved in hearing, but the others have no clear link to echolocation so far; some genes with shared changes are important for vision, but most have functions that are unknown.
“The biggest surprise,” says Frédéric Delsuc, a molecular phylogeneticist at Montpellier University in France, “is probably the extent to which convergent molecular evolution seems to be widespread in the genome."

"Genomicist Todd Castoe from the University of Texas, Arlington, is also impressed: “I’m pretty convinced they are finding something real, and it’s really exciting [and] pretty important.” However, he is critical about the way the analysis was done, suggesting that the approach found only indirect evidence of molecular convergence.

"The discovery that molecular convergence can be widespread in a genome is "bittersweet,” Castoe adds. Biologists building family trees are likely being misled into suggesting that some organisms are closely related because genes and proteins are similar due to convergence, and not because the organisms had a recent common ancestor. No family trees are entirely safe from these misleading effects, Castoe says. “And we currently have no way to deal with this.'”

Comment: So convergence is a problem for research. Not if God designed and dabbled with pre-planning or control of mutations.

As this has nothing to do with scallop eyes, I hope you won’t mind my giving it a new title.

DAVID’s comment: Evolution uses the same solutions over and over, which supports my contention that there are basic patterns that are present from the beginning, making the process of evolution easier to accomplish. Put in place by God.

dhw: Basic patterns are indeed the bedrock of common descent. I would argue that these medical treatments are evidence of the extraordinary intelligence of ants. This is not altogether dissimilar from that of bacteria, which are able to work out solutions to almost every problem that nature and humans can throw at them. Of course this extraordinary intelligence may originally have been “put in place by God”, allowing organisms to work out the solutions for themselves. That would certainly “make the process of evolution easier to accomplish”, rather than your God having to preprogramme or dabble all the problems and their solutions.

The patterns would limit the dabbling.

DAVID’s comment: Evolution uses the same solutions over and over, which supports my contention that there are basic patterns that are present from the beginning, making the process of evolution easier to accomplish. Put in place by God.

Basic patterns are indeed the bedrock of common descent. I would argue that these medical treatments are evidence of the extraordinary intelligence of ants. This is not altogether dissimilar from that of bacteria, which are able to work out solutions to almost every problem that nature and humans can throw at them. Of course this extraordinary intelligence may originally have been “put in place by God”, allowing organisms to work out the solutions for themselves. That would certainly “make the process of evolution easier to accomplish”, rather than your God having to preprogramme or dabble all the problems and their solutions.

https://phys.org/news/2018-02-antibiotics-ants.html

"Ants, like humans, deal with disease. To deal with the bacteria that cause some of these diseases, some ants produce their own antibiotics. A new comparative study identified some ant species that make use of powerful antimicrobial agents - but found that 40 percent of ant species tested didn't appear to produce antibiotics.

***

"'These findings suggest that ants could be a future source of new antibiotics to help fight human diseases," says Clint Penick, an assistant research professor at Arizona State University and former postdoctoral researcher at North Carolina State University who is lead author of the study.

"'One species we looked at, the thief ant (Solenopsis molesta), had the most powerful antibiotic effect of any species we tested - and until now, no one had even shown that they made use of antimicrobials," says Adrian Smith, co-author of the paper.

***

" The researchers found that 12 of the 20 ant species had some sort of antimicrobial agent on their exoskeletons - including some species, like the thief ant, that hadn't previously been shown to do so. But eight of the ant species seemed not to make use of antibiotics at all. Or, at least, any antimicrobials on their exoskeletons were ineffective against the bacteria used in the study.

"'We thought every ant species would produce at least some type of antimicrobial," Penick says. "Instead, it seems like many species have found alternative ways to prevent infection that do not rely on antimicrobial chemicals."

"'The fact that not all ants use antimicrobials highlights the importance of refining our search for species that actually do hold promise for biomedical research," Smith says.
"For example, the thief ant is closely related to the red imported fire ant (Solenopsis invicta), which is well known for the antimicrobial properties of its venom. But in our study, we found that the thief ant was even more effective against bacteria than the fire ant. There may be other species in the same genus that are worth studying for their antimicrobial potency."

"The researchers caution that this study is a first step, and that this study does have limitations. For example, the researchers used only one bacterial agent in their tests, meaning it is not clear how each species would fare against other bacteria.

"'Next steps include testing ant species against other bacteria; determining what substances are producing the antibiotic effects - and whether ants produce them or obtain them elsewhere; and exploring what alternative strategies ants use to defend against bacterial pathogens," Smith says. "

Comment: Evolution uses the same solutions over and over, which supports my contention that there are basic patterns that are present from the beginning, making the process of evolution easier to accomplish. Put in place by God.

Thank you for yet another extraordinary example of how organisms invent their own individual organs, skills, ways of life in the never ending quest for survival and/or improvement.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/eyes-of-the-scallop

"Researchers have obtained a detailed view of a scallop’s visual system - a sophisticated arrangement of up to 200 eyes they say is strikingly similar to a reflecting telescope. Just as the complex optics of other animals, like lobsters, have informed telescope design, these results may pave the way to the construction of novel bio-inspired optical devices for imaging and sensing applications.

"Most animals use lenses to focus light onto their retina, a light-sensitive layer of tissue coating the inner portion of the eye, though certain marine organisms (including the Pecten scallop) have adopted mirrors to create images.

"Benjamin Palmer and colleagues at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, investigated the complex organization of the scallop’s mirror. Using various microscopic imaging approaches, the scientists found that spatial vision in the scallop is achieved through the mirror's layered structure located at the back of each eye, which is fine-tuned to reflect wavelengths of light that penetrate its habitat.

"What’s more, the mirror is tiled with a mosaic of square-shaped crystals, minimizing surface defects for a clearer picture. The mirror forms images on a double-layered retina, to separately image both peripheral and central fields of view. The researchers note their work demonstrates the remarkable control the scallop exerts over the growth and arrangement of crystals to make a highly reflective mirror capable of forming functional images."

From the original article:

"Fine-tuned for image formation

"We typically think of eyes as having one or more lenses for focusing incoming light onto a surface such as our retina. However, light can also be focused using arrays of mirrors, as is commonly done in telescopes. A biological example of this is the scallop, which can have up to 200 reflecting eyes that focus light onto two retinas. Palmer et al. find that spatial vision in the scallop is achieved through precise control of the size, shape, and packing density of the tiles of guanine that together make up an image-forming mirror at the back of each of the eyes.

Science, this issue p. 1172

"Abstract

"Scallops possess a visual system comprising up to 200 eyes, each containing a concave mirror rather than a lens to focus light. The hierarchical organization of the multilayered mirror is controlled for image formation, from the component guanine crystals at the nanoscale to the complex three-dimensional morphology at the millimeter level. The layered structure of the mirror is tuned to reflect the wavelengths of light penetrating the scallop’s habitat and is tiled with a mosaic of square guanine crystals, which reduces optical aberrations. The mirror forms images on a double-layered retina used for separately imaging the peripheral and central fields of view. The tiled, off-axis mirror of the scallop eye bears a striking resemblance to the segmented mirrors of reflecting telescopes."

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6367/1172

Comment: An other superb example of convergence. Evolution is set up as an extremely inventive process producing advanced complexity.

dhw: Very interesting variation. The authors say it’s all random. According to your beliefs, it’s divinely preprogrammed or dabbled for the sake of complexity for the sake of keeping life going for the sake of producing the brain of Homo sapiens. I suggest that it’s evidence of different cell communities devising their own different ways of survival/improvement: i.e. not random, and not for the sake of Homo sapiens.

DAVID: You are sticking to your view that evolution is at random, but really not at random if cell committees do what they wish. Are the cells somehow guided? The authors have to say it is at random to keep their Darwin credentials.

dhw: You have quoted me and then claim I say the exact opposite! So look at it again: “…different cell communities devise their own different ways of survival/improvement: i.e. not random (…). You seem to think that “random” means anything your God does not personally control! Are the cells somehow guided? Yes: you claim they were divinely preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago or divinely dabbled with, and I propose they are guided by their (perhaps God-given) autonomous intelligence in their quest for survival and/or improvement.

In my view the appearance of cellular intelligent action can be from designed activties in the cell supplied by God's design. How this can be translated into cell committies designing their own future evolutionary changes is for me beyond reason. What is the source of heir intelligence? Evidence not available in science.

DAVID: You are sticking to your view that evolution is at random, but really not at random if cell committees do what they wish. Are the cells somehow guided? The authors have to say it is at random to keep their Darwin credentials.

You have quoted me and then claim I say the exact opposite! So look at it again: “…different cell communities devise their own different ways of survival/improvement: i.e. not random (…). You seem to think that “random” means anything your God does not personally control! Are the cells somehow guided? Yes: you claim they were divinely preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago or divinely dabbled with, and I propose they are guided by their (perhaps God-given) autonomous intelligence in their quest for survival and/or improvement.

QUOTE: ‘There is more than one way to make a neuron, more than one way to make a brain,’ says Moroz. In each of these evolutionary branches, a different subset of genes, proteins and molecules was blindly chosen, through random gene duplication and mutation, to take part in building a nervous system.'

DAVID’s comment: The process of evolution is designed to innovate complexity. Convergence proves it!

dhw: Very interesting variation. The authors say it’s all random. According to your beliefs, it’s divinely preprogrammed or dabbled for the sake of complexity for the sake of keeping life going for the sake of producing the brain of Homo sapiens. I suggest that it’s evidence of different cell communities devising their own different ways of survival/improvement: i.e. not random, and not for the sake of Homo sapiens.

You are sticking to your view that evolution is at random, but really not at random if cell committees do what they wish. Are the cells somehow guided? Thec authors have to say it is at random to keep their Darwin credentials.

DAVID’s comment: The process of evolution is designed to innovate complexity. Convergence proves it!

Very interesting variation. The authors say it’s all random. According to your beliefs, it’s divinely preprogrammed or dabbled for the sake of complexity for the sake of keeping life going for the sake of producing the brain of Homo sapiens. I suggest that it’s evidence of different cell communities devising their own different ways of survival/improvement: i.e. not random, and not for the sake of Homo sapiens.