To introduce a new argument about the bugs in Darwinian evolution, I've just come across a very interesting scholarly article by Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig which can be downloaded in PDF format here.
It's well known that Darwin said: If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find no such case.
However, what's somewhat less well known is this statement of Darwin's: If it could be proved that any part of the structure of any one species had been formed for the exclusive good of another species, it would annihilate my theory, for such could not have been produced through natural selection.
The article concerns plant galls, produced by many thousands of species of insect -- in, for example, the orders hymenoptera (ants and wasps), diptera (two-winged flies), coleoptera (beetles), etc -- and in some cases other organisms such as mites and nematodes. with insects, the large majority of galls provide exclusive benefit for the insect, with none at all for the plant. In fact, the effect on the plant is deleterious and therefore couldn't have been selected for.
A gall provides food, shelter and a favourable microenvironment for the insect or its grub, but makes the plant less fit for survival: indeed, severe cases of infestation have the name of a disease: cecidiosis (after cecidium, the Latin name for a gall).
I think it's important not to confuse the situation with the effects of many disease organisms, which can cause the host organism to produce various kinds of defence structures (e.g the rashes of chicken pox). What produces the galls isn't the host organism's defence mechanism, but ultimately the insect itself's effect on the plant to foster exclusively the insect's own well-being. Galls, in and of themselves, aren't fatal for the plant except perhaps when present in very large numbers, but any galls at all are definitely deleterious because the insect is commandeering plant resources that otherwise could be used to further the plant's own well-being; infected plants do less well when compared to uninfected ones.
Nor is the situation quite like that in viruses, which inject their DNA into the host's genome and commandeer the latter's DNA machinery to reproduce themselves: the host doesn't produce any new structure (check Darwin's statement again -- it specifically refers to this). The only thing produced is viral material; the host doesn't construct anything new to further the aims of the virus. Rather, the virus simply takes advantage of structure that is already there, viz., the host genome and its cellular machinery, to generate more viral material.
Besides, the host does mount an attack on the virus, whereas the gall is not at all a defence against the offending insect; quite on the contrary, it offers a safe haven for its offspring, which will grow up to infect others of the plant's species, affecting their well-being too. Galls are of a specific size, shape, and layered construction, and may even develop exit plugs for the developing insect grubs that can only be opened from the inside.
The article is packed with detailed information that explicitly challenges Darwinism, and I won't go any further at this point except to post a few acerbic quotes from it:
...let’s analyze Mayr’s line of argumentation in detail:
“Why ... should a plant make the gall such a perfect domicile for an insect that is its enemy? Actually we are dealing here with two selection pressures.
Are there really “…two selection pressures” involved, which are in competition with each other running at different speeds? The doubtful basis for this statement is the imaginary conviction of many evolutionary biologists that "natural selection comes close to omnipotence"...
According to Charles Darwin, natural selection displays, in fact, limitless power and virtually godlike abilities for the origin of life’s “endless forms most beautiful”, saying (1859, p. 84):
“It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life. We see nothing of these slow changes in progress, until the hand of time has marked the long lapse of ages, and then so imperfect is our view into long past geological ages, that we only see that the forms of life are now different from what they formerly were.”
(1859, p. 469, 1872, p 412) What limit can be put to this power, acting during long ages and rigidly scrutinising the whole constitution, structure, and habits of each creature,—favouring the good and rejecting the bad? I can see no limit to this power, in slowly and beautifully adapting each form to the most complex relations of life.
...Let’s now contrast this somehow deceptively beautiful and alluring language of the delusion of the omnipotence of natural selection with the sobering facts nature.
For an encyclopedia article on natural selection, I stated, among other things:
...Dobzhansky’s 1937 work Genetics and the Origin of Species is generally viewed as the crystallization point for the origin and growth of the modern synthesis or neo-Darwinian theory of evolution (Lönnig, 1999a). There is hardly a better example to illustrate the key message (and, at the same time, the weaknesses) of the modern theory of natural selection than the following quotation from this pioneering work of Dobzhansky (p. 149):
With consummate mastery Darwin shows natural selection to be a direct consequence of the appallingly great reproductive powers of living beings. A single individual of the fungus Lycoperdon bovista produces 7 x 1011 spores; Sisymbrium sophia and Nicotiana tabacum, respectively, 730,000 and 360,000 seed; salmon, 28,000,000 eggs per season; and the American oyster up to 114,000,000 eggs in a single spawning. Even the slowest breeding forms produce more offspring than can survive if the population is to remain numerically stationary. Death and destruction of a majority of the individuals produced undoubtedly takes place. If, then, the population is composed of a mixture of hereditary types, some of which are more and others less well adapted to the environment, a greater proportion of the former than of the latter would be expected to survive. In modern language this means that, among the survivors, a greater frequency of carriers of certain genes or chromosome structures would be present than among the ancestors...
For agreement on and further documentation of the principle of natural selection, see the group of authors cited above, beginning with Bell (1997). However, in the 1950s, French biologists, such as Cuénot, Tétry, and Chauvin, who did not follow the modern synthesis, raised the following objection to this kind of reasoning (according to Litynski, 1961, p. 63):
Out of 120,000 fertilized eggs of the green frog only two individuals survive. Are we to conclude that these two frogs out of 120,000 were selected by nature because they were the fittest ones; or rather - as Cuenot said - that natural selection is nothing but blind mortality which selects nothing at all?
Similar questions may be raised for the 700 billion spores of Lycoperdon, the 114 million eggs multiplied with the number of spawning seasons of the American oyster, for the 28 million eggs of salmon and so on. King Solomon wrote around 1000 BC: "I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,...but time and chance happeneth to all of them" (KJV 1611).
If only a few out of millions and even billions of individuals are to survive and reproduce, then there is some difficulty believing that it should really be the fittest who would do so. Strongly different abilities and varying environmental conditions can turn up during different phases of ontogenesis. Hiding places of predator and prey, the distances between them, local differences of biotopes and geographical circumstances, weather conditions and microclimates all belong to the repertoire of infinitely varying parameters. Coincidences, accidents, and chance occurrences are strongly significant in the lives of all individuals and species. Moreover, the effects of modifications, which are nonheritable by definition, may be much more powerful than the effects of mutations which have only "slight or even invisible effects on the phenotype" (Mayr 1970, p. 169, similarly 1976/1997; see also Dawkins, 1995, 1998), specifying that kind of mutational effects most strongly favored for natural selection and evolution by the neo-Darwinian school. Confronting the enormous numbers of descendants and the neverending changes of various environmental parameters, it seems to be much more probable that instead of the very rare "fittest" of the mutants or recombinants, the average ones will survive and reproduce.
...Applied to the topic of plant galls and evolution, we can conclude that:
Natural selection – which was thought to be “daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good” – not only failed miserably and totally in all the thousands of affected plant host species, but also – against all expectations and predictions – would have been entirely efficacious, successful and victorious exclusively in the ca. 132,930 different galling insect species.
...Thus, natural selection does definitely not come “close to omnipotence”. Instead of selection reflecting "both the beauty and the brilliance in its omnipotence to explain the myriad observations of life", it has shown its total inefficiency and utter impotence to explain the myriad research results pertaining not only to plant galls but also innumerable further biological phenomena...
...Darwin had provided the basic idea of continuous evolution more than 150 years ago by postulating:
“innumerable slight variations”, “extremely slight variations” and “infinitesimally small inherited variations” (he also spoke of “infinitesimally small changes”, “infinitesimally slight variations” and “slow degrees”) and hence imagined “steps not greater than those separating fine varieties”,”insensibly fine steps” and “insensibly fine gradations”, “for natural selection can act only by taking advantage of slight successive variations; she can never take a leap, but must advance by the shortest and slowest steps” or “the transition [between species] could, according to my theory, be effected only by numberless small gradations” (emphasis added, see http://darwin-online.org.uk/).
However, for each of these postulated “insensibly fine steps”, each of the “numberless small gradations” etc. the following rule has unanimously been established by population genetics:
“Even a new mutation that is slightly favorable will usually be lost in the first few generations after it appears in the population, a victim of genetic drift. If a new mutation has a selective advantage of S in the heterozygote in which it appears, then the chance is only 2S that the mutation will ever succeed in taking over the population. So a mutation that is 1 percent better in fitness than the standard allele in the population will be lost 98 percent of the time by genetic drift.”
So, let’s keep in mind that for each of the “extremely slight variations”, each of the “steps not greater than those separating fine varieties” a mutation 1 percent better in fitness than the standard allele has to occur at least 50 times (in many cases even much more often) to have a chance to succeed in taking over a population. As for the additional remote possibility of the origin of new genes and protein folds, see, for example, Ax (2017).
Hence, in each and every case of all the different some 132,930 independently arisen galling insects species, correspondingly literally thousands of supposed long evolutionary gall histories must be postulated, all by “uncountable successive small microevolutionary steps”, “infinitesimally small inherited variations” etc. – and each of the necessary mutations had to occur separately of each other at least some 50 times on average to have a chance to succeed in a given population.
In other words: for the evolution of complex galls over innumerable intermediary links by the supposed micro-mutations “with slight or even invisible effects on the phenotype” (Mayr) in the genomes of the insects, it has to be assumed that these steps must have been successful not just once, but in each case of the individually evolving galling insect species and corresponding gall phenomena even tens of thousands of times, i.e. for each further infinitesimally small step in millions of years, eventually resulting in the present phenomena of elaborate plant galls.
I'll leave it there for now. I may have more to say in due course as I'm only about half way through this longish article. Meanwhile, I'd be interested to read any comments.
It's well known that Darwin said: If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find no such case.
However, what's somewhat less well known is this statement of Darwin's: If it could be proved that any part of the structure of any one species had been formed for the exclusive good of another species, it would annihilate my theory, for such could not have been produced through natural selection.
The article concerns plant galls, produced by many thousands of species of insect -- in, for example, the orders hymenoptera (ants and wasps), diptera (two-winged flies), coleoptera (beetles), etc -- and in some cases other organisms such as mites and nematodes. with insects, the large majority of galls provide exclusive benefit for the insect, with none at all for the plant. In fact, the effect on the plant is deleterious and therefore couldn't have been selected for.
A gall provides food, shelter and a favourable microenvironment for the insect or its grub, but makes the plant less fit for survival: indeed, severe cases of infestation have the name of a disease: cecidiosis (after cecidium, the Latin name for a gall).
I think it's important not to confuse the situation with the effects of many disease organisms, which can cause the host organism to produce various kinds of defence structures (e.g the rashes of chicken pox). What produces the galls isn't the host organism's defence mechanism, but ultimately the insect itself's effect on the plant to foster exclusively the insect's own well-being. Galls, in and of themselves, aren't fatal for the plant except perhaps when present in very large numbers, but any galls at all are definitely deleterious because the insect is commandeering plant resources that otherwise could be used to further the plant's own well-being; infected plants do less well when compared to uninfected ones.
Nor is the situation quite like that in viruses, which inject their DNA into the host's genome and commandeer the latter's DNA machinery to reproduce themselves: the host doesn't produce any new structure (check Darwin's statement again -- it specifically refers to this). The only thing produced is viral material; the host doesn't construct anything new to further the aims of the virus. Rather, the virus simply takes advantage of structure that is already there, viz., the host genome and its cellular machinery, to generate more viral material.
Besides, the host does mount an attack on the virus, whereas the gall is not at all a defence against the offending insect; quite on the contrary, it offers a safe haven for its offspring, which will grow up to infect others of the plant's species, affecting their well-being too. Galls are of a specific size, shape, and layered construction, and may even develop exit plugs for the developing insect grubs that can only be opened from the inside.
The article is packed with detailed information that explicitly challenges Darwinism, and I won't go any further at this point except to post a few acerbic quotes from it:
...let’s analyze Mayr’s line of argumentation in detail:
“Why ... should a plant make the gall such a perfect domicile for an insect that is its enemy? Actually we are dealing here with two selection pressures.
Are there really “…two selection pressures” involved, which are in competition with each other running at different speeds? The doubtful basis for this statement is the imaginary conviction of many evolutionary biologists that "natural selection comes close to omnipotence"...
According to Charles Darwin, natural selection displays, in fact, limitless power and virtually godlike abilities for the origin of life’s “endless forms most beautiful”, saying (1859, p. 84):
“It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life. We see nothing of these slow changes in progress, until the hand of time has marked the long lapse of ages, and then so imperfect is our view into long past geological ages, that we only see that the forms of life are now different from what they formerly were.”
(1859, p. 469, 1872, p 412) What limit can be put to this power, acting during long ages and rigidly scrutinising the whole constitution, structure, and habits of each creature,—favouring the good and rejecting the bad? I can see no limit to this power, in slowly and beautifully adapting each form to the most complex relations of life.
...Let’s now contrast this somehow deceptively beautiful and alluring language of the delusion of the omnipotence of natural selection with the sobering facts nature.
For an encyclopedia article on natural selection, I stated, among other things:
...Dobzhansky’s 1937 work Genetics and the Origin of Species is generally viewed as the crystallization point for the origin and growth of the modern synthesis or neo-Darwinian theory of evolution (Lönnig, 1999a). There is hardly a better example to illustrate the key message (and, at the same time, the weaknesses) of the modern theory of natural selection than the following quotation from this pioneering work of Dobzhansky (p. 149):
With consummate mastery Darwin shows natural selection to be a direct consequence of the appallingly great reproductive powers of living beings. A single individual of the fungus Lycoperdon bovista produces 7 x 1011 spores; Sisymbrium sophia and Nicotiana tabacum, respectively, 730,000 and 360,000 seed; salmon, 28,000,000 eggs per season; and the American oyster up to 114,000,000 eggs in a single spawning. Even the slowest breeding forms produce more offspring than can survive if the population is to remain numerically stationary. Death and destruction of a majority of the individuals produced undoubtedly takes place. If, then, the population is composed of a mixture of hereditary types, some of which are more and others less well adapted to the environment, a greater proportion of the former than of the latter would be expected to survive. In modern language this means that, among the survivors, a greater frequency of carriers of certain genes or chromosome structures would be present than among the ancestors...
For agreement on and further documentation of the principle of natural selection, see the group of authors cited above, beginning with Bell (1997). However, in the 1950s, French biologists, such as Cuénot, Tétry, and Chauvin, who did not follow the modern synthesis, raised the following objection to this kind of reasoning (according to Litynski, 1961, p. 63):
Out of 120,000 fertilized eggs of the green frog only two individuals survive. Are we to conclude that these two frogs out of 120,000 were selected by nature because they were the fittest ones; or rather - as Cuenot said - that natural selection is nothing but blind mortality which selects nothing at all?
Similar questions may be raised for the 700 billion spores of Lycoperdon, the 114 million eggs multiplied with the number of spawning seasons of the American oyster, for the 28 million eggs of salmon and so on. King Solomon wrote around 1000 BC: "I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,...but time and chance happeneth to all of them" (KJV 1611).
If only a few out of millions and even billions of individuals are to survive and reproduce, then there is some difficulty believing that it should really be the fittest who would do so. Strongly different abilities and varying environmental conditions can turn up during different phases of ontogenesis. Hiding places of predator and prey, the distances between them, local differences of biotopes and geographical circumstances, weather conditions and microclimates all belong to the repertoire of infinitely varying parameters. Coincidences, accidents, and chance occurrences are strongly significant in the lives of all individuals and species. Moreover, the effects of modifications, which are nonheritable by definition, may be much more powerful than the effects of mutations which have only "slight or even invisible effects on the phenotype" (Mayr 1970, p. 169, similarly 1976/1997; see also Dawkins, 1995, 1998), specifying that kind of mutational effects most strongly favored for natural selection and evolution by the neo-Darwinian school. Confronting the enormous numbers of descendants and the neverending changes of various environmental parameters, it seems to be much more probable that instead of the very rare "fittest" of the mutants or recombinants, the average ones will survive and reproduce.
...Applied to the topic of plant galls and evolution, we can conclude that:
Natural selection – which was thought to be “daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good” – not only failed miserably and totally in all the thousands of affected plant host species, but also – against all expectations and predictions – would have been entirely efficacious, successful and victorious exclusively in the ca. 132,930 different galling insect species.
...Thus, natural selection does definitely not come “close to omnipotence”. Instead of selection reflecting "both the beauty and the brilliance in its omnipotence to explain the myriad observations of life", it has shown its total inefficiency and utter impotence to explain the myriad research results pertaining not only to plant galls but also innumerable further biological phenomena...
...Darwin had provided the basic idea of continuous evolution more than 150 years ago by postulating:
“innumerable slight variations”, “extremely slight variations” and “infinitesimally small inherited variations” (he also spoke of “infinitesimally small changes”, “infinitesimally slight variations” and “slow degrees”) and hence imagined “steps not greater than those separating fine varieties”,”insensibly fine steps” and “insensibly fine gradations”, “for natural selection can act only by taking advantage of slight successive variations; she can never take a leap, but must advance by the shortest and slowest steps” or “the transition [between species] could, according to my theory, be effected only by numberless small gradations” (emphasis added, see http://darwin-online.org.uk/).
However, for each of these postulated “insensibly fine steps”, each of the “numberless small gradations” etc. the following rule has unanimously been established by population genetics:
“Even a new mutation that is slightly favorable will usually be lost in the first few generations after it appears in the population, a victim of genetic drift. If a new mutation has a selective advantage of S in the heterozygote in which it appears, then the chance is only 2S that the mutation will ever succeed in taking over the population. So a mutation that is 1 percent better in fitness than the standard allele in the population will be lost 98 percent of the time by genetic drift.”
So, let’s keep in mind that for each of the “extremely slight variations”, each of the “steps not greater than those separating fine varieties” a mutation 1 percent better in fitness than the standard allele has to occur at least 50 times (in many cases even much more often) to have a chance to succeed in taking over a population. As for the additional remote possibility of the origin of new genes and protein folds, see, for example, Ax (2017).
Hence, in each and every case of all the different some 132,930 independently arisen galling insects species, correspondingly literally thousands of supposed long evolutionary gall histories must be postulated, all by “uncountable successive small microevolutionary steps”, “infinitesimally small inherited variations” etc. – and each of the necessary mutations had to occur separately of each other at least some 50 times on average to have a chance to succeed in a given population.
In other words: for the evolution of complex galls over innumerable intermediary links by the supposed micro-mutations “with slight or even invisible effects on the phenotype” (Mayr) in the genomes of the insects, it has to be assumed that these steps must have been successful not just once, but in each case of the individually evolving galling insect species and corresponding gall phenomena even tens of thousands of times, i.e. for each further infinitesimally small step in millions of years, eventually resulting in the present phenomena of elaborate plant galls.
I'll leave it there for now. I may have more to say in due course as I'm only about half way through this longish article. Meanwhile, I'd be interested to read any comments.