Douglas J. Bender

I posted this over at ARN, but so far have gotten only humoro(u)s responses. I was wondering what evolutionary scenarios are supposed to have evolved the Venus Flytrap - any ideas?

In Christ,

Douglas

Vorkosigan

Type "Venus Flytrap convergent evolution" and watch the sites tumble out.

Douglas, it is not necessary to explain in detail the history of every single organism on earth in order for evolution to be a fact. If I couldn't give you my family history -- and as a matter of fact I cannot, since several of my great-grandparents and grandparents have anglicized names that have wiped out their origin-- would you then assume I was a special creation?

In point of fact no one has done the kind of genetic studies on Venus Flytraps that would show their exact relationship two other plants. So no one can answer your question at the moment. If you want to provide funding, I am sure someone will be willing to do the analysis.

Vorkosigan

Douglas J. Bender

Vorkosigan,

No (but that doesn't mean you aren't "special" ). However, if it was clear that there was no known natural process which could reasonably account for your existence, then either you don't exist, or you were "supernaturally" created.

In the case of the Venus Flytrap, I wonder how evolutionists' would explain its rather complex mechanism for trapping and digesting insects, when it can just as well (and does) subsist strictly via photosynthesis. That is, why would such a thing be such a survival advantage, especially in light of the fact that mammalian fetuses (fetusi?) (I think I've got this right - it's on one of the other threads, where they are discussing "unintelligent design" in Nature) have such apparently (according to evolutionists) poorly "designed" blood circulation or what-not, which in the case of the fetuses, is seemingly even sometimes fatal. Why would evolution be so "sensitive" as to "select" the Venus Flytrap mechanism, yet be so "insensitive" as to fail to "select out" the poor, and seemingly sometimes fatal, blood circulation "design" in mammalian fetuses?


In Christ,

Douglas

Vorkosigan

Vorkosigan,
No (but that doesn't mean you aren't "special" ). However, if it was clear that there was no known natural process which could reasonably account for your existence, then either you don't exist, or you were "supernaturally" created.

But we do have a process that accounts for complexity in nature; it is called evolution by natural selection.

In the case of the Venus Flytrap, I wonder how evolutionists' would explain its rather complex mechanism for trapping and digesting insects, when it can just as well (and does) subsist strictly via photosynthesis.

It cannot subsist on photosynthesis; that is why I advised you to run a search. Carnivorous plants live in nitrogen poor soils; the only way they can get nitrogen is from the bodies of insects. Carnivorous plants generally tend to be found in areas of poor soils.

The trap mechanism is discussed <a href="http://www.carnivorousplants.org/news/meeting2000/Legendre.htm" target="_blank">here</a>, although much of it is still not completely understood, of course. The trap itself is merely a modified leaf; the trap only works a few times over its life, and when its trap function fails, still makes sugars by photosynthesis.

As for the Design hypothesis, that is laughable. It was clever of the Designer to put the plant in a nitrogen-poor soil, but make it so that it still needs nitrogen to live.

Why would evolution be so "sensitive" as to "select" the Venus Flytrap mechanism, yet be so "insensitive" as to fail to "select out" the poor, and seemingly sometimes fatal, blood circulation "design" in mammalian fetuses?

Your use of the term "sensitive" is entirely subjective. Why is one more "sensitive" than the other?

The reason the poor fetal circulatory system does not get selected out is that its benefits outweigh its costs. Evolution doesn't produce perfect systems, it produces ad hoc systems that work. Like the Venus Fly-Trap, whose trap is made from a leaf.

Trivia: Darwin published a book on these plants in 1875.

Vorkosigan

scigirl

I like the title of this thread, Douglas.

I still say - if there was a divine creator of life on this earth, it sure as hell isn't the Christian God. Nope, the god (goddess?) who made life on this earth does not believe in good and evil, likes homosexuality, and has a very strange sense of humor (as evidenced by venus fly traps, hippos, etc). Doesn't sound like good ol' Yahway to me.

BTW Douglas - any comments on my last two replies to you <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=58&t=000920" target="_blank">here</a> regarding the human/chimp chromosome fusion event?

scigirl

scigirl

Oh, but I think you said it yourself quite precisely in another thread:



But seriously though, that line of reasoning is baloney. Before we understood gravity, does that mean that God was moving the planets around the sun with his hands?

Just because we don't have a natural explanation for something yet, does in fact NOT automatically mean that there isn't one.

scigirl

[ June 22, 2002: Message edited by: scigirl ]</p>

Automaton

Design of the gaps (or traps) strikes once again. Is this honestly the best you can do, Bender?

KC

I posted the title of a paper on the evolution of carnivorous plants on ARN for Douglas, but I guess he thought I was joking:

Albert VA, Williams SE, and Chase MW (1992). Carnivorous Plants: Phylogeny and Structural Evolution. Science 257: 1491-1495


However, as far as the Venus Fy Trap is concerned, several things can be noted. As previous posters have pointed out, carnivorous plants frequent nitrogen-poor areas, and insects are a good source of nitrogen. Little is actually known about the true evolution of this feature, but one hypothesis is some plants with depressions in their leaves trapped water, and insects that drowned in these depressions decompsosed, and the nitrogen was absorbed by the plants leaves.Some carnivorous species, like the Pitcher plant, developed passive traps and digestive enzymes to more rapidly digest th einsects (even so, its still very slow). Others, like the Venus Fly Trap, developed active traps.The active snapping of the leaf of the Venus Fly Trap is not unique: we can see other non-carnivorous plants with similar response mechanisms, like the Mimosa, or 'Sensitive Plant". Its possible that the Venus Fly Trap already possessed this sensitive feature, and such a mechanism trapped insects occasionally and never opened, resulting in decomposition and nutrient transfer. What we see now in the Venus Fly Trap may be a more refined version of that original mechanism.

Unfortunately we don't have a good fossil record for these plants (as far as I know), so this scenario is purely my own speculation.

Cheers,

KC

[ June 22, 2002: Message edited by: KCdgw ]</p>

Heading to Hell

Yet again someone has failed to comprehend the true power of natural selection.
Please go away and read a Richard Dawkins book (I suggest "Climbing Mount Improbable" or "Unvweaving The Rainbow" and discover how the most complex of structures can be formed in incremental steps.
Just because we cannot imagine an evolutionary pathway does not mean there isn't one. There is, for instance, the possibility that the Venus flytrap's ingeneous design was originally a mutation that benifited the plant in some other way, and that mutation was then adapted and refined for the use we see for it today.

Of course (and I apologise for stooping to the level of most creationists with this argument) if God was a loving, caring sort of guy then why on earth would he devise an elaborate device to capture innocent flies and then kill them by slow digestion? Or did he do it soley so that evolutionists would look at it nd go "Gnarly. We must be wrong."?
Hope I got my point of view across,
HtH

hyzer

Douglas - the venus fly trap is the product of design. But the designer was not your god-myth. The venus fly trap was designed by aliens! From Venus!!!