Knowledge

Malcolm Forbes -

Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.

UC Berkeley News: Researchers witness natural selection at work in dramatic comeback of male butterflies

By Sarah Yang of Media Relations at UC Berkeley News [July 12, 2007]

BERKELEY – An international team of researchers has documented a remarkable example of natural selection in a tropical butterfly species that fought back - genetically speaking - against a highly invasive, male-killing bacteria.

Within 10 generations that spanned less than a year, the proportion of males of the Hypolimnas bolina butterfly on the South Pacific island of Savaii jumped from a meager 1 percent of the population to about 39 percent. The researchers considered this a stunning comeback and credited it to the rise of a suppressor gene that holds in check the Wolbachia bacteria, which is passed down from the mother and selectively kills males before they have a chance to hatch.

"To my knowledge, this is the fastest evolutionary change that has ever been observed," said Sylvain Charlat, lead author of the study and a post-doctoral researcher with joint appointments at the University of California, Berkeley, and University College London. "This study shows that when a population experiences very intense selective pressures, such as an extremely skewed sex ratio, evolution can happen very fast."

The researchers' findings are described in the July 13 issue of the journal Science.

Charlat pointed out that, unlike mutations that govern such traits as wing color or antennae length, a genetic change that affects the sex ratio of a population has a very wide impact on the biology of the species.

It is not yet clear whether the suppressor gene emerged from a chance mutation from within the local population, or if it was introduced by migratory Southeast Asian butterflies in which the mutation had already been established.

"We'll likely know more in three years' time when the exact location of the suppressor gene is identified," said Charlat. "But regardless of which of the two sources of the suppressor gene is correct, natural selection is the next step. The suppressor gene allows infected females to produce males, these males will mate with many, many females, and the suppressor gene will therefore be in more and more individuals over generations."

Charlat worked with Gregory Hurst, a reader in evolutionary genetics at University College London and senior author of the paper. Descriptions of all-female broods of H. bolina date back to the 1920s, but it wasn't until 2002 that Hurst and colleagues first identified Wolbachia bacteria as the culprit behind the distorted sex ratio.

"We usually think of natural selection as acting slowly, over hundreds or thousands of years," said Hurst. "But the example in this study happened in a blink of the eye, in terms of evolutionary time, and is a remarkable thing to get to observe."

The researchers noted that bacteria that selectively kill male offspring are found among a range of arthropods, so what was seen in this study may not be unusual, despite the fact that it has never before been described in the scientific literature. Previous research has revealed some of the extraordinary ways in which insects adapt to the pressures inherent when nearly all its members are of one gender.

Notably, Charlat and Hurst reported in an earlier study that, thanks to Wolbachia, when males of H. bolina, commonly known as the Blue Moon or Great Eggfly butterfly, become a rare commodity, the number of mating sessions for both males and females jumps, possibly as an attempt to sustain the population despite the odds.

Charlat added that the relationship between Wolbachia and the Blue Moon butterfly illustrates the so-called Red Queen Principle, an evolutionary term named after a scene in Lewis Carroll's famous book, "Through the Looking-Glass," in which the characters Alice and the Red Queen run faster and faster at the top of a hill, only to find that they remain in the same place.

"In essence, organisms must evolve or change to stay in the same place, whether it's a predator-prey relationship, or a parasite-host interaction," said Charlat. "In the case of H. bolina, we're witnessing an evolutionary arms race between the parasite and the host. This strengthens the view that parasites can be major drivers in evolution."

The researchers focused on the Samoan islands of Upolu and Savaii, where in 2001, males of the Blue Moon butterfly made up only 1 percent of the population. In 2006, the researchers embarked on a new survey of the butterfly after an increase in reports of male-sightings at Upolu.

They found that males that year made up about 41 percent of the Blue Moon butterfly population in Upolu. They hatched eggs from 14 females in the lab and confirmed that the male offspring from this group were surviving with sex ratios near parity. For Savaii, the population was initially 99 percent female at the beginning of 2006. By the end of the year, researchers found that males made up 39 percent of the 54 butterflies collected.

The researchers tested for the continued presence of Wolbachia in the butterflies. By mating infected females with males from a different island that did not have the suppressor gene, they also confirmed that the bacteria were still effective at killing male embryos. The male-killing ability of the bacteria emerged again after three generations. Thus, they could rule out a change in the bacteria as an explanation for the resurgence of the males in the butterfly populations studied.

The field work for this study was based out of the UC Berkeley Richard B. Gump South Pacific Research Station on the island of Moorea in French Polynesia. The Gump station is part of the Moorea Coral Reef Long Term Ecological Research Site, one of 26 sites funded by the National Science Foundation to study long-term ecological phenomena.

The Gump Research Station is managed through UC Berkeley's Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research. George Roderick, UC Berkeley professor of environmental science, policy and management and curator of the Essig Museum of Entomology, is a former director of the station, and Neil Davies is the station's executive director and research scientist. Both Roderick and Davies are co-authors of this study.

Other study co-authors are Emily Hornett of University College London, James Fullard of the University of Toronto at Mississauga, and Nina Wedell of the University of Exeter in Cornwall, England.

The U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.K. Natural Environment Research Council and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada helped support this research.

Awareness!

Albert Einstein -

Somebody who only reads newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else.

Commentary: "On the future and the importance of science"

Surfing the net I found an interesting article. Written by Ben Brothers, it focuses on his idea of the future and the importance of science (obviously given the title of his article). You can find his original article here, and excerpts quoted throughout my blog post with commentary...

Brothers begins his article with a very valid hypothesis (I use hypothesis almost comically here given the material, but the definition applies perfectly): "All generations create their future..." Given our theories on cause and effect, this is certainly true. To understand the cause and foresee its effects allows us to literally construct our future. Even a dog can, at some level, ascertain the effects on its owner if it chooses to dig holes in the lawn. After foreseeing the effect the dog will choose to dig, or not to dig. We can evaluate much more.

Given the same example (which is used loosely this time... In fact, lets replace 'dog' with 'son', and 'owner' with 'father'), the son choosing to dig in the yard has much more to consider before weighing out the effects. Proposing that he is strictly not allowed to dig, the son may consider filling up the hole after he is satisfied and covering it with leaves. Only if there are leaves that would exist there to cover the scar, because if this is not a valid solution he could potentially cause more problems with his father: not only breaking the rules, but lying about it too. Maybe there is a large stone that could be moved? He could dig there, and move the stone back. This still poses the same problems of the last example. What if the son expresses his interests in digging to his father, and asks to be allowed a small concealed place where he may be allowed to dig? Two things: He may be given his digging place and rewarded for approaching him respectfully; or he may not be allowed to dig, yet he may gain understanding as to 'why not' and still be rewarded for approaching him respectfully.

Maybe I have gone too deep into the subject, but this really engages your mind before you go on into the article. The fact that this idea shapes us... So the article begins...

All generations create their future, and ours is no exception. But the idea that the future must be better than the past is relatively new. For most the history of our species, the future offered no hope for a happier life. There were new kings to worship and new wars to fight, but most of all, things were the same. There really was nothing new under the sun. What we knew was based on tradition and ritual. Things were done a certain way because they had always been done that way. Those who remembered and kept these rituals became powerful scribes and priests, who would often challenge new ideas as a threat to their power.

But twenty-five hundred years ago, in a place called Ionia, there was something new. We discovered knowledge. Of course, man had discovered things and invented things before, but this was a fundamental shift in the way he thought. Knowledge was no longer a static thing. Knowledge was dynamic. It was less a body of what we knew, and more a way of thinking. It was bred in the confidence that we could find out new things, ask more insightful questions and reveal the secrets of the universe.

Of course, here the author refers to the historical territories of Greek settlements in present-day Turkey. It was home to the notable Ionian School of Philosophy, which yielded scholars such as Anaximander, Anaximenes, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, Diogenes Apolloniates, Archelaus, Hippon and Thales. It was also the place of origin for a distinct school of art that would carve the path for Athens' brilliant artistic development. This was a region of open thought and thriving knowledge that unbarred doors to many advancements for science, and thus the future. Would you know that the these ideas were established as far back as 500 BC? However, you, as I, can probably attest to the generality that not all new ideas are welcomed with open arms.

Religious philosophy also existed widely. Interestingly, Platonic philosophy gave way to a very unique form of religion known as Neoplatonism. It was defined by a hierarchy structure of gods with a single god on top who was good and ineffable. Evil (or darkness) did not exist unless there was an absence of good (or light). Because things exist, they were good. Evil was there only if what existed was flawed, meaning that it missed something good that it should have. This idea set the path for many religious scholars to accept, what was at the time, a very similar philosophy called Christianity. Neoplatonism had influenced the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic religious philosophers during their religious development. However it would not be long before even the Neoplatonism philosophy was labeled 'pagan', along with the very culture that gave rose to it, and the Western Roman Empire would fall. Call it politics, maybe religion, or even name it religious politics, the ideas were heavily suppressed...

The Middle Ages is what it is referred to now. A period of time between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance. The age experienced heavy Christian education by the reorganized English church, which held powerful seats in the political arena. Books were written, and teachers were employed by the English church; and for centuries, 'pagans' who did not baptize were sentenced to death by the right of the English church. The very same 'pagan' philosophies that influenced their Christian ideals.

The Middle Ages also experienced the Crusades. Religious wars, preached by Popes, designed to claim Jerusalem from Islamic control. The very same Islamic people who were influenced similarly by Neoplatonism when developing their own religious philosophies. The ideals were similar; therefore, the threat of power remained. An Order known as the Knights Templar was created by the Western Christian church. Among the best fighting unit in the Crusades, it also invented an early form of banking that would be controlled by the Church.

During this time in Western Europe, governed largely by religious politics, Islamic philosophy, science, and technology became far more advanced. This would largely be due to the Islamic scholars that preserved and developed from the early philosophies that influenced them. It was known as the Islamic Golden Age and would later be taught to Western Europeans. Soon afterwards, cathedrals and monasteries would no longer be the only source of education. Universities would open in European cities, and the ability to read and write became available to many classes of citizens.

But the Middle Ages are not over... It would take the division of the unified Church to end the age for Europe. The Western European Church now existed in such a way that it affected the daily lives of everyday people. Controversy rose when corruption was suspected. This was in part due to the monetization of indulgences, or a monetary fee paid to fully or partially remove the punishment for a sin that has already been forgiven. These indulgences became large revenue for the Church, which paid money all the way up to the pope. The unified Church of the Middle Ages, after being perceived as a corrupted institution, would divide into Catholicism, Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Anabaptism.

What happened to all of the classical ideas? Suppressed they may have been, but they were not gone. A rebirth of these philosophies would reform Europe.

Yet copies of the old works remained, and eventually the ideas of reason and rationalism again triumphed. And they worked. So many new creations of art and science and literature appeared that the time was known as the Renaissance, a rebirth, and as the Enlightenment. We now know much more about our world and our universe, than any other species that has ever lived on the Earth. And because of that knowledge, all of us are better off. Our future, if we pursue it wisely and knowingly, seems very bright to me. But to do so, we must remain true to the tenets of rational scientific thought that have brought us so far.

Unfortunately, there is no assurance that we will do so. There are two philosophies, two ways of looking at the world, that are absolutely fundamental to rational thought. These are openness and skepticism. We need to listen to, to consider every theory that is proposed. We can't write off ideas merely because we do not like the source, or because we hadn't thought of them before, or because we do not approve of their implications, or because we are afraid of uncertainty.

But we also need to distinguish between sense and nonsense. Many ideas can be proven wrong. Let's reject those. Many of them are constructed in such a way as to be invulnerable to disproof. These are equally worthless. (That is not to say they are necessarily wrong, an entirely different argument. I mean only that we cannot use them to explore further into that which we do not know.)

We need to subject a new theory to the most critical tests. Does it explain all of our observations? What other explanations can there be? Where does it improve upon our current understanding? What are its weaknesses? What experiments can we devise to see that this theory works but others do not? Can we use this theory to predict some other phenomenon, and then see if it works like we think? This enterprise, of course, is called science.

We should not forget about the importance of science in our future, and for the future of further generations. How will we harness energy? What new medicine can we create? What diseases can we cure? What new life will we discover? "All generations create their future..."

In a future that will be increasingly technological and scientific, it is vital that this knowledge be shared by all. The man who doesn't learn about the world he lives in will not be able to succeed in it very often. Power becomes concentrated in the hands of the few, and the many lose. In crude terms, this is the danger we face in the future if we fail to reform in the present.

On the other hand, once someone learns to approach a problem logically, he rarely falls back on superstition or irrationality. And the man who approaches the scientific world logically is likely to do the same to other endeavors. Imagine the benefits if Congress, when debating a new law, consulted the experts in the field with the honest goal of reaching the best solution, instead of with the goal of finding support for a position already chosen, or for pandering for votes. And imagine voters looking for this, and removing those politicians who insult their intelligence.

I see no downside to an increase in our expenditures on science and technology and the future. But I see enormous pitfalls for the nation that commits itself to short-sighted policies like cutting funding to the National Science Foundation, or to renewable energy research, or to NASA. And the nation that refuses to spend money on education may save some money now, but in the long run it will lose far more than it will ever realize.

There is much that currently lies just beyond what we know. Amazing discoveries await us in every field, from genetics to astronomy, from the smallest genes to the most distant galaxies. Solutions to so many of man's problems are within our reach, if we dedicate ourselves to their pursuit. Jacob Bronowski once called this pursuit the ascent of man. He was right. There are no insurmountable barriers in our way; the future is what we make it.

The quest for knowledge that is available in this world almost seems to go away with age... I think of how interesting the world was when I was young. The vivid details only sparked questions and a powerful thirst to know even more. I thank organizations like The Discovery Channel for doing a great job at continuing to fuel my aging thirst! The older I get, the harder it is to satisfy. They educate with science, and promote other organizations that work toward better education and a positive future.

Check out their beautiful shows (which are now being shot in chrystal clear high definition for a truly stunning experience) and their science gear (scientific learning for kids, and even high powered telescopes for star gazing unlike anything you've ever experienced).