No species mixing to make caterpillars - October 26, 2009
Butterflies did not mistakenly mate with worm-like animals to give rise to caterpillars, according to a new report that challenges previous claims to the contrary.
"It's a nutbar idea," says study author Michael Hart, an evolutionary biologist at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada. "There's just nothing to it."
In August, the Proceedings of the National Academy (PNAS) published a paper online by Donald Williamson, a retired zoologist at the University of Liverpool, UK, arguing that at some point in the distant past a larva-less insect hybridized with a velvet worm, and the resulting descendants now develop successively through stages that resemble both parents. The study — which was 'communicated' by academy member Lynn Margulis, of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, via the soon-to-be-obsolete 'Track I' submission route, which allows academy members to handle the review of a colleague's manuscript — became embroiled in controversy after questions were raised about the peer review process (see 'Row at US journal widens').
The paper's print publication was suspended for more than a month, but it was ultimately given the green light in mid-October by the PNAS editorial board. The journal also plans to publish a short 'letter to the editor' by Gonzalo Giribet, an invertebrate zoologist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a response from Williamson. In addition, PNAS today published a full-length counter-argument to Williamson's hypothesis.
Williamson's paper offered little direct evidence for hybridization other than physical resemblances between caterpillars and velvet worms. But he predicted that insects with caterpillar larvae should show genetic similarities to the worm-like invertebrates, and he called on genomicists to test his ideas. Now, two non-academy members — Hart and fellow evolutionary biologist Richard Grosberg, of the University of California, Davis — have taken Williamson to task and turned to published data on genome sizes and contents to rubbish his proposals.
To prepare the new paper — a direct, 'Track II' submission for which the PNAS editorial board assigns an academy member expert to organize the review process — Hart and Grosberg spent "a few hours trolling the web for data and observations that were directly relevant to [Williamson's] specific predictions", says Hart. First, they amassed genome size data based on the total amount of DNA, which is measured by weight in picograms using cytological methods. They showed that insects that lack caterpillar-like larvae have relatively larger genome sizes than insects that have the grub-like stage in their life cycle. (Williamson predicted the opposite trend.)
The authors also note that caterpillar-bearing bugs have fewer genes than other arthropods, and that genome sequence comparisons do not indicate a close evolutionary relationship between velvet worms and metamorphic insects.
Williamson was unconvinced by these arguments. "The results [from DNA weight measurements] seem to bear little or no relationship to the number of genes in base-pairs," he says. "I hope some geneticist will point out the difficulty of interpreting the picogram figures." He notes, for example, that a mountain grasshopper has nearly 200-fold more DNA than a hessian fly as measured by weight but it does not have that many more functional genes.
Hart says that Williamson's defense is hypocritical. He points out that Williamson himself relied on genome weight data as evidence of larval transfer in his paper. "How can [Williamson] reasonably object to our use of the same type of data in response?" asks Hart.
Williamson also discounts the gene number comparisons because all the insect species with sequenced genomes are metamorphic, and there are no comparable sequences for non-metamorphic insects or velvet worms.
Hart is unsurprised that Williamson is sticking to his guns. "I expect he'll continue to advocate for the idea," he says. "I don't suppose this will be the end of it."
Image: Velvet worm via Wikimedia Commons
Comments
Hart and Grosberg spent "a few hours trolling the web for data and observations that were directly relevant to [Williamson's] specific predictions", says Hart.
Trolling the web, eh? How to make yourself unpopular with your peers.
Posted by: Bob O'H | October 26, 2009 10:23 PM
I think they gave it only a few hours of web trolling because that's all the paper deserved.
Posted by: Chad | October 27, 2009 03:13 PM
RE: How to test the “unbelievable” Williamson hypothesis!?
I think that the Williamson hypothesis can only be further tested in the following way:
1) by comparing the gene expressions of the homeobox -- or specifically -- the hox genes in velvet worms, and in caterpillar-like and grub-like larvae of the metamorphic insects;
and not 2) by pseudo-genetic reductionism -- of attempting to compare the genome size data of these organisms, as apparently as both the “neo-Darwinism reductionists” Hart and Grosberg, have had suggested in their very unscientific arguments -- after a few hours of their “expertise” trolling and amassing the “comparable genome size data” on the Internet, as their “relevant disproved observations” to Williamson's specific predictions, in his hybidogenetic hypothesis, in metamorphic insects!?
Best wishes, Mong 10/27/9usct1:19p; practical science-philosophy critic; author "Decoding Scientism" and "Consciousness & the Subconscious" (works in progress since July 2007), Gods, Genes, Conscience (iUniverse; 2006) and Gods, Genes, Conscience: Global Dialogues Now (blogging avidly since 2006).
Posted by: Mong H Tan, PhD | October 27, 2009 07:16 PM