Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
If Steve Pinker is right, and I hope he is, Islam will inevitably be tamed, with the more pernicious aspects of the faith either being ignored (as is happening with Catholicism) or jettisoned outright. But given the large percentage of surveyed Muslims who see the Qur’an as not only the word of God, but literally true*, as well as the many believers who favor sharia law (see below), this taming will take a long time.
In the interim, the dictates of sharia law, including death for gays, adulterers, and apostates, continue to be enforced in many places, either publicly or by vigilante justice. Is there anyone brave enough among the readers to claim that Islam has nothing to do with these beastly deeds?
If so, first read the piece on Gay Star News about ISIS’s latest execution of four gay men in Mosul by hurling them from buildings, two onto a pile of cement bricks. (This seems to be a regular event in Mosul: 9 were killed in a single day last August). Here’s a photo from last weekend’s killing, a photo that is disturbing but, I think, important in understanding what’s really happening.
Then look at these data, from the recent Pew Survey of worldwide Muslim beliefs (summary here), and try to argue that religious dictates played no role in the tragic and brutal deaths of these men. Note that Pew did not survey Muslim attitudes in countries like Saudi Arabia and Syria, where, says the Pew survey, “political sensitivities or security concerns prevented opinion research among Muslims.”
While we’re at it, let’s look at the survey’s report on men’s attitudes towards women. This cannot be due to colonialist oppression, so you decide what role religion might play:
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*From the Pew Survey; data taken only from sub-Saharan Africa:
“Across most of the African nations surveyed, more than nine-in-ten Muslims say the Quran is the word of God, and solid majorities say it should be taken literally, word for word. Only in two countries in the region – Guinea Bissau (59%) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (54%) – do smaller percentages think the Quran should be read literally. The results in those two countries are similar to the United States, where 86% of Muslims said in a 2007 survey that the Quran was the word of God, including 50% who said it should be read literally, word for word. (For more U.S. results, see Appendix A.)”
Mimicry is a recurring subject on this site, mainly because I’m fascinated by the precision with which natural selection can mold animals and plants to look like things they’re not. We’ve also seen examples of plants mimicking animals before, as in the orchids that mimic bees and wasps, fooling randy insect males into trying to copulate with the flowers (this deception promotes pollen transfer). But I think the following example is unique, for it involves plants whose seeds mimic animal feces. And the mimicry involves both the shape, size, and odor of the seeds.
What does the plant gain from this mimicry? It fools dung beetles, who apparently mistake the seeds for antelope dung. And dung beetles, as we all know, roll the dung balls away, bury them, and lay eggs in them, providing sustenance for their larvae. By fooling the beetles, the plant gets insects to not only disperse the seeds, but bury them, hiding them from seed predators and destructive fires, giving them a head start in germination.
This fascinating mimicry is described in a new article in Nature Plants (reference below, free access at link) written by a team of investigators from the Universities of Cape Town and of KwaZulu Natal in South Africa. Here’s the duplicitous plant, Ceratocaryum argenteum, a rush-like angiosperm native to Cape Province, South Africa (photo from Rosa Rubicondior).
The plant is unusual in having large rough seeds (nuts), which, as you can see in figures a-c below, are about 1.5 cm (0.6 inches) across. They’re not only large, but, to the investigators, smelled distinctly like animal feces.
(From the paper): a–c, Vertical (a) and side (b) views of a C. argenteum seed as well as one that has been cracked open (c) showing the endosperm and thick woody inner seed-coat layer and the outer tuberculate layer which together form the husk.
While studying what animals might eat these seeds, the team discovered that while de-husked seeds were eaten by the area’s main mammalian seed-eater, the striped field mouse (Rhabdomys pumilio), those mice avoided whole, husked seeds and didn’t cache or bury them. But in the course of these observations, the authors realized something else: hard seeds like these often have no odor, and in fact hard seed coats may have evolved in part to protect predators from smelling the inner seed and eating it. Thus the pungent fecal odor of C. argenteum suggested that maybe the odor was adaptive for the plant.
Sure enough, they observed individuals of the dung beetle Epirinus flagellatus treating the seeds exactly as if they were spherical pieces of animal dung: the beetle rolled away the seeds and buried them. Here’s the beetle; it’s a small one, about 1 cm. long:
Here, from Science News, is a video of the hapless beetle rolling and burying a C. argenteum seed. This is the Sisyphus of the animal world, laboriously rolling a heavy object to no avail.
To see how many of these seeds got buried, the authors put out 195 of them in 31 locations. They found that 27% of the seeds were buried whole (presumably by dung beetles) within a day, under what they call “optimal moist conditions.” That’s a pretty good way to get your seeds moved to new habitat where they don’t have to compete with other seeds, and even planted underground. One can see how a plant tricking a beetle in this way could substantially increase the spread of the plant’s genes.
When they dug up the seeds, they found no beetles or eggs associated with them (beetles tend to go underground with their dung balls, laying eggs in them and nomming some of the dung). This suggests that the beetles discover their mistake only after rolling away the seeds and burying them. I guess they just give up and return aboveground, searching for real dung.
What are the seeds’ adaptations to facilitate beetle dispersal? First, their shape. As the authors note:
C. argenteum seeds look similar in size, shape and dark brownish colouration to the dung of local small antelope (Fig. 1g). [JAC: this is feces from the bontebok, Damaliscus pygargus]. Seeds are remarkably circular (ratio of widest to narrowest seed dimension = 1.02; Fig. 1a,b) whereas scatterhoarded nuts tend to be flattened (L. sessileratio = 1.86; Fig. 1h, i). This circularity would facilitate rolling. Seeds of most of the other Ceratocaryum and closely related Cannomois species are unscented, smaller, smooth, black and have elaiosomes for ant dispersal (Fig. 1j).
Here are the figures (a and b are above; note similarity of bontebok feces in shape and size to the plant seed).
Finally, the mimicry involves, as noted above, not just size and shape but odor as well. Using gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, the authors compared the amount and composition of volatile chemicals emitted by both old and fresh C. argenteum seeds with those of other seeds in the family, and also with the dung of elands, elephants, gemsboks, impalas, and bonteboks. (The main antelopes in the area are elands and bonteboks.)
C. argenteum seeds emitted a tremendously higher amount of volatiles than did other seeds in the family (a 300-fold difference). Further, as you can see from the figure below, the chemical composition of C. argenteum seeds resembled that of dung, while related but non-rolled seeds did not. As the authors note:
Compounds emitted from the seeds that are also emitted by eland and/or bontebok dung include various acids, the benzenoid compounds acetophenone, phenol, p-cresol and 4-ethyl-phenol, as well as the sulphur compound dimethyl sulphone (Supplementary Tables 2 and 3). Most of these compounds are well known as components of the scent of herbivore dung(see also Supplementary Table 3). Similarity in scent is not due to bontebok feeding on C. argenteum as this plant is unpalatable and bontebok feed instead on various grasses (Poaceae).
(From paper): Similarity in the composition of volatile blends of seeds and animal droppings is based on non-metric multidimensional scaling. Symbols for other Restionaceae (Methods, Supplementary Table 3) that overlap are slightly offset for clarity. The composition of scent sampled from Ceratocaryum seeds is very similar (R = 0.75, P = 0.33) to that of dung of local herbivores (eland and bontebok), but differs markedly (R = 1.0, P = 0.028) from that of seeds of other Restionaceae (nested ANOSIM permutation test).
One final point: the habitat of C. argenteum is one swept regularly by fire, and, unlike many plants, this species can’t re-sprout after a fire. Thus, the ability to get its seeds buried away from the flames is highly adaptive!
This is a very nice paper that reveals a heretofore unknown kind of mimicry. And the mimicry involves not just shape and size, but odor.
The resemblance of C. argenteum seed odor to that of animal dung was obvious to the investigators, but of course what matters is the resemblance of the smells to beetles. And we can’t say that the dung smells the same to humans as it does to beetles: all we can say is that beetles and humans probably detect the same chemicals. The perception of odor, after all, is subjective.
There are probably many other cases of animal and plant mimicry that also involve odor, but aren’t so easy to detect because the odors are perceptible to insects or other beasts whose odor receptors differ from ours. After all, it was discovered only recently that the bee-and-wasp-resembling orchids have also evolved a scent resembling the mating pheromones of bees. There must be many aspects of mimicry that—as humans whose range of senses differs from that of many creatures who are duped—we simply cannot yet detect.
CODA: I was a young graduate student when I took my first trip to the tropics: a two month Organization for Tropical Studies course in ecology in Costa Rica. (It was a fantastic experience.) Before I went, one of my naturalist friends, the late Ken Miyata, gave me some advice. If you want to learn some biology, he said, go out in the forest by yourself and defecate. Then just sit near your leavings and watch them for a while. So I did it, and sat nearby for over an hour. Within a matter of five minutes, all manner of insects had descended on the pile, and soon the dung beetles came, rolling bits of scat into balls and trundling them away. Within an hour the pile was completely gone—eaten or sequestered by all kinds of beasts. Dung is a rich resource, and the rapidity of its disappearance shows not only its value to many species, but how well adapted they are at finding a small lump of excrement in the deep forest. In the tropics, nothing edible goes uneaten.
UPDATE: WBIR television reports this morining that, by a vote of 10-5, the County commission refused to consider the entire agenda, so the “Save Us, God” resolution was tabled. (Be sure to watch the news video at the site showing the supporters of the Tennessee Equality Project). But chairperson Karen Miller vows to reintroduce the resolution.
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“You cannot petition the Lord with prayer.”
–Jim Morrison, “The Soft Parade”
I’m not sure how many more posts I’ll do pointing out the kind of inane behaviors prompted by religion in the American South, for by now we all know of many: prayers at football games, Ten Commandments monuments on courthouse lawns, invocations of God’s mercy for saving lives during a tornado (while failing to blame Him for the deaths), and so on. But this one takes the cake, for it’s a serious throwback to the days of the Old Testament.
“Petitioning God’s mercy”? Yes, what we have in that item is a resolution sponsored by board chairperson Karen Miller—a reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s legalization of gay marriage. The resolution condemns the court ruling as immoral and anti-Biblical, and, bizarrely, asks God to spare that Bible-loving county when, as is inevitable, He visits His wrath upon those who dare allow people of one sex to marry others of the same sex.
It’s no surprise that Southerners often object strongly to same-sex marriage (remember the “conscientious objector” Kim Davis?), but it’s a throwback to the Bronze Age for modern Americans to importune God to spare their land from retribution. But they did indeed ask; quotes below are from The Raw Story, but emphasis is mine.
The resolution begins: “Whereas, the Governor, Attorney General, and ALL WE Blount County Legislators have sworn an oath consistent with the moral Law of God (“So Help Me God”) to uphold the Constitution of Tennessee and the Constitution of the United States; and Whereas, the fulfillment of this oath, in the American tradition, may not be read to contradict the written Constitution, Justice, Reason and higher Natural Law…” before turning to Commissioner Miller’s grievances.
“Federal judges have once again usurped powers not delegated to them, and have violated Reason, the Rule of Law and Natural Law by purporting to strike down State laws and acts of the People recognizing and protecting Natural Marriage,” it states by way of explaining that Miller believes the Supreme Court overstepped its bounds by legalizing same-sex marriage. [JAC: Clearly the real Power was delegated to God.]
Miller’s resolution calls upon “all of the Officers of the State of Tennessee, the Governor, the Attorney General, and the members of the Tennessee Legislature,” to join the commission in saving “natural marriage,” and defending “the the Moral Standards of Tennessee.”
. . . “We the Blount County Legislature call upon all of the Officers of the State of Tennessee, the Governor, the Attorney General, and the members of the Tennessee Legislature, to join us, and utilize all authority within their power to protect Natural Marriage, from lawless court opinions.”
. . . “WE adopt this Resolution before God that He pass us by in His Coming Wrath and not destroy our County as He did Sodom and Gomorrah and the neighboring cities. As the Passover Lamb was a means of salvation to the ancient Children of Israel, so we stand upon the safety of the Lamb of God to save us, ” the resolution reads. “WE adopt this Resolution begging His favor in light of the fact that we have been forced to comply and recognize that the State of Tennessee, like so many other God-fearing States, MAY have fallen prey to a lawless judiciary in legalizing what God and the Bible expressly forbids.”
It need hardly be mentioned that such resolutions, by breaching the wall between religion and government, are violations of the Constitution’s First Amendment.
There are of course some sane people in Tennessee, and The Daily Times, the Blount County local paper, reports some pushback in its long article on the resolutiion:
Ginny West Case, a retired Christian educator in the United Methodist Church, said the God of Miller’s resolution doesn’t sound like the God she knows.
“That is not a primary characteristic of the God I know and love,” she said. “I’m tired of God being used as a battering ram. The Bible, over and over, tells us God is the God of love and grace and mercy.”
Well, I’ll take that as a sign of empathy, but Ms. West is still cherry-picking the Bible to find her good God. Other places in Scripture show God as genocidal, solipsistic, and bigoted. Better to appeal to human decency than the Old Testament!
You’ll be amused to see what local Biblical scholars said when the Times contacted them about the Sodom and Gomorrah angle. Like Ms. Case, they manage to interpret the story so it’s not a punishment for homosexuality. That story is, in part, given in Genesis 19:4-5 (King James Version). There Lot proffers his hospitality to three visitors to the city, but the locals demand that the visitors be brought out so they can have anally rape them. Lot refuses and offers his daughters as a carnal substitute.
Now before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both old and young, all the people from every quarter, surrounded the house. 5 And they called to Lot and said to him, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may know them carnally.”
6 So Lot went out to them through the doorway, shut the door behind him, 7 and said, “Please, my brethren, do not do so wickedly! 8 See now, I have two daughters who have not known a man; please, let me bring them out to you, and you may do to them as you wish; only do nothing to these men, since this is the reason they have come under the shadow of my roof.”
Now one can indeed question whether God destroyed city for lack of proper hospitality or for the citizens’ misguided carnality (would God have destroyed the city if the crowd had accepted Lot’s daughters?). Indeed, Ezekiel 16:49 says this:
Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.
But since the whole thing is made up anyway, why bother to argue about the “proper” interpretation of the story? That’s like arguing with young-earth creationists about the “proper” interpretation of Genesis. After all, one could make a good case that Lot himself should have been smitten along with everyone else. This kind of witless parsing is what inevitably ensues if you try to justify morality on Biblical grounds.
Today we feature some of the backlog of photos I have from Stephen Barnard, photographer par excellence of birds, fancy cars, artiodactyls, and border collies.
In this week’s Jesus and Mo, the barmaid asks those who limn Uncaused Cause arguments—whether those arguments are cosmological or invoke A Cause that Exists of Absolute Necessity—the fatal question:
I’m chuffed that the artist said this at the bottom of the strip: “Tip of the hat to WEIT.”
And I’ll insist again: there is no way you can have confidence in the existence of anything that supposedly exists in the universe based on philosophy alone. One must always use, in large part, empirical evidence.
It’s my last Hump Day in Poland, and there’s lots to do: talks to write and look over, science papers to read, walks to take, and pies to eat. I don’t know how I manage to cram so much into one day, or so much pie into my maw. (Seriously, folks, I’m abstemious, and will be here all week.) A week from today I’ll be in Atlanta, probably deeply jet-lagged and hassled (I have a burgeoning fear of the Newark Airport, which I imagine as Customs and Baggage Hell). Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, today’s Hili Dialogue features a photo I took, catching Editor Hili just at the moment when she’s feeling peckish. But that’s not hard: 85% of her moments are just like that!
Hili: Could we stop work now and have a look at it from the kitchen?
A: Is there any other option?
Hili: No, there isn’t.
(Photo: Jerry Coyne)
In Polish:
Hili: Czy moglibyśmy teraz przestać pracować i spojrzeć na to wszystko od kuchni.
Ja: A jest inna opcja?
Hili: Nie ma.
(Zdjęcie: Jerry Coyne)
I’m not an extreme language prescriptivist, but I think two phrases bear inspection since, for both, the correct form makes more sense than the other one. Here they are:
Life has been slow and relaxed in Dobrzyn, with the usual round of walkies, workies, and nomz. Sunday dinner was a Swedish dish, potatis gratáng, which the French would call “pommes gratinée.” (Malgorzata and Andrzej lived in Sweden for 15 years, so we get many Swedish nomz.) It consisted of layers of potatoes and ham, all topped with a crispy and scrumptious crust of cheese. It was served with broccoli and a cold can of Zubr (“Bison”) beer. It was hard to maintain a proper balance between ingredients of the main dish and not take too much of that great crust!
On Monday we went to Wloclawek to do shopping and pick up new glasses for Malgorzata. The town itself is rather nondescript, distinguished only by a bakery famous for its cheesecake (you can see one at upper left). Since we already have one at home, I bought a selection of sesame pastries and pączki (polish donuts, these filled with plum and raspberry jam).
On the way back, we passed another Polish town with a weird name. The sign below literally means “Upper Hideous.” (There is also a “Lower Hideous” nearby.) Blame it on a mean feudal lord:
Back home we encountered the daughter of the lodgers upstairs, Hania (she’s five), playing with her friend Lena. Hania is in the swing. They’re adorable kids.
Dinner last night, which we traditionally have once during my visits, was “children’s food”: noodles with yogurt, sour cherries, and a bit of sugar. But it’s a traditional Polish dish: kluski z wiśniami.Don’t criticize it until you’ve tried it! The textural combination of slippery noodles and soft sour cherries, bathed in a creamy, cherry-infused yogurt, is wonderful:
After dinner it was time for Hili to get her monthly application of anti-tick fluid, which she hates. One look at the bottle and she scooted under the table in my bedroom. Andrzej and I managed to corner her, and Malgorzata did the application. Hili was very affronted!:
And on to today (Tuesday). Right after breakfast Malgorzata baked another cherry pie; she’s taking quite seriously her vow that I not have a single pieless day in Poland!
Then I had some quality time with the Princess, whom I removed from Cyrus’s bed so she could join me on the couch. I made her a little nest from a blanket (the weather has turned cold) and she slept by me, purring, while I worked. The temperature is predicted to descend to freezing tonight, and the leaves are turning rapidly.
After naptime it was time for walkies. All five resident mammals hiked together to the river bluffs. Since Andrzej forgot Cyrus’s blue plastic ball, he made do with a stick. Whether ball or stick, Cyrus shakes his catch vigorously after he retrieves it—clearly an atavistic killing behavior:
And then back home to work. Andrzej was assisted by Chief Editor Hili while Cyrus looked on, perhaps aspiring to a position on the website:
And so another day in Dobrzyn draws to a close, with the only unknown being this: “What’s for dinner?” Whatever it is, I know it will be good!
