Science versus Pseudoscience, or, Creationism versus Darwinism
(alternate title) The tan strepsipteran ran in haste to leap into space lest it lose its place in the larval nest of the insect pest in which it is a guest but at Whose behest?
I am going to give us a nice piece of meat to gnaw on here. First I will give you a secular science article concerning "strepsipteran", that world-famous parasitical insect. I may reach out to Karl Priest to comment later on this. For now, as oftentimes I do, my words will be in this color when I comment within an article. The article itself in both cases will be normal copy.
We begin with a News in Science article:
These fascinating creatures, known to insect specialists as Strepsiptera (from the Greek meaning ‘twisted wing’), are virtually unknown to the public. However, with about 400 known species, these insects are quite widespread. But the biology of very few has been studied in detail.
Strepsiptera are parasites of other insects—such as bugs, flies, cockroaches, wasps, bees, grasshoppers, and more. Adult males, rarely more than four millimetres long, are free-living and winged. Adult females, on the other hand, are quite peculiar in that they are grub-like (see Figure 1), and generally never leave their host. Host insects are normally rendered sterile by their uninvited ‘guests.’
The only visible parts of the parasite are the head and thorax, which poke out between two abdominal segments of the host (photo right), with the arrow showing the protruding part of the parasite.
These larvae are a story in themselves. Shaped vaguely like a woodlouse, these triungulinids, as they are called, are very active little fellows. They are a form of larva almost unique to the Strepsiptera.1 Figure 2 gives you an idea of what one type of these looks like.
These creatures have a fascinating life cycle. Typically, the winged and free-living male insect starts seeking out a female as soon as he emerges from his pupa and leaves his host. Remember, the females are not free-living, but remain forever imprisoned, cemented into their obliging host. Just how the male is able to find an insect which is playing host to a female strepsipteran, (which has to be of the same species) is a question which no one so far has been able to answer. Perhaps the complex and bizarre-looking antenna of the male plays some part in this.
Cutting a long story short, the mated female finally ‘gives birth’ to her brood—usually about one thousand infants! This she does while still attached to her host, as she always is. The larvae make their way to the outside world by means of a special canal that opens at the front end of the mother. This in itself is remarkable. In all other insects, the egg-laying or birth canal is located at the back end of the female. How many disasters would have occurred while such a reversal took place, if evolution ‘created’ this feature?
Indeed! Another amazing Darwinist feat, an insect that realizes it needs to evolve to reverse the normal birth canal pattern and also some nice abdomen-dissolving saliva as well as figure out the entire process of jumping up to hitch a ride, not entering the rider but instead waiting for the larvae they have already figured out could be waiting for them while they cast lots to decide which sex gets to stay buried and which one has to leave "home" and fly/jump? There are so many processes and systems that have to work in concert both in the twisted wing and the host...as a design, it is ingenious and interesting and even fascinating and perhaps a deliberate clue to His creation of the existence of a Creator. As a chance occurrence it strains the logic far past its limits.
Well, what happens next? The problem that confronts the newly-hatched triungulinids is how to find a new host.
How do they do this? Well, as soon as they can, these little ‘lice’ alight from the insect host on which they began their existence. This presumably takes place when the host makes a pit-stop on a flower. Having disembarked, they now loiter on the flower until it is visited by another insect. God has programmed their microscopic computer brain so they can literally jump aboard any flying insect that alights on the flower.
Again, an assumption. A creationist credits remarkably complex processes and designed features to a Designer, which is of course much more logical than "it just happened and we have no idea how" that is at the bottom of every Darwinist assumption. Once Darwinists get more specific they get blown out of the water, which is why Dr. Mastropaolo is never challenged directly. Darwinists like to keep their money far more than they trust any evidence they claim to possess (and miserly they are, since they never share it)! Here the implications of all these features working together to allow this behavior are understood by the writer to be a designed system, which is the most logical conclusion one could reach. Darwinists do not want to go here, because they have a giant wall entitled ANYTHING BUT GOD that precludes them from following such evidence to its logical end.
The photos show three males of the Strepsiptera (twisted-wing) insects. Only the males have wings and fly (see text). Photo ‘A’ has the scientific name Bohartilla joachimscheveni, after the well-known creationist scientist Dr Joachim Scheven who first discovered it in amber,1 and who kindly supplied all photos for this article.
Although not much bigger than a speck of dust, these larvae can spring up to three centimetres (more than one inch) in one leap—a mind-boggling ability. Most of these tiny larvae perish soon after hitching a ride simply because they have caught the wrong plane. But enough of them hop on to the correct host to keep the species flourishing.
BTW how do fleas generally find a host? They jump up onto them. Both strepsipteran and flea can jump many times their own height in order to obtain access to a host. Did one evolve from the other? Or is such behavior a design feature often integrated into God-created organisms? Salmon need to be able to jump far beyond one body length in order to go upstream to mate in the waters that spawned them. Are they descended from fleas? Common Design is a good answer. There is design found in structure and in function and in behavior. It dominates the world of living things.
This is not the end of the story, but almost just the beginning. The triungulinid is not really interested in the animal it has boarded, even if it is the correct kind. It is using this insect as nothing more than an airborne taxi. It is hoping that its pilot will take it to the pilot’s nest, if it has one. If it does—and the mathematical chances of this happening are very small, which is why so many are produced—it disembarks in the nest. Here it immediately, instinctively, seeks out any larvae (‘grubs’) that its taxi driver has been nurturing.
In order to keep the life cycle going, it has to get inside the grub. How does it do this? One might think it would simply crawl into its mouth, or one of its breathing holes. But no. It enters by literally dissolving a hole in the grub’s skin. It exudes large quantities of a special fluid from its mouth, so that it soon becomes completely immersed in it.
So let us get this straight...the newborn strepsipteran jumps off a wasp, let us say. It lands on a flower. It hops on another wasp. It jumps off of THAT potential host and hopes to find a larvae to invade in that wasp's nest. Three hops and a quick burrow into an abdomen? Sure, that is behavior that natural selection thought up by itself. (sarcasm alert)
This substance hardens on the outside in three to four minutes, while at the same time dissolving a hole in the skin of the host grub. The triungulinid is quite active while immersed in this fluid, contracting and expanding its body in an effort to break through the softened skin of its future host. Eventually it succeeds.
[Editor’s note: Although this is a remarkable design feature, would this have existed in a perfect world before the Fall? We can say with confidence that there was no pre-Fall death or bloodshed among self-conscious animals (those which have what the Bible calls a nephesh [Hebrew] or life principle). Plants do not have a nephesh, although biologically alive (Gen. 1:30). Vertebrates like rabbits, lions, and so on clearly do. Do creatures like insects, that function only by instinct, not conscious planning, also have nephesh life? Possibly not. There may be insufficient information to determine from Scripture where to make the distinction for certain. Note that the triungulinid’s host does not die, and seems not to be conscious of any pain or suffering in this process as far as can be determined. For more discussion on this intriguing question, see the chapter 6: ‘How did Bad Things Come About?’ in The Answers Book.]
Bible information: We know that the Genesis account has Noah only taking vertebrates that were land dwellers or birds aboard on the Ark. Death entered into the world after Adam and Eve sinned (Genesis chapter three) but certainly all organisms before the fall required nourishment. Plants were offered as food to all other organisms but the question remains concerning insects. Were insects considered amongst the organisms to be fed or primarily to be food? In a world before the death of self-aware nephesh kinds we must test and study but have no direct instruction from God either way. Since it appears that plants and insects do not feel pain or experience suffering, it could well be that insects were an original food source along with plants. Creation scientists have been studying both the ability of plants to move and seeking to determine with certainty if any insects actually suffer pain.
Once inside, another remarkable thing occurs. Here the triungulinid casts off its outer skin. What emerges from the cast-off skin is not an active little triungulinid, but a legless maggot-like creature. What a wonder! Such complete transformation (as when, somewhat in the reverse direction, a caterpillar becomes a butterfly) is called metamorphosis. This ‘maggot’ lives in the body cavity of the host grub (of a bee, beetle, etc.), absorbing food from its benefactor’s blood. Usually it passes the entire winter in this secure house.
When spring comes, the miracle of life continues. Generally, both the host insect and its free-loading tenant metamorphose simultaneously, the one inside the other. (Obviously, the strepsipteran doesn’t kill its host.) When the host insect emerges from its winter retreat, its little companion can be observed jutting out from between the abdominal plates of its landlord.2 And so the life cycle of this ingenious example of God’s handiwork continues.
It’s also worth noting that strepsipterans have a unique eye design which is closer to that of a trilobite’s than to any other insect’s. This is a difficulty for evolutionists since they believe that all insects share a common ancestor.
"A difficulty" is an understatement. As with a multitude of organisms, once we take a closer look at the composition of the creature and the activities of said creature, we continually find inexplicably preexisting information/knowledge/instinct to do remarkable things and we find such efficient designs in many cases that we are still trying to copy them for our own use. Furthermore, there is apparently no discernible difference in the "twisted wings" aka strepsipterans that are found preserved in amber and those that are living today.
It is also remarkable that such a metamorphosis in any organism is rather difficult to explain from the Darwinist perspective, it is exponentially harder to explain how two unrelated organisms not only live in symbiosis but metamorphose in harmony as well. Since there is not a connection between them in the sense of DNA/cellular reproductive processes then such harmonic symbiosis is impossible squared. With twisted wings, they go from flying creature to a grub form instead of the other way around. Remarkable.
The strepsipteran’s has a compound eye with very large facets that sample larger chunks of the visual field. 75% of the insect’s brain is devoted to processing this extra information. The images produced are inverted, but the insects also have chiasmata, or X-shaped nerve crossings, that turn the image right-way-up. (See Raspberry eye looks like living fossil.)
Believe it or not!
So you see that the creationist author had no qualms citing a Darwinist source for additional information, not being afraid of the argument. Both Darwinist and creationist authors share assumptions with the readers. Science must make some assumptions in order to pursue answers. At some point the assumptions must be tried and tested. In the case of the twisted wing insects, they provide innumerable problems for the Darwinist paradigm, with not only symbiosis but harmonic metamorphosis without sharing of a central information source. Furthermore, the trilobite-like eye is unique to two creatures, this kind of insect and the trilobite, an aquatic arthropod that would certainly not be directly related. The logical common denominator is a shared design source rather than a shared ancestry or an invented line of descent from trilobite to
I am going to give us a nice piece of meat to gnaw on here. First I will give you a secular science article concerning "strepsipteran", that world-famous parasitical insect. I may reach out to Karl Priest to comment later on this. For now, as oftentimes I do, my words will be in this color when I comment within an article. The article itself in both cases will be normal copy.
We begin with a News in Science article:
Raspberry eye looks like living fossil
Monday, 8 November 1999 |
 |
A highly unusual type of multi-faceted eye - resembling a tiny raspberry and not seen since trilobites disappeared hundreds of millions of years ago - has been discovered in a tiny parasitic insect.
Scanning electron micrographs show a) head of the strepsipteran b) eye of a fruit fly c) eye of the strepsipteran Pic: Cornell University
Scanning electron micrographs show a) head of the strepsipteran b) eye of a fruit fly c) eye of the strepsipteran Pic: Cornell University
picture credit (notice that a mantis shrimp has a structural resemblance to a strepsipteran? Design template? The mantis shrimp picture is mine and not from the article).
I could be unkind like Jon Woolf and label the opening statement a "lie", since the author certainly cannot prove that trilobites disappeared hundreds of millions of years ago. The evidence that they perished in the Noahic Flood is better supported by the evidence in my opinion but certainly this author cannot make this claim with any authority!
Cornell University biologists report, in the latest edition of Science, their discovery that the composite eyes of the parasitic insect, strepsipteran, have only 50 facets compared with the compound eyes of most insects which have many hundreds of lens facets, each sampling only one small point in the insect's visual field.
"No other insect that we know of has eyes quite like this," said Ron Hoy, professor of neurobiology and behavior at Cornell and co-author, with Elke Buschbeck and Birgit Ehmer, of the report. "The only place one may see a comparable eye structure is in the fossils of some kinds of trilobites," he says, referring to the extinct arthropods that lived in shallow seas during the Paleozoic era.
Cornell University biologists report, in the latest edition of Science, their discovery that the composite eyes of the parasitic insect, strepsipteran, have only 50 facets compared with the compound eyes of most insects which have many hundreds of lens facets, each sampling only one small point in the insect's visual field.
"No other insect that we know of has eyes quite like this," said Ron Hoy, professor of neurobiology and behavior at Cornell and co-author, with Elke Buschbeck and Birgit Ehmer, of the report. "The only place one may see a comparable eye structure is in the fossils of some kinds of trilobites," he says, referring to the extinct arthropods that lived in shallow seas during the Paleozoic era.
I hope you noticed the second assumption. Ron Hoy has no proof that there ever was a "Paleozoic era" but rather is presenting someone's educated-in-the-1800's guess. Typical Darwinist thinking.
Fewer facets does not mean poorer vision, the Cornell biologists believe. The strepsipteran lenses are larger, and each has about 100 receptors, forming an individual retina behind each lens. According to the investigators, this kind of eye is well equipped to sample not points but "chunks" of the visual field, greatly improving visual capability.
"This composite lens arrangement allows the insect to have many more photoreceptors in a given area than would be possible with a compound eye. If you only have so much space on your head for eyes and you want to gather the most light, you want a composite lens eye," says Buschbeck. "The larger lenses of the strepsipteran insects are similar to a large lens of a camera, large insect lenses admit more light, support more photoreceptors and permit higher resolution."
Fewer facets does not mean poorer vision, the Cornell biologists believe. The strepsipteran lenses are larger, and each has about 100 receptors, forming an individual retina behind each lens. According to the investigators, this kind of eye is well equipped to sample not points but "chunks" of the visual field, greatly improving visual capability.
"This composite lens arrangement allows the insect to have many more photoreceptors in a given area than would be possible with a compound eye. If you only have so much space on your head for eyes and you want to gather the most light, you want a composite lens eye," says Buschbeck. "The larger lenses of the strepsipteran insects are similar to a large lens of a camera, large insect lenses admit more light, support more photoreceptors and permit higher resolution."
I have previously pointed out that the trilobite eye is/was highly sophisticated, which in and of itself tends to falsify the upward myth of evolution. But here is a massive problem for Darwinists which is no problem for creationists. Suppose this eye was passed from trilobite to insect according to Darwinism. How did a parasitic insect evolve from a bottom-dwelling sea creature and why are there no transitional forms along the way? Did trilobites just decide to "hopeful monster" themselves from lying in the mud to burrowing into abdomens? How did such a sophisticated eye appear in such "primitive" arthropods, then reappear in a parasitic insect?
Actually, we will discover that the parasitic insect has had the same kind of sophisticated eye for "millions of years" in Darwinspeak or "both before and after the Flood" in actual science based on best evidence. Therefore it is logical that neither organism is primitive at all or an ancestor to the other. One of the untold lies of Darwinism is the idea that creatures like a trilobite are primitive. But from what we can tell from the fossil record, the trilobite would be right at home in the ocean today and is simply an organism that got buried by the Flood to the point that none have survived (as far as we know). Perhaps, like many other "lazarus" organisms, a population of trilobites will be found off the coast of Indonesia or Suriname? If so, it is unlikely to be much different from the fossilized version. Living strepsipteran specimens resemble those preserved in amber so no evolution there, either.
The seldom-seen parasites are hidden in the bodies of common paper wasp. Females never leave their host. When males do, they are on a specific, hurried mission. In the approximately two hours before they die, the males have to find another wasp that is parasitised by a female, mate and depart.
"Sex pheromones from females probably help males to locate the general neighborhood of a wasp with a female parasite," Ehmer says, "but the male presumably relies on his vision once he is close to the wasp." She said that the importance to the insect of the visual system also is apparent from the volume of optic lobes dedicated to processing visual information, which Ehmer estimates to be 75 percent of the insect's brain.
The seldom-seen parasites are hidden in the bodies of common paper wasp. Females never leave their host. When males do, they are on a specific, hurried mission. In the approximately two hours before they die, the males have to find another wasp that is parasitised by a female, mate and depart.
"Sex pheromones from females probably help males to locate the general neighborhood of a wasp with a female parasite," Ehmer says, "but the male presumably relies on his vision once he is close to the wasp." She said that the importance to the insect of the visual system also is apparent from the volume of optic lobes dedicated to processing visual information, which Ehmer estimates to be 75 percent of the insect's brain.
How could such a process evolve? There is much more to this, as the next article will point out. These creatures are highly specialized and the entire process is complex and exacting.
An insect viewing the world in fewer but larger chunks of the visual field would have an inverted, mirror-image problem. Like any simple lens, each facet inverts or reverses its individual portion of the overall image.
The correction comes about, the Cornell biologists believe, because of chiasmata, X-shaped nerve crossings. The biologists found that behind each of the facets is a nerve that connects it to the brain. The nerve exhibits a chiasma, rotating the nerve 180° around its own axis and re-inverting each portion of the image.
An insect viewing the world in fewer but larger chunks of the visual field would have an inverted, mirror-image problem. Like any simple lens, each facet inverts or reverses its individual portion of the overall image.
The correction comes about, the Cornell biologists believe, because of chiasmata, X-shaped nerve crossings. The biologists found that behind each of the facets is a nerve that connects it to the brain. The nerve exhibits a chiasma, rotating the nerve 180° around its own axis and re-inverting each portion of the image.
Hitch-hiking insects
A female paper wasp which has been ‘stylopised’. This is the technical term for when an insect has been infested with a strepsipterous parasite (see main text). Photo by Dr. Joachim Scheven.
Strepsiptera are parasites of other insects—such as bugs, flies, cockroaches, wasps, bees, grasshoppers, and more. Adult males, rarely more than four millimetres long, are free-living and winged. Adult females, on the other hand, are quite peculiar in that they are grub-like (see Figure 1), and generally never leave their host. Host insects are normally rendered sterile by their uninvited ‘guests.’
The only visible parts of the parasite are the head and thorax, which poke out between two abdominal segments of the host (photo right), with the arrow showing the protruding part of the parasite.
These creatures have a fascinating life cycle. Typically, the winged and free-living male insect starts seeking out a female as soon as he emerges from his pupa and leaves his host. Remember, the females are not free-living, but remain forever imprisoned, cemented into their obliging host. Just how the male is able to find an insect which is playing host to a female strepsipteran, (which has to be of the same species) is a question which no one so far has been able to answer. Perhaps the complex and bizarre-looking antenna of the male plays some part in this.
Cutting a long story short, the mated female finally ‘gives birth’ to her brood—usually about one thousand infants! This she does while still attached to her host, as she always is. The larvae make their way to the outside world by means of a special canal that opens at the front end of the mother. This in itself is remarkable. In all other insects, the egg-laying or birth canal is located at the back end of the female. How many disasters would have occurred while such a reversal took place, if evolution ‘created’ this feature?
Indeed! Another amazing Darwinist feat, an insect that realizes it needs to evolve to reverse the normal birth canal pattern and also some nice abdomen-dissolving saliva as well as figure out the entire process of jumping up to hitch a ride, not entering the rider but instead waiting for the larvae they have already figured out could be waiting for them while they cast lots to decide which sex gets to stay buried and which one has to leave "home" and fly/jump? There are so many processes and systems that have to work in concert both in the twisted wing and the host...as a design, it is ingenious and interesting and even fascinating and perhaps a deliberate clue to His creation of the existence of a Creator. As a chance occurrence it strains the logic far past its limits.
Well, what happens next? The problem that confronts the newly-hatched triungulinids is how to find a new host.
How do they do this? Well, as soon as they can, these little ‘lice’ alight from the insect host on which they began their existence. This presumably takes place when the host makes a pit-stop on a flower. Having disembarked, they now loiter on the flower until it is visited by another insect. God has programmed their microscopic computer brain so they can literally jump aboard any flying insect that alights on the flower.
Again, an assumption. A creationist credits remarkably complex processes and designed features to a Designer, which is of course much more logical than "it just happened and we have no idea how" that is at the bottom of every Darwinist assumption. Once Darwinists get more specific they get blown out of the water, which is why Dr. Mastropaolo is never challenged directly. Darwinists like to keep their money far more than they trust any evidence they claim to possess (and miserly they are, since they never share it)! Here the implications of all these features working together to allow this behavior are understood by the writer to be a designed system, which is the most logical conclusion one could reach. Darwinists do not want to go here, because they have a giant wall entitled ANYTHING BUT GOD that precludes them from following such evidence to its logical end.
Photos by Dr Joachim Scheven, LEBENDIGE VORWELT Museum
The photos show three males of the Strepsiptera (twisted-wing) insects. Only the males have wings and fly (see text). Photo ‘A’ has the scientific name Bohartilla joachimscheveni, after the well-known creationist scientist Dr Joachim Scheven who first discovered it in amber,1 and who kindly supplied all photos for this article.
It is preserved in Dominican amber (fossilized tree resin), which evolutionists claim is 35 million years old. If that were true, imagine how many millions of generations of this Bohartilla would have given mutations the opportunity to change this type drastically. However, it is fundamentally identical to the living Bohartilla from Central America. Photo ‘B’ of the genus Stichotrema, is also from Dominican amber, and again is identical to the living strepsipteran Stichotrema in photo ‘C.’
Fossils never show any significant ‘evolution’—rather, they show that fossil creatures have no remaining living counterparts (extinction), or that they have stayed essentially the same (stasis), or have degenerated (lost information).
Reference
- Ragnar Kinzelbach and Hans Pohl, The Fossil Strepsiptera (Insecta: Strepsiptera), Annals of the Entomological Society of America 87(1):59–70, 1994.
BTW how do fleas generally find a host? They jump up onto them. Both strepsipteran and flea can jump many times their own height in order to obtain access to a host. Did one evolve from the other? Or is such behavior a design feature often integrated into God-created organisms? Salmon need to be able to jump far beyond one body length in order to go upstream to mate in the waters that spawned them. Are they descended from fleas? Common Design is a good answer. There is design found in structure and in function and in behavior. It dominates the world of living things.
This is not the end of the story, but almost just the beginning. The triungulinid is not really interested in the animal it has boarded, even if it is the correct kind. It is using this insect as nothing more than an airborne taxi. It is hoping that its pilot will take it to the pilot’s nest, if it has one. If it does—and the mathematical chances of this happening are very small, which is why so many are produced—it disembarks in the nest. Here it immediately, instinctively, seeks out any larvae (‘grubs’) that its taxi driver has been nurturing.
In order to keep the life cycle going, it has to get inside the grub. How does it do this? One might think it would simply crawl into its mouth, or one of its breathing holes. But no. It enters by literally dissolving a hole in the grub’s skin. It exudes large quantities of a special fluid from its mouth, so that it soon becomes completely immersed in it.
So let us get this straight...the newborn strepsipteran jumps off a wasp, let us say. It lands on a flower. It hops on another wasp. It jumps off of THAT potential host and hopes to find a larvae to invade in that wasp's nest. Three hops and a quick burrow into an abdomen? Sure, that is behavior that natural selection thought up by itself. (sarcasm alert)
This substance hardens on the outside in three to four minutes, while at the same time dissolving a hole in the skin of the host grub. The triungulinid is quite active while immersed in this fluid, contracting and expanding its body in an effort to break through the softened skin of its future host. Eventually it succeeds.
[Editor’s note: Although this is a remarkable design feature, would this have existed in a perfect world before the Fall? We can say with confidence that there was no pre-Fall death or bloodshed among self-conscious animals (those which have what the Bible calls a nephesh [Hebrew] or life principle). Plants do not have a nephesh, although biologically alive (Gen. 1:30). Vertebrates like rabbits, lions, and so on clearly do. Do creatures like insects, that function only by instinct, not conscious planning, also have nephesh life? Possibly not. There may be insufficient information to determine from Scripture where to make the distinction for certain. Note that the triungulinid’s host does not die, and seems not to be conscious of any pain or suffering in this process as far as can be determined. For more discussion on this intriguing question, see the chapter 6: ‘How did Bad Things Come About?’ in The Answers Book.]
Bible information: We know that the Genesis account has Noah only taking vertebrates that were land dwellers or birds aboard on the Ark. Death entered into the world after Adam and Eve sinned (Genesis chapter three) but certainly all organisms before the fall required nourishment. Plants were offered as food to all other organisms but the question remains concerning insects. Were insects considered amongst the organisms to be fed or primarily to be food? In a world before the death of self-aware nephesh kinds we must test and study but have no direct instruction from God either way. Since it appears that plants and insects do not feel pain or experience suffering, it could well be that insects were an original food source along with plants. Creation scientists have been studying both the ability of plants to move and seeking to determine with certainty if any insects actually suffer pain.
Once inside, another remarkable thing occurs. Here the triungulinid casts off its outer skin. What emerges from the cast-off skin is not an active little triungulinid, but a legless maggot-like creature. What a wonder! Such complete transformation (as when, somewhat in the reverse direction, a caterpillar becomes a butterfly) is called metamorphosis. This ‘maggot’ lives in the body cavity of the host grub (of a bee, beetle, etc.), absorbing food from its benefactor’s blood. Usually it passes the entire winter in this secure house.
When spring comes, the miracle of life continues. Generally, both the host insect and its free-loading tenant metamorphose simultaneously, the one inside the other. (Obviously, the strepsipteran doesn’t kill its host.) When the host insect emerges from its winter retreat, its little companion can be observed jutting out from between the abdominal plates of its landlord.2 And so the life cycle of this ingenious example of God’s handiwork continues.
It’s also worth noting that strepsipterans have a unique eye design which is closer to that of a trilobite’s than to any other insect’s. This is a difficulty for evolutionists since they believe that all insects share a common ancestor.
"A difficulty" is an understatement. As with a multitude of organisms, once we take a closer look at the composition of the creature and the activities of said creature, we continually find inexplicably preexisting information/knowledge/instinct to do remarkable things and we find such efficient designs in many cases that we are still trying to copy them for our own use. Furthermore, there is apparently no discernible difference in the "twisted wings" aka strepsipterans that are found preserved in amber and those that are living today.
It is also remarkable that such a metamorphosis in any organism is rather difficult to explain from the Darwinist perspective, it is exponentially harder to explain how two unrelated organisms not only live in symbiosis but metamorphose in harmony as well. Since there is not a connection between them in the sense of DNA/cellular reproductive processes then such harmonic symbiosis is impossible squared. With twisted wings, they go from flying creature to a grub form instead of the other way around. Remarkable.
The strepsipteran’s has a compound eye with very large facets that sample larger chunks of the visual field. 75% of the insect’s brain is devoted to processing this extra information. The images produced are inverted, but the insects also have chiasmata, or X-shaped nerve crossings, that turn the image right-way-up. (See Raspberry eye looks like living fossil.)
Believe it or not!
So you see that the creationist author had no qualms citing a Darwinist source for additional information, not being afraid of the argument. Both Darwinist and creationist authors share assumptions with the readers. Science must make some assumptions in order to pursue answers. At some point the assumptions must be tried and tested. In the case of the twisted wing insects, they provide innumerable problems for the Darwinist paradigm, with not only symbiosis but harmonic metamorphosis without sharing of a central information source. Furthermore, the trilobite-like eye is unique to two creatures, this kind of insect and the trilobite, an aquatic arthropod that would certainly not be directly related. The logical common denominator is a shared design source rather than a shared ancestry or an invented line of descent from trilobite to
Notes
- But not quite unique. A number of beetles produce a similar-looking larval stage, and they are also termed triungulinids. Return to text.
- If a male, it pushes off a ‘cap’ of tissue, almost as if it had a built-in ‘tear along this line’ crease around the rim. This enables it to emerge and fly off in search of a mate. Return to text.