Multi-eyed jellyfish helps with Darwin's puzzle

[BoyntonStu]

Multi-eyed jellyfish helps with Darwin's puzzle
14 May 2005
From New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
DARWIN famously wrote in On the Origin of Species that the eye is so complex that its evolution by natural selection seems "absurd". The key to the puzzle, he argued, was to find eyes of intermediate complexity in the animal kingdom that would demonstrate a possible path from simple to complicated. Now, a detailed study of the eyes of the box jellyfish (Tripedalia cystophora) has thrown up one of these fascinating intermediate stages.

Box jellyfish, or cubozoans, are bizarre, highly poisonous predators (New Scientist, 8 November 2003, p 34). "These are fantastic creatures with 24 eyes, four parallel brains and 60 arseholes," says Dan Nilsson, a vision expert from the University of Lund in Sweden.

The eyes occur in clusters on the four sides of the cube-like body. Sixteen are simply pits of light-sensitive pigment, but one pair in each cluster is surprisingly complex, with a sophisticated lens, retina, iris and cornea, all in an eye only 0.1 millimetres across.

The lens structure is unusual because the refractive index - the extent to which it bends light - is graded from one side to the other. Because the image is focused way behind the retina, it appears blurry. So cubozoan eyes are good for spotting large, stationary objects, while filtering out unnecessary detail such as plankton drifting with the current. From here it would be an easy step to evolve an image-forming eye.

From issue 2499 of New Scientist magazine, 14 May 2005, page 18

[weasel]

nice find, B. That may turn out to be solid support for evolution. Gonna be interesting to find out what further research uncovers about these compound? semi-complex eyes.

[BoyntonStu]

Originally Posted by weasel

nice find, B. That may turn out to be solid support for evolution. Gonna be interesting to find out what further research uncovers about these compound? semi-complex eyes.

Ever see any equally verifiable data on 'the other side'?

BoyntonStu

[Bird]

Originally Posted by BoyntonStu

Multi-eyed jellyfish helps with Darwin's puzzle
14 May 2005
From New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
DARWIN famously wrote in On the Origin of Species that the eye is so complex that its evolution by natural selection seems "absurd". The key to the puzzle, he argued, was to find eyes of intermediate complexity in the animal kingdom that would demonstrate a possible path from simple to complicated. Now, a detailed study of the eyes of the box jellyfish (Tripedalia cystophora) has thrown up one of these fascinating intermediate stages.

Box jellyfish, or cubozoans, are bizarre, highly poisonous predators (New Scientist, 8 November 2003, p 34). "These are fantastic creatures with 24 eyes, four parallel brains and 60 arseholes," says Dan Nilsson, a vision expert from the University of Lund in Sweden.

The eyes occur in clusters on the four sides of the cube-like body. Sixteen are simply pits of light-sensitive pigment, but one pair in each cluster is surprisingly complex, with a sophisticated lens, retina, iris and cornea, all in an eye only 0.1 millimetres across.

The lens structure is unusual because the refractive index - the extent to which it bends light - is graded from one side to the other. Because the image is focused way behind the retina, it appears blurry. So cubozoan eyes are good for spotting large, stationary objects, while filtering out unnecessary detail such as plankton drifting with the current. From here it would be an easy step to evolve an image-forming eye.

From issue 2499 of New Scientist magazine, 14 May 2005, page 18

Interesting read indeed. But I'm thinking with only 24 eyes, 4 serial brains, yet an astounding 60 arseholes, that this thing may lend itself more to the study of the evolution of the arsehole more than anything else.... just another one way to look at it.

[weishaupt1776]

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20050514/fob2.asp

Here's an excerpt for brevity:

• “Biologists need to be careful in working out the evolutionary implications of the new study,” she says, quoting Alan Collins of NOAA.* “The eyes of box jellyfish, cephalopods such as the octopus, and vertebrates seem to have arisen independently.* So, unraveling the evolution of box-jellyfish eyes may not reveal the particular path of eye evolution for other lineages.”

Believing in evolution isn't gonna be agood enough excuse when you stand before the Almighty in his Glory & Power

[BoyntonStu]

"Believing in evolution isn't gonna be agood enough excuse when you stand before the Almighty in his Glory & Power"

Right you are, IF that ever happens to be factually correct and IF you assume that HE did not want humans to use the brains that He gave us. Perhaps He would be also pissed at our discovery of heart transplants and anti-biotics.

On the hand, if we do not fully use our God given brains, and instead we believe in old wive's tales, we would have gone through life and completely wasted our opportunities for truth.


YMMV


BoyntonStu

[weishaupt1776]

Originally Posted by BoyntonStu

On the hand, if we do not fully use our God given brains,

YMMV


BoyntonStu

So was the article in science news evidence of someone not using their god given brain?

[BoyntonStu]

Originally Posted by weishaupt1776

So was the article in science news evidence of someone not using their god given brain?

Yes they did. Most scientists do as well. Most scientists have no doubt that the age of the earth is at least 4 BILLION years old.

BoyntoinStu

Is that in dog years, people years, or jellyfish years?

Sincerely,
truth

[scottinalaska]

Any evidence for the other side, Boyt?

Hello!?!
The incredible fully functioning design of this multi arsed jellyfish's eyes are screaming evidence of a creator!
How long would this cubist fish have lasted while he tried to get his vision together, let alone making them function together if they did happen to all appear...or just a few appear...or just one complex eye on north facing sides hoping their little baby jellies get born with a bonus south facing eye too(and of course the compatible software to coordinate the two new complex eyes)...and wham!, a 100 thousand years later, now we have it! FOUR fully formed sides with vision to rival all the other envious jellyfishes' underevolutionized eyes.

I suppose given enough time without Bill Gates and his multudinous staff, Windows XP would have appeared on my Atari Video game I had on my TV in 1977, but then again some stupid creationist who doesn't use his brain might ask me where the TV came from...geez, always running to God for answers! We all know that TV's are very simple and sometimes spontaneously appear in the fossil record. And living creatures? Oh, they're even more simple:
I pick up road kill (Not exactly the primordial soup we are told we all came from but that soup all dried up) and for kicks put the roadkill in my yard to see it come to life. Hmmm, all the parts are there too, and still it just rots. Goes from complex and organized to chaos(2nd Law of thermodynamics) and pretty soon, it is fertilizer, Maybe I'll add jellyfish and see if it will grow eyes.
Ah, but if I did that, that would be infusing intelligence into the equation and would totally defeat my experiment of random chance. The more I try to make life, the more I prove the need for and evidence of a creator.
Gentlemen, the evidence IS in front of you all the time. Don't say, "Hmmm, interesting. We'll wait and see if my preconceived notions might get some credit." Indeed as Boyt has said, use your brains.
And Boyton, I embrace many iconoclasts, even those who I don't agree with, but your posts seem to have offered nothing of significant substance we can use. Yes, getting us to think and re-examine is good. But let's offer something constructive too. I may have missed some of your posts that do offer that, so I'll stand corrected if that be the case. Even this jellyfish is enlightening, but it follows a long pattern of posts that I read having a tambre of denigration.

scottinalaska