Parasitic Worms Evolved the Wrong Direction | The Institute for Creation Research

Parasitic Worms Evolved the Wrong Direction

Parasites are a topic that often makes people cringe. Some like to use parasites as an argument against creation, because after all, how could a good God create “bad” organisms like these?

According to biologist Ralf Sommer, “Infective larvae evolved from dauer larvae.”1 Sommer and his German research team recently analyzed roundworm biochemicals. Their findings don’t really exemplify onward and upward macroevolutionary progression, but rather demonstrate adaptation of a created kind in a fallen world.

Roundworms are tiny creatures that are abundant throughout the earth. Dauer larvae are a kind of dormant stage that many developing roundworms can enter when conditions are too unfavorable to moult into adults. The dauer larvae look very much like the parasitic stage in the life cycle of other roundworms that can infect mammalian hosts.

Researchers have been trying to establish a link between dauer and parasitic forms by looking for similarities in their molecules, and the German team believes it has found a connection. The scientists’ studies show that an infective roundworm (Pristionchus pacificus) and a non-infective one (Caenorhabditis elegans) have the same “core endocrine module,” a collection of genes called the DAF 12 system, that signals the organism to form a dauer larva instead of an adult.2

“Thus they found the first indication [other than visual similarity] that infective larvae originally evolved from dauer larvae,” according to a press release announcing the researchers’ conculsions.1 Dauer larvae can attach to hosts with the possibility of being carried to a more favorable environment. If at some point these larvae began to invade their carriers, searching for better living conditions, then they changed from benign dauer larvae into infective parasites.

There was no evolutionary upward progression: They did not “evolve” new organisms, new organs, or even new and useful molecular signaling pathways. Rather, they really “devolved,” or at best exercised pre-ordered options to perform lateral variations. These variations involve mixing and matching, but not inventing any new, core biological systems.3

According to the Bible, roundworms created during creation week were originally “very good.”4 This must mean that any form of parasitism that harms the host did not then exist, but has since developed as a result of the world’s fallen condition. So, if God is good, why did He create parasitic roundworms? Evolutionary scientists have answered this for us: He didn’t. The parasitic worms were once benign, just as Scripture indicates.

References

  1. Novel Findings on the Evolution of Parasitism. Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology press release, January 13, 2009.
  2. Ogawa, A. et al. 2009. A Conserved Endocrine Mechanism Controls the Formation of Dauer and Infective Larvae in Nematodes. Current Biology. 19 (1): 67-71.
  3. Thomas, B. What Spurs Evolution: the Old or the Young? ICR News. Posted on icr.org October 17, 2008, accessed January 22, 2008.
  4. Genesis 1:31.

* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer.

Article posted on February 2, 2009.

The Latest
CREATION PODCAST
Towers, Buttes, and Gardens of Stone - Exploring America's National...
America is home to stunning forests, mountains, monuments, and other wondrous features. The unique beauty of many of these locations has prompted...

NEWS
Oldest Dinosaurs in North America Explained by the Flood
A team of conventional paleontologists claims to have found the oldest dinosaur in North America, rivaling the oldest dinosaur remains found anywhere.1...

NEWS
Leaf and Stick Insect Variation
The phylum Arthropoda suddenly appears in the fossil record in a most un-Darwinian way.1 The largest group within the arthropods is the class...

NEWS
Snowflakes: A Symphony of Intricacy and Beauty
Snowflakes are among the most exquisite forms that nature has to offer, and no two flakes are alike. Several evolutionists have attempted to use the...

NEWS
Molecular Machines Twist Evolution
We read in the first chapter of Romans that God loves us so much that He has given us a general revelation of what He has created. Verse 19 states,...

CREATION PODCAST
America's Oldest National Park - Exploring the Unique Features...
America is home to stunning forests, mountains, monuments, and other wondrous features. The unique beauty of many of these locations have prompted...

NEWS
Binary Star Pair Detected Near Supermassive Black Hole
Astronomers have detected a likely binary star pair, designated as D9, orbiting the supermassive black hole Sag A* at the center of our Milky Way galaxy.1,2...

NEWS
The Jaw Drops an Evolutionary Explanation
The lepidosaurs are a large and diverse group of land vertebrates that include the snakes and lizards. There are almost 12,000 species of these animals....

NEWS
''Super-Puff'' Exoplanets: Evidence of Youth?
Astronomers have inferred the presence of a fourth exoplanet in the Kepler-51 star system.1,2 They made the discovery when the third exoplanet...

NEWS
A Fresh Start
"That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; And be renewed in the spirit...