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Insects Develop Pesticide Resistance Through Symbiosis With Gut Flora

Posted by samzenpus on from the with-a-little-help-from-my-little-friends dept.

First time accepted submitter blinkin247 writes "The indiscriminate spraying of pesticides has probably caused as many problems as it has solved, but here's one that was not expected: some bacteria have decided that insecticide is a very tasty meal. Unfortunately for us, one of the strains of bacteria that has evolved the ability to digest the toxin happens to be able to find a home in an insect's gut. When it does so, it provides the insect with resistance."

35 of 144 comments (clear)

  1. Curses! by masternerdguy · · Score: 5, Funny

    Darwin strikes again!

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    To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
    1. Re:Curses! by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 2

      Why blame Darwin for something Monsato or Bayer dids? Poor chump, all he did was to set up a logical framework to predict what would happen if we spray chemicals indiscriminately.

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      sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    2. Re:Curses! by MichaelKristopeit498 · · Score: 2, Insightful
      you're an idiot.

      any evolution could be dismissed as such a small modification caused by an external force.

    3. Re:Curses! by multicoregeneral · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yes. The creationists will have a hard time explaining this one. My guess is that they'll choose to ignore it, just like they do with all the other proofs of evolution in action. What I find interesting about all this is how quickly these bacteria actually evolve into totally new organisms. I mean, it makes sense with their short lives and fast reproductive cycles, but it's just amazing to watch.

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    4. Re:Curses! by phantomfive · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Yes. The creationists will have a hard time explaining this one.

      My guess is they'll say that bacteria with this resistance already existed in the population, but spraying made it so only those bacteria survived.

      And for all I know, in this case they might be right.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    5. Re:Curses! by LordLucless · · Score: 4, Insightful

      My guess is they'll just say "meh", and shrug their shoulders.

      Most creationists don't have a problem with "evolution" as an adaptive mechanism, just the particular application of evolution that posits that trillions of iterations of evolution moved life from primordial sludge to sentient life.

      The idea that the species existed in a "perfect" unchanged state from the point of creation until the present time was rejected as religious dogma even before Darwin.

      --
      Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
    6. Re:Curses! by binarstu · · Score: 2

      Yes. The creationists will have a hard time explaining this one.

      My guess is they'll say that bacteria with this resistance already existed in the population, but spraying made it so only those bacteria survived. And for all I know, in this case they might be right.

      They would almost certainly be right. What you have just described is natural selection, in a nutshell. Natural selection can only work on existing variation in a population. If no resistant bacteria were present in a population, then the entire population would by wiped out by the pesticide.

    7. Re:Curses! by labnet · · Score: 2

      Natural selection IS evolution in action

      Rubbish.
      Natural Selection is the selection of pre existing characteristics. (Creationists agree)
      Evolution is the mutation/creation of NEW genetic information that produces new beneficial function that was not there before. (Creationists disagree)

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      46137
    8. Re:Curses! by joocemann · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The symbiotic organism evolved against the pressure, and since it is symbiotic with the insects, fitness is acquired. Classic darwin in the true complexity of life.

    9. Re:Curses! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That's not what the second law of thermodynamics means. That paper equivocates the meaning of order and disorder several times, dipping into the formal definitions to make the math work. Order and disorder are metaphors for thermodynamic entropy, but dS is not the change in chaos, it's the change in entropy. He defines order as the opposite of entropy, which is misleading to begin with and downright false when he starts using the word order to mean things other than the opposite of entropy (or X-entropy) in his paper.

      It doesn't make any sense to ask whether the increase in solar engery makes spaceships not extremely improbable. No matter what happened, it was extremely improbable because there's a huge timescale and the chances of everything happening the same way twice in a huge timescale are nil (if they did happen the same way twice, that would pretty much imply that there was little to no entropy from start to finish).

      He has this line:

      "If an increase in order is extremely improbable when a system is closed, it is still extremely improbable when the system is
      open, unless something is entering which makes it not extremely improbable."

      He's removed all precision from this. Undoing his re-definitions, this de-sugars to "if a decrease in entropy is a decrease in entropy when the system is closed, it is still a decrease in energy when the system is open, unless something is entering that has high entropy".

      As a counterexample: spaceships do happen. Unless you claim that God made cars, or something, it follows that this localized order did in fact come from an external source, for surely the spaceship did not assemble itself. And I guarantee that humans are inputting far, far, far, far less energy into their spaceship creations that the sun is inputting into the Earth. Life does happen. Following this rationale, unless you insist on a continually-active creator god which is continually inputting order to supplement the sun which is apparently insufficient, there's no way there can be population growth, since that's an "increase in order". Plants grow. They're creating "order" very specifically from the input of the sun.

      Not to mention he completely skips his proof that the "order" coming from the sun is strictly less than the "order" appearing on Earth.

      But aside from that. Genetic mutations plus natural selection = evolution. Or more precisely, inheritance with mutations, where the mutations are not always a net negative in every possible respect, plus some form of selection = evolution. Even if that did violate the second law you'd have to come up with a way to reconcile it, for it isn't enough to say "these things contradict", you have to figure out which is wrong and why, instead assuming thermodynamics always wins and that somehow like magic the other thing must be wrong even if you can't point out what's wrong about it (we know it doesn't actually win at the microscopic level, as indicated in that paper).

    10. Re:Curses! by Your.Master · · Score: 2

      No, evolution is the union of both things, although "beneficial" isn't strictly necessary, and "NEW genetic information" is ill-defined.

      Do you disagree that mutations happen: insertions, deletions, changes? All have been observed.

      If so, we can walk down the road of those proofs. If not, what mechanism do you propose that prevents these things from producing "NEW genetic information". be sure to define "NEW genetic information".

    11. Re:Curses! by Khyber · · Score: 2

      Genetic change by a non-sentient living organism is still evolution, nimrod. Did the genetic change give us any useful advantages?

      Thank you, ancestral survivors of the Black Plague, for bestowing genetic immunity against 95% of known HIV upon me, through knocking out my CCR5 receptor.

      --
      Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
    12. Re:Curses! by Chris+Burke · · Score: 3, Informative

      Few creationists deny natural selection. Few creationists deny genetic mutations occur.

      Great! Then few creationists would deny evolutionary theory! Because natural selection + mutations explains the diversity of species very, very well!

      Effectively, what we do deny is that these mechanisms can violate the second law of themodynamics

      Creationists always try to use the second law,
      to disprove evolution, but their theory has a flaw.
      The second law is quite precise about where it applies,
      only in a closed system must the entropy count rise.
      The earth's not a closed system' it's powered by the sun,
      so fuck the damn creationists, Doomsday get my gun!
      - MC Hawking, "Entropy"

      --

      The enemies of Democracy are
    13. Re:Curses! by Chris+Burke · · Score: 4, Informative

      If I have a billion self replicating programs, and randomly change the object code in all of them every second, they all won't suddenly die, but I will see the entire population gradully LOSE information and thus FUNCTION.

      You should actually try this. I have. So have many others. What we've learned by doing it is that if you just randomly modify your billion programs with an external program and use this same program to do the copying (so none of the population of programs you're "evolving" can ever fail to reproduce), and nothing else then yeah you'll just get a big mess of programs that mostly don't work.

      However if you constrain those that are allowed to be copied in some way, for example by running them through some tests to see if they have the desired functionality and only copying the best-working programs then randomly modify them, you prevent regression and select for enhancement. Iterating on this process, you'll find that you can achieve order and you can increase function. Dramatically so, and faster than you would think, too.

      There's a whole field of computer science on the subject: genetic algorithms. They're only like biological evolution in principle, but it's the principle of random changes resulting in increased order that you have an issue with. Well, genetic algorithms provide a mathematical description of how that is not only perfectly possible, but a common, expected outcome.

      We call the criterion we use to decide what solutions will be allowed to propagate the "fitness function", and it is the main thing that guides what the solution looks like, so defining it well is the major issue when you're a human trying to solve a specific problem. Even if you do a good job, you can still get solutions that are wildly outside what you assumed the solution should look like -- which is one of the strengths of genetic algorithms.

      In nature, the "fitness function" is the same as the problem to be solved: Survive to reproduce. And what we see is the incredible number of ways that problem can be solved.

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      The enemies of Democracy are
    14. Re:Curses! by silentcoder · · Score: 2

      Aaah, but your experiment has no natural selection.

      When you add a selective element that actively culls the population of bad mutations the good ones not only win out but become dominant.
      In fact this exact process is the mechanism we use to do evolve learning into neural networks. Your exact experiment - only with a selective pressure added.

      It gets better we've used the process to evolve HARDWARE using programmable logic chips. The chips were initially programmed with random junk. Then a criteria was chosen, the chips that were best at the task were kept and replicated while those that were worst were discarded.
      Within just 1000 generations we had circuits that could complete complicated tasks.
      One specific experiment I know of used the task of distinguishing two frequencies. The interesting thing is ... nobody has a clue how the result works ! It does work. But we don't know HOW exactly. No electronic engineer would try to build a frequency differentiator with 100 logic chips (they'd build an oscilator) but it was evolved from them. Then it was found that 24 chips could be removed, they weren't electrically connected. Voila... but now get this, there is another 18 chips that are not electrically connected to the circuit EITHER - but if you take any of those out, the circuit stops working !
      We have no idea why, the guess is that they have some physical effect on the circuit, perhaps producing a weak natural capacitor or gaining current through induction - but we have no real idea. It's theorized that the circuit works by looping it's power repeatedly over a long "wire" through the chips to slow it down to the same speed as the lower frequency, and then compare the frequency to the result... but we really have no clue.
      This was the original pioneering work in the field by Adrian Thompson but evolvable hardware is now a solid engineering concept. Try reading up on it, it's really fascinating geeky stuff !

      So in fact- the problem you describe doesn't say anything about evolution. You proved that random mutation by itself will mostly harm a species, but you left selection out entirely. Whether that selection is human guided (as it would have to be in your experiment) or natural (as it is in well nature) it has to exist - and when you combine selection with mutation you get evolution.

      So guess what, this "only a theory" has been experimentally PROVEN in thousands of settings, even if you've always been told it wasn't.

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      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
    15. Re:Curses! by Chris+Burke · · Score: 2

      The earth may not be a closed system, but the universe is.

      And the entropy of the universe is undoubtedly increasing. The second law does not preclude local, temporary decreases in entropy (which is what we are) so long as the total in the system increases, which it is. Eventually the entire universe will have such high entropy that essentially nothing will ever happen -- heat death -- regardless of what we do during our brief existence.

      Energy alone is not enough to increase order.

      Yes, you need some other mechanisms that make use of energy, like chemistry.

      On a side note, I personally think that all of this gives a nice, if not a little superficial, definition of life. That is that life is the organized resistance to entropy.

      So you personally think crystals are alive. You're welcome to your belief, but I thought that was more of a New Age thing than a Creationist thing.

      It is important to note, too, that while the crystal itself has less entropy than its liquid precursors, the total entropy of the system (here drawing a box around the crystal instead of the entire universe) has increased because crystal formation releases highly entropic heat.

      So too with you and I.

      There is no second law violation implied by evolution.

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      The enemies of Democracy are
  2. Re:Evelution in action. by Theovon · · Score: 4, Informative

    I didn't RTFM, but on the surface, although this looks like evolution and symbiosis, it doesn't look like symbiotic evolution. The insect didn't change. The bacteria did, and the bacteria is living in the insect. The bacteria didn't cause the insect to develop a resistance. The bacteria is PROVIDING the resistance. If you were to remove the bacteria from the insect, the insect would be vulnerable again.

  3. Actually the finding could be a good news ! by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The discovery that the bacteria inside insects' guts finds human-made (often very toxic) insecticide "tasty" can actually be a good news for all of us ---

    We can tap the ability of those bacteria to "digest" away many of the toxic waste produced by industries

    --
    Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
    1. Re:Actually the finding could be a good news ! by c0lo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The discovery that the bacteria inside insects' guts finds human-made (often very toxic) insecticide "tasty" can actually be a good news for all of us ---

      We can tap the ability of those bacteria to "digest" away many of the toxic waste produced by industries

      And allow the said industries to produce other flavors of toxic waste, only cheaper?
      Or would you like Monsanto to provide both the meal and the "enhanced digestion additive" for it?

      --
      Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
    2. Re:Actually the finding could be a good news ! by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The discovery that the bacteria inside insects' guts finds human-made (often very toxic) insecticide "tasty" can actually be a good news for all of us ---

      We can tap the ability of those bacteria to "digest" away many of the toxic waste produced by industries

      And allow the said industries to produce other flavors of toxic waste, only cheaper?

      Whether you like it or not, the industrial complex has been producing, - and is producing - millions and millions of tons of toxic waste every single year. toxic wastes that are very difficult - and very un-economical to un-toxic-fy

      If there are bacteria which can "digest" those toxic waste and break-down the chemicals in such that the resultant by-products lose their toxicity - we should tap into the abilities of those bacteria to clean up the environment

      And your point being ... ?

      --
      Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
    3. Re:Actually the finding could be a good news ! by Chris+Burke · · Score: 2

      My point: for the time being, those bacteria requires a gut to function.

      Not all of them do. :P Even the summary says this was just one strain of a number of pesticide-eating bacteria.

      I fully agree with being leery of and avoiding introducing species, but these bacteria evolved in places where there was heavy pesticide use. So they aren't exactly introduced species when used to clean up pesticides, they aren't that far removed from their natural environment. When the pesticide is gone, the pressure would be to return towards their previous food sources. Of course I couldn't say that would be the case, but it's not as big an shock to the ecosystem as many introductions.

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      The enemies of Democracy are
    4. Re:Actually the finding could be a good news ! by c0lo · · Score: 2

      I fully agree with being leery of and avoiding introducing species, but these bacteria evolved in places where there was heavy pesticide use. So they aren't exactly introduced species when used to clean up pesticides, they aren't that far removed from their natural environment.

      Well, yeah... except that my objection to the post I was answering to was not against letting the bacteria do what they were pressured to do, but against tapping into it.

      We can tap the ability of those bacteria to "digest" away many of the toxic waste produced by industries

      And my objection stems from the two reasons I listed:
      1. in biology/ecology, the things have a tendency to go wrong in more ways and much faster anyone can imagine
      2. my distrust into the capabilities of the corporations to act responsible (and I'm not necessary hating the player, but the "game" requires them to maximize their profits and "to act responsible" comes only secondary to that)

      --
      Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
    5. Re:Actually the finding could be a good news ! by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 2

      I think you may need a visit to your local psychiatrist

      No one is talking about introducing alien species of bacteria culture into pristine environment

      We are talking about cleaning up dangerous and toxic chemicals - ie, brown fields which have been polluted by those toxics - no matter it is in Australia or in Timbuktu, polluted brown fields are polluted brown fields, and the pollution won't go away simply because of your unfounded phobia

      If the bacteria can gobble up those toxic substances and reduce them to basic elements that are non-toxic, why the hell not use what the nature is providing us - hey, those bacteria are NOT man-made, you know? - to help clean up the mess we have done to the only planet that we live on?

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      Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
  4. Simple Solution by theshowmecanuck · · Score: 4, Funny

    There is a simple cause and solution to this. They aren't spraying enough pesticides and they need to spray more. Just ask the chemical companies and their congressional and parliamentary stooges. They'll back me up on this.

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    -- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
  5. Re:Evelution in action. by datsa · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's not that simple. Being able to harbor the new bacteria is now a measure of fitness in these insects. Insects that reject the bacteria will die off (if they haven't already), and insects that do a better job accommodating the bacteria are more likely to survive to the next generation. We happen to be seeing the end product of that process.

  6. Now put bacteria in farmers by ignavus · · Score: 3, Informative

    Yay! So now we can put those bacteria in farmers, and they won't get sick or die when they spray their farms.

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    I am anarch of all I survey.
  7. Great... by Dwedit · · Score: 2

    Great... Just what we need...
    Pesticides with Antibiotics mixed in there too. I for one welcome our new superbug overlords.

  8. Organic farming is not for hippies by rastoboy29 · · Score: 2

    This is why organic farming is not just for hippies and phobes.

    Personally, I think of it as a very Taoist way of solving these problems--instead of a frontal attack (insecticides) plant symbiotic plants nearby that ward off insects, and things like that.  Go with the flow...

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    expandfairuse.org
    1. Re:Organic farming is not for hippies by Mashiki · · Score: 3, Informative

      So, will you be the first to sign your own death and the death of 4 billion other people? Organic farming is unsustainable for our population levels.

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      Om, nomnomnom...
    2. Re:Organic farming is not for hippies by joocemann · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Smart people would make changes in farming and population control over the sae timeframe. Sadly, lots of ignorant people will die because they were born from ignorance and largely dont improve from the cycle.... and so 4+ BN will die, not that any sane human wouldnt be apalled by natures big push back.

      Oil resources finite? Check phosphorous peak estimates for a real scary reality check.

    3. Re:Organic farming is not for hippies by netsavior · · Score: 2

      not enough free nitrogen on earth to farm for its current population. "Organic" food is for privileged first worlders, and is not the answer to anything. It uses the most fertile land to produce the least robust crops for the smallest group of people. Awesome.

  9. Life will find a way by msobkow · · Score: 4, Interesting

    No matter whether you're dealing with antibiotics, pesticides, herbicides, or natural predators, life will always evolve to survive.

    We all know this. The scientists. The chemists. The engineers. The pharmacorps. The pesticide and herbicide companies.

    Hell, Monsanto even gene-engineers such resistance into their tainted products.

    But the public doesn't want to accept the truth: we're all on borrowed time. All we're doing is leveraging short-term odds for short-term gain, at the price of long term dissolution. So the marketing experts and technology pundits tell them what they want to hear: that we can win the fight in the long term.

    We can't, and we won't. Eventually every single antibiotic, pesticide, and herbicide we have will be useless, and the new generations of such products will be so lethal that we won't be able to use them because they're also poisonous to humans.

    And then the shit is really gonna hit the fan, big time.

    --
    I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
    1. Re:Life will find a way by phantomfive · · Score: 2

      We can't, and we won't. Eventually every single antibiotic, pesticide, and herbicide we have will be useless, and the new generations of such products will be so lethal that we won't be able to use them because they're also poisonous to humans.

      I'm not sure this is true. It seems that each generation of pesticide is safer, and more targeted than the previous generation. The earlier pesticides, like DDT are much worse than later ones, like paldoxins. Your scenario COULD happen, I don't claim to predict the future, but there is more than one possibility.

      And our knowledge of biology is growing and such an incredible pace, it wouldn't be surprising if we get better and better pesticides in the future, at an increasing pace. Once computers are more accurately able to model cells and molecular interactions, then we'll be able to find new ones even faster. Or maybe technology will falter, and your vision will come true. But there is room for more than one prediction of the future.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    2. Re:Life will find a way by joocemann · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Microbiologists ma disagree about the antibiotic resistance cold war component of your point. They often assert that when resistance is evolved against one mode of action, it is devolved from a previous mode.... this is true in bacteria, whereby removing antibiotics from media can generate a dominant species that is absent of resistance in 30 generations (1 to 2 days). This is because without the pressure, the small functional advantage of lacking a useless resistance gene lets the nonresistant mutant outpace its resistant ancestor in 30 doublings.

      I am a firm believer in working *with* nature than against it. The future looks dreary...

  10. It was expected by icqraid · · Score: 2

    This isn't surprising to me. Just like dosing animals with antibodies and using sterilization products everywhere which creates resistance to said chemicals. As Ian Malcolm said "Life finds a way."