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"Severe Abnormalities" Found In Fukushima Butterflies
Dupple writes "The collapse of the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant caused a massive release of radioactive materials to the environment. A prompt and reliable system for evaluating the biological impacts of this accident on animals has not been available. This study suggests the accident caused physiological and genetic damage to the pale grass blue Zizeeria maha, a common lycaenid butterfly in Japan. We collected the first-voltine adults in the Fukushima area in May 2011, some of which showed relatively mild abnormalities. The F1 offspring from the first-voltine females showed more severe abnormalities, which were inherited by the F2 generation. Adult butterflies collected in September 2011 showed more severe abnormalities than those collected in May. Similar abnormalities were experimentally reproduced in individuals from a non-contaminated area by external and internal low-dose exposures. We conclude that artificial radionuclides from the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant caused physiological and genetic damage to this species."
How does this affect the butterfly effect? This could be chaos!
MOTHRA!!!!!!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This is a complex and information-dense article. I'm so glad someone like you posted... with your brilliant and dismissive hand waving, now I don't have to read it or learn anything new. I now look forward to any Fukushima-scale nuclear events in my area as you have shown us that unless something is detrimental, it isn't damage. I bet flipper-babies probably even swim better than normal babies.
It's a substantial change in a population post-incident. Whether the changes are beneficial or not is besides the point.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
This is forever. It's genetically inherited and it can NEVER be cured. There is no way to know how bad the effects will be (i.e. disease, immunity response, deformities, life span, etc) in the offspring for all generations. And all you can do is make jokes and actually excuse it!! Wow... Is something wrong with your brainwashed, apathetic, sorry excuse for minds? They used to say the same things about cigarettes except this can never be quit, and it effects all these victims' children and their children and on and on... Ya, it's real fucking funny. It's people like you that make this world shit.
I love science. But this is barely news. These creatures eat the sweet surface juices and pollen, and develop at a rate so fantastic it make them a source of childhood wonder. Of course they'll be the first to be affected. A reduced fore-wing size will not unravel the entire food chain, and very importantly: evolution will push back. This species has an enormous population that is unaffected by radiation. If the small wings are an advantage going forward: great. If not, their neighbors will out compete them, and the mutants will die out.
Wake me when they have a stable population of 6 legged dogs.
Having flippers for feet when your peers are land-faring probably is detrimental. It is also probably detrimental if the flippers do not either come with gills or massively increased lung capacity / oxygen efficiency.
Oh, I see, so this is some sort of semantics pissing match you want to win. Call it what you like, but the odds are far greater that we're going to be dealing with very few beneficial mutations, and more than likely a good many bad ones, but hey, if it somehow makes you feel like you've won a debate, then so be it. In fact, I recommend you go and get some substantial dosage of radiation right now. After all, you can't call it damage until your dick falls off.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
you can't call it damage until your dick falls off.
Forgive him. He works for a tobacco company.
The government says it's safe, and I believe them! You whacko libertariqans and your anti-gov rhetoric is the true source of evil. The government is just there to help us and protect us!
/end sarcasm
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
There are no "beneficial" changes. There are only changes, in the form of mutations. The ones that do not produce viable offspring die. The ones that do continue to survive.
To question whether this change is beneficial is like asking whether water is good or evil.
What this is illustrating is the rate of change, which is fairly high. A high rate of change can be beneficial in the long run, but extremely damaging in the short run. And it is both damaging for the species concerned, as well as for the rest of the ecology which is dependent on the health of all its species.
If you extrapolate it to more advanced and sophisticated species, ultimately those with vertebrae, it's a frightening picture. Insects can handle quite a bit of mutation, as well as are built to resist radiation. Not to mention the species will survive by sheer reproductive numbers alone. More advanced lifeforms like birds and mammals cannot handle the radiation, cannot handle almost all but the smallest of mutations. Worse, birth rates decrease as complexity increases. A 99.9% chance of stillborn for an insect that lays hundreds of eggs is nothing. A mere nine in ten chance of stillborn for more advanced animals would irrepairably damage the species' survivability.
Not to mention that species survivability is a much lower threshold than maintaining civilization. So if you want to put a Good-Bad qualifier on these findings, it's Bad. Very Bad.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Indeed. "Why, you can't call those malignant growths in your lungs harmful until you actually die. For all you know, they could give you superpowers!"
When you have severely malformed wings and eyes and other developmental abnormalities of a clearly genetic nature in a population, many of which are clearly deleterious from a purely fitness measurement, then it's not going over the top to call it "damage".
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
They could have tested captive breeding in much higher radiation levels, but of course they haven't.
They actually were talking of using this butterfly species to monitor background contamination (non-radiological) of the human environment as these butterflies have been studied and are very sensitive to environmental changes. They have already noticed that these butterflies are changing due to current levels of global warming as seen in Japan.
There was also a mention on BBC website of "surprised by magnitude of effects because insects were thought to being resilient to radiation". Clearly, that is indication of not understanding insects. Many insects are very susceptible individually to environmental changes and I am NOT surprised by effects of low changes in radiation on individuals. Insect *populations* are very resilient to environmental changes because,
1. they generally breed quickly, having short lifespans, and
2. there is so many of them
Insect *populations* are resilient to toxins (pesticides, pollution) and other environmental stressors (radiation, climate change) because they will quickly adapt to those stressors. The same with these butterflies.
I suspect that you could increase radiation in a large area to 1-2Sv/yr, amount that would kill people, but insects like these butterflies and other short lived creatures, like mice, would survive. They would take a terrible short term hit until they could adapt, but in the span of a few generations, they would thrive once more.
Very interesting read.
http://today.ttu.edu/2011/04/25-years-later-amazing-adaptation-in-chernobyl/
into meat-eaters and I'll worry.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
There are no "beneficial" changes. There are only changes, in the form of mutations. The ones that do not produce viable offspring die. The ones that do continue to survive.
To question whether this change is beneficial is like asking whether water is good or evil.
A thousand times "wrong". In the context of evolutionary theory, a beneficial mutation provides a "benefit"... I know this is a radical logical leap. A beneficial change would be a mutation that allows an organism to better compete and ultimately have more offspring. It is nothing at all like asking about good or evil, it is about being better suited to the environment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation#Beneficial_mutations
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A natural disaster causes a lot of pollutants to escape. I didn't read the article, but has the cause been narrowed down to anything particular?
It's a feature!
Yes, folks, we now have real bugs with features.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
They're not Mutant Butterflies, they're just discarded packaging from the MSN installer disks from back when they administrated the plant remotely via dialup connection. You know, before the meltdown. They don't use MSN dialup now... that would be silly.
Uh . . . Poe's Law. I have a feeling you're trying to be funny, but in the absence of a smiley or similar, I have no way of telling if you're a serious whacko nutcase.
Don't waste your time reading the article. Barely any of the butterflies can shoot lasers from their eyes.
Butterflies lay offspring by the hundreds, have short enough lifespans that selection will take place soon after the event, lack the socializing effects of modern healthcare in humans, etc.
There's no doubt that there were millions of stillborn and otherwise irreparably genetically damaged butterflies already. The question is has it affected the long-term survivability of the species.
It's the butterflies' fault. If they had not stopped with the development of nuclear power 30 years ago, they would not suffer from these "abnormalities". After all, modern reactor designs are intrinsically safe!
Wait. What?!
Free Manning, jail Obama.
And the change in population is entirely due to radiation and not, say at least partly, due to having had most of the landscape flooded by salt water and scoured by a tsunami? Caterpillars don't just drop out of the sky and hatch into butterflies. I'm sure their environment has been quite dented.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Read the article then comment.
Meh just ignore him. I agree with you and I have a pretty strong biology background (MD). Changes that are not beneficial we call "disease". But there are a whole bunch of other changes we might not even notice. Those are called genetic variability. So long as it's not detrimental to the organism and, per evolutionary rules, interfering with its ability to compete and mate, change is not necessarily "bad". It's just change.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Oh, I see, so this is some sort of semantics pissing match you want to win. Call it what you like, but the odds are far greater that we're going to be dealing with very few beneficial mutations, and more than likely a good many bad ones, but hey, if it somehow makes you feel like you've won a debate, then so be it. In fact, I recommend you go and get some substantial dosage of radiation right now. After all, you can't call it damage until your dick falls off.
It sounds like you're mad and you want the butterflies to die off so you can use it as evidence to stir up FUD about radiation.
The butterflies have mutated, but are still able to breed and be successful butterflies. This isn't damage, it's change. Damage is, by definition, change that is detrimental. If you want to argue about anything it helps to know the definitions of the things you're arguing about. If you consider that to be a "semantics pissing match", then I can offer you no help.
He probably works as a health insurance claims processor.
The presence of abnormalities and the time and location they were observed does not prove they were caused by radiation.
It might be a reasonable conjecture, but it is not proof. When they can prove that these specific abnormalities were definitely caused by radiation that came from the plant (as opposed to natural sources), then we will have cause to be concerned.
Wait till you see the sharks.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Hey, has anybody mentioned Mothra yet?
And that extra hand might come in, well, handy...
Thanks for posting that. We all know how beneficial irradiated insects, animals, and humans can be.
Just look at the spider that bit Peter Parker.
Will they grow lasers on their heads?
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
I'm not angry at all. The fact is that a massive number of genetic mutations in a population within a few generations from something like ionizing radiation or some other agent does not lead to greater fitness, but almost inevitably to lesser fitness; deleterious morphological changes (ie. malformed wings, eyes, internal organs) and increase in various cancers. Insects get an edge, in general, because fast breeding and lots of offspring can counterbalance such effects, and eventually, you will see some population that can return to some level of fitness, but that doesn't mean that dangerous doses of ionizing radiation is somehow potentially healthy, just because you get some potential survivors, any more than firing into a chicken coop with a shotgun and still having some chickens manage to survive means shotguns are potentially good for chicken survival. It's an absurd position.
We're not talking about the generally intermittent nature of natural genetic changes that occur under normal conditions. We're talking about populations being blasted with radiation of sufficient strength to cause massive morphological changes within a generation or two. Evolution isn't some superhero comic book, and there are levels of radiation that make any population much less fit to related populations outside the environment that caused this.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Haha, that's a good one. Could have been:
I have a pretty strong mathematics background (acountant)
and been about as funny.
But just FYI, wether a change is beneficial or not evolutionary is a rather subtle thing. Just consider sickle cell anemia, which sucks, but can protect you from malaria.
any more than firing into a chicken coop with a shotgun and still having some chickens manage to survive means shotguns are potentially good for chicken survival.
Well, theoretically, if you keep doing this for a million generations natural selection ought to automatically breed hulking armour-plated bullet-resistant chickens. That's basic Darwin 101, innit?
In fact there's probably a US defense contractor working on exactly this idea right now...
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
That's not Darwinism 101 at all. In fact, plenty of lineages just go extinct when confronted with environmental pressures that they cannot adapt to.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
...on Mars where the strippers have three tits.
Life is not for the lazy.
Shadows of Fukushima coming to stores near you for Christmas 2012!!!
Unless you believe evolution to be massively inefficient in the long run, you cannot seriously believe that many random changes over a very short span in any given organism will not include detrimental ones. Your stance is nonsense.
Evolution IS massively inefficient in the long run. It's random noise that sometimes makes a better picture than the previous picture which was selected for over hundreds of millions of years. The longer it goes on, the more inefficient evolution becomes. If you build up a finely-tuned, massively complex genetic base and then randomly fuck shit up, the odds are astronomically against you. If the environment changes, the larger, older code base means it takes much longer to adapt.
Evolution is the selection against inferior (in the current environment) variations in genetics. Said genetic variations are due to random mutation.
Random mutation is far more likely to have negative effects than positive effects. It takes selection pressure to weed out those negative effects. If evolution were efficient changes would be directed even without said pressure.
I absolutely believe that many random changes over a short time span will likely include detrimental ones.
However, you cannot say that that is the case without evidence, and just as humans weren't evidence of damaged primate genes, mutated butterflies aren't evidence of damaged butterfly genes until they're unable to survive and reproduce as well as the non-mutated butterflies.
I'm not angry at all. The fact is that a massive number of genetic mutations in a population within a few generations from something like ionizing radiation or some other agent does not lead to greater fitness, but almost inevitably to lesser fitness; deleterious morphological changes (ie. malformed wings, eyes, internal organs) and increase in various cancers. Insects get an edge, in general, because fast breeding and lots of offspring can counterbalance such effects, and eventually, you will see some population that can return to some level of fitness, but that doesn't mean that dangerous doses of ionizing radiation is somehow potentially healthy, just because you get some potential survivors, any more than firing into a chicken coop with a shotgun and still having some chickens manage to survive means shotguns are potentially good for chicken survival. It's an absurd position.
We're not talking about the generally intermittent nature of natural genetic changes that occur under normal conditions. We're talking about populations being blasted with radiation of sufficient strength to cause massive morphological changes within a generation or two. Evolution isn't some superhero comic book, and there are levels of radiation that make any population much less fit to related populations outside the environment that caused this.
Until you show that the changes are hurting the mutated butterflies's ability to survive and reproduce you can't say the changes are "damage". Plain and simple. it doesn't matter how the mutation happened or how fast.
butterflies? Can't wait to see them take on the shredder!
You forget that nature will select out the detrimental mutations and select in the beneficial mutations.
It seems (to me, a layman) that this incident has accelerated evolution and will, on the medium term, make the bugs more adapted to the environment (for example, they will better adapt to climate change). It increased the raw material (genetic diversity) which fuels evolution.
Actually, you have to occasionally point and say "Everyone... this is what stupid looks like... back to your business." Because if you don't, other stupid people will begin to quote him, you'll start seeing it on FOX News, and before you know it, the Tea Party is demanding Obama's birth certificate. Just point and say "Everyone... this is what stupid looks like... back to your business." Nip it in the bud... as a public service mind you.
Hi all,
The butterflies' abnormalities reported in this paper are potentially caused by 1) preexistent character of the populations, 2) inbreeding depression in laboratory, 3) environmental change after quake other than radioactive materials, 4) radioactive materials, and 5) other factors. However, the sampling design is unbelievably bad, and the effects of above factors cannot be isolated. For example, the number of female is very small (Spplementary Table 1), and the control population (Ube) is very distant (Fig. 1a).
In addition, similar abnormality of this butterfly is reported "before quake" by Otaki et al. (2010). As written in this paper, the distribution area of this butterfly is expanding to the northward in recent years (Fig. 1), and color-pattern abnormality of the range-margin population was known. The cause of color-pattern abnormality is considered to be low temperature in this paper.
More importantly, the corresponding authors of Otaki et al. (2010) and the focal paper is same. The authors of the focal paper "must" know preexistent abnormality of this butterfly, but northern populations were not surveyed although they should be able to survey easily.
Thus, I concluded that this paper may be publicity seeking by the authors. It has been very prosperous.
Yeah, you think they just hand out medical doctorates without any backround in biology right? I might not be an expert on repitilian biochemistry, but you bet your backside I have the basics down pretty damned straight. Just like you expect your accountant to be able to do arithmetic and statistics quite flawlessly, even if fractional calculus is a little beyond him.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.