Natures wonders: Monarchs use toxic Milkweed (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, November 26, 2021, 15:10 (1091 days ago) @ David Turell

From special mutations, which are also in Monarch-eating annimals:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/11/211122135324.htm

"In high enough concentrations, milkweed can kill a horse, or a human. To be able to eat this plant, monarchs evolved a set of unusual cellular mutations. New research shows the animals that prey on monarchs also evolved these same mutations.

"Scientists now understand how certain animals can feed on picturesque, orange monarch butterflies, which are filled from head to abdomen with milkweed plant toxins.

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"A Current Biology journal article, published today, describes the research that revealed these mutations in four types of monarch predators -- a bird, a mouse, a parasitic wasp, and a worm.

"'It's remarkable that concurrent evolution occurred at the molecular level in all these animals," said UCR evolutionary biologist and study lead Simon "Niels" Groen. "Plant toxins caused evolutionary changes across at least three levels of the food chain!" (my bold)

"Milkweed toxins target a part of animal cells called the sodium-potassium pump, which helps enable heartbeats and nerve firing. It's so important in humans that our bodies use a third of all the energy we generate from food to power this pump. When most animals eat milkweed, the pump stops working.

"Two years ago, Groen and his colleagues wrote about amino acid changes in three places on the pump that not only allow monarch butterflies to consume milkweed, but also to accumulate the milkweed toxins in their bodies as a defense against attacks.

***

"The researchers took DNA sequence information from databases for a variety of birds, wasps, and nematode worms to see if any of them evolved the amino acid changes in their sodium pumps. One of the four animals in which the team found the pump mutations includes the black-headed grosbeak, which eats up to 60% of the monarch butterflies in many colonies each year."

Comment: how do required mutations happen in concurrent mutations (my bold)? Either the germ cells in each of the various animals 'knew' what to do in three places on the sodium-potassium pump, or the designer helped them.