How do evolutionists explain mutualistic symbiosis?

Question

For example: The blue-streaked wrasse and the oriental sweetlips. The sweetlips is a fish with teeth, and the only way that those teeth keep from rotting off is is to stay clean. How do they stay clean? the blue streaked wrasse enters its mouth and eats the stuff off it. Well, in order for this to happen, they would both have to develop these instincts at the same time. The instincts would have to develop at the same time as the sweetlips' teeth. If one of these didn't develop, the system wouldn't work, and the sweetlips that had teeth would all die. You gotta admit, there are too many coincidences here to have happened by chance. Admittedly, there are some symbiotic relationships that you could explain, but there are others simply too complex to to throw in the hands of fate.

Your explanations remind me of Native American legends. Because one raven was blackened, all now are. Because one wrasse was stupid enough to swim into a big fish's mouth all its descendants do. Fish don't teach their kids the tricks of the trade, so you're saying that its actions affected the instincts of its offspring. Well, I think we all agree that that doesn't happen.
And think. If you had something stuck in your teeth, and someone stuck a potato chip in your mouth with the intent of getting the thing out, but they didn't tell you, what would you do? Either bite down or tell them to get lost, and why are they putting things in your mouth. Well, since fish don't talk, it would be much more likely to bite when that little morsel entered its jaws than anything else. Much more likely. Even if it didn't, fish aren't smart engh to fgre smthing like tht out. It just thnks "hey, that annoying thng in my teeth is gone", nt "that nice little fish just brushed my teeth! Better not eat it!"

Answer 1

Remember that Evolution depends on being able to survive and pass your genes on.

1) Big fish whose teeth rot away can't survive. Big fish whose teeth don't rot away do survive.
2) Little fish who get extra nutrients from eating off of Big fish's teeth survive in greater numbers than those who lack these nutrients.
3) Big fish who eat the little fish now lack fish to clean their teeth and do not survive. Big fish who do not eat little fish survive.

There is no reason that the wrasse had to evolve at the same time the teeth did. The sweetlips may be able to survive perfectly fine without the wrasse. But maybe it survived better once it had the wrasse cleaning its teeth. So say before a sweetlips lived to be 4 yrs old and had 20 kids. But now, with the wrasse, it lives to be 6 and has 60 kids. Pretty soon, all the sweetlips will have an affinity for wrasses and getting their teeth cleaned.

Remember that these all seem complex, but it happens over millions of years. Like someone else said about "accidents," it seems a bit hard to believe that this could happen by chance, but remember that these "chance" "accidents" happen all the time in an infinite number. (Btw, I put them in quotations because nothing in science in random or accidental. Everything has an underlying chemical reason; even "random" mutations in DNA are not random.)

Answer 2

Just about every "mutualistic symbiosis" has been adequately explained by evolution, or can be. Your wrasse's teeth might not have always rotted so easily; perhaps through an evolutionary accident, they caught a bit of food, and a little fish found it could eat the food out of the teeth. Maybe this was easier for the wrasse than trying to keep its mouth clean by itself, so over time its teeth became better adapted to the sweetlips. Suddenly something happens to the environment the little fishy go the rest of its food from, and bam! The only way they could survive was to hang out with their wrasse.

With something like this, yes -- the odds of this particular accident happening are small. But remember that there are an almost infinite number of "accidents" that could cause two animals to work together like this. Accidents are pretty much guaranteed -- you just don't know which ones. Evolution explains symbiotes as the accidents that DID happen!

Answer 3

Have you ever had food get caught between your teeth? It hurts and you get instant relief when it's removed. The ancestor of the sweetlips was not dependent on the wrasse, but those that let the wrasse nibble bit of food out got an immediate reduction in pain and teeth that lasted a bit longer. That slight increase in survival meant a few more offspring who would be permissive of the wrasse. After a enough generations, all sweetlips were permissive to wrasse and since their teeth were clean, they didn't get a benefit from defending them from decay based on their immune mechanism which, over more generations became less pronounced as the energy was being wasted.

This is a classic model of coevolution. Even the "complex" ones make sense when you consider the millions of years they took to develop.

Answer 4

well im not an atheist...but to answer ur question...i think humans use religion to explain what cannot be explained...take aboriginals for example....they have tree gods for explaining why trees grow, fire gods to explain why volcanos erupt, etc. .....this also applies to greek mythology....zeus gets angry and throws lightning bolts...explains why theres lightning...aries(spelling?) the god of war was why some were victorious and some werent...there's also the wind god, sea god...basically a god for everything that can't be scientifically explained.
1000 years ago, religion was everything...but as science developed, it slowly dissolved religious claims...such as the earth is flat....earth is the centre of the universe....and now...id say its 50/50 religion vs. science.
As science develops and technology improves...we are becoming more and more able to explain things we never knew before...im not a scientist so i dont know if there is an answer to ur question right now....but i can assure u that anything and everything has some sort of scientific explanation to it....all it takes is time
i do believe in God...but rather than believing that God told the wrasse to eat away cavity from the fish's teeth, maybe God invented the science behind why the wrasse behaves the way it does....what's wrong with the idea that maybe evolutionism is part of God's plan?

Answer 5

The food was there to be eaten. Among the wrasses, there was one who had propensity to bravery, went and got the food, and survived to pass on this trait to its offspring. It is not the thing which would develop overnight. You might ask why anyone would create a fish which would not survive if it did not have its teeth cleaned by another fish. That is what does not make sense.

Answer 6

There are mechanisms by which symbiotic relationships can develop. However, let's imagine for a moment that we DON'T know exactly how this symbiotic relationship developed. So we say "Aha! it was designed by a God who is supernatural and therefore does not need explanation". All you've done is said "I don't know who did it, so I'm going to invent someone or something who did" - you've just shifted the problem - or explanation, and made yourself intellectually poorer in the process. God is a great extension of our soul, and makes us (or can if we allow it) kinder, more generous, more tolerant. But he is not there to provide explanations for our intellectual laziness.

Answer 7

knowledge is the answer to repelling attacks on evolution. why is evolution so threatening? if you do not believe in it that is fine. do not try to change those who believe in evolution. they really do not care if you believe in intelligent design.

Answer 8

I am sure evolutionists could come up with some sort of BS they do pretty good with everything else.