Symbiotic relationships

How do Evolutionists explain symbiotic relationships, when certain organisms reguire other ones.
EX: (source, Dr. Kent Hovind) Termites have other organisms inside them, because they cannot digest the food, the temite cannot live without the critter, and the critter can't live without the termite. Which evolved first?

I'm going to promote this with a caveat. Our new poster is a 7th grader so I do NOT want to see everyone pounce.DB, I'm putting this in a science forum, as it is a biology question. This forum is divided into two parts, a science part and a faith/belief part. Science forums discuss things from a science/evidence point of view.

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Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

Symbiosis is believed to result from co-evolution. That's when two species evolve together, and become more closely interrelated as they evolve.Here are a couple of web pages on the topic
Evolution - Coevolution
http://biology.clc.uc.edu/courses/bio303/coevolution.htm

Could you show me evidence that co-evolution is how it got this way?This message has been edited by DinoBoy93, 12-23-2005 11:42 PM

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I love Science

DinoBoy93 responds to nwr:

quote:

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Could you show me evidence this is how it got this way?

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I say this in the most gentle way I can: Did you read the references you were given? The first describes the difference between coevolution and coadaptation and shows how you can distinguish one from the other. It gives an example, antagonism, and a specific instance of it, parasitic arms races. Do you have specific questions about them?It would help if you could tell us what you are having trouble with. Otherwise, you're a complete blank slate with a single question and we have no idea at what level to craft the response. That is, if you are familiar with the terminology and experiments that have been carried out, then the response would be about the specifics of the experiments, how the data was analysed, etc. But if you are a complete novice, then we have to start at a much more elementary and fundamental level; "starting from scratch," as it were.If you could help us out with more specific questions, we will be better able to give you satisfactory answers.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

I'm a mathematician and computer scientist. Maybe one of the biologists can point to some good examples.As Rrhain said in his reply, there are some examples in the links I gave you in my earlier reply.Here are some more links that you might find useful:
Evolution of Complex Systems - Self Organization
Symbiosis

Welcome DinoBoy! I hope you have permission and guidance from adults.There is evidence that termites evolved from insects that ate many different things other than wood - possibly the ancestors of modern cockroaches. Someone who posts on another evolution forum (MrDarwin on IIDB) recently posted an article about it on his blog: Darwinblog.blogspot.com: Transitional Species in Insect Evolution. DNA evidence suggests that the coevolution between termites and their bacteria goes back to when they evolved from cockroaches.An important thing to understand about symbioses where both species benefit (which scientists call "mutualisms") is this: they start with two species that can live apart from each other, but both species get some benefit from interacting with each other. This is called a "facultative" mutualism. Because this interaction helps both species survive and reproduce better, over a very long period of time they may become more specialized to work together, and eventually each species may not be able to live without the other. This is known as "obligate" mutualism. Symbiosis is a major driving force in evolution.In other words, in the distant past there was a cockroach-like insect that ate all sorts of things. There was also a kind of bacterium that digested the cellulose in wood (there are many such bacteria still around today). The insect found that it was able to eat the wood once the bacterium digested the cellulose, and in the process it spread the bacterium around to new sources of wood. This gave the insect the ability to eat a very abundant food source, and the bacterium received free transportation to that same food. Individuals of each species that worked together the best were more likely to reproduce, and so over time each species changed to accomodate the other.Unfortunately, I'm not very familiar with the research about termite coevolution in particular, but if this topic lasts through next week when I can get to a reference library, I'd be glad to do a literature search to see what is known. I work with bark beetles and ambrosia beetles, which feed in trees. Ambrosia beetles are like termites: they can't digest wood by themselves, and can't live without their symbiotic (obligate mutualist) fungi which they carry into the tree. The transition from facultative (fungi and beetle help each other) to obligate mutualism (fungi and beetle need each other) in this beetle group is very well-studied, and examples of related beetles at different points on this transition still can be found today.{edit: updated link; MrDarwin posted the final draft of his article at a different URL}This message has been edited by Belfry, 12-25-2005 02:30 PM

Belfry got a POTM nomination for his message.Earlier NWR posted: While the above quoted are not bare links, the text content is pretty minimal, albeit good (I am not condemning NWR's message, just commenting).Between the two of them they got it all covered - Text here, plus references.Congrats on the POTM - Now back to the theme of the topic, already in progress. AdminnemooseusAdded by edit: OK, skimmed too fast. Belfry also has a reference. Kudos again.This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 12-24-2005 12:36 PM

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there is a great deal of evidence that suggests that the mitochondria in our cells is the result of a symbiosis (likewise the chloroplasts in plant cells). they have double organelle walls, they have separate dna, they replicate on their own.this would, i assume, represent the next step in symbiosis. the complete adoption of one species by another. so if the bacteria became part of the stomach cells of the termite rather than just living inside the stomachs.but i've been out of bio for a few years. just a little tidbit.

omg so cute <3

If I'm reading this mitochodria stuff right, what happened was one of these barely-even-a-bacteria archaic chemical reactions got the rickets, and it permanently damaged his little pseudobacterial immune system.His array of genetic information has been mostly-growing ever since, from a small coil to some hundreds of chromosomes, as he incorporates new and exciting genetic aberrations into his original simple neat loop.Periodically, he even gets the rickets again, but he's like Fool Me Once and just diesMitochondrion - Wikipedia

ow.what?

Although DinoBoy seems to have abandoned us for the time being, I have started to look into the literature on the evolution of termite/flagellate symbiosis, and I hope to be ready to report within a couple of days. This sort of thing is my cup of tea, so I'll do it for my own knowledge even if no one cares .What I've found so far indicates that the origin may have been very different from the hypothetical scenario described in my previous post... and considerably more interesting, IMO.

Could y'all show physical evidence that co-evolution is how symbiotic relationships happen?