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Galapagos finches - new species
Posted: Fri Nov 24, 2017 2:10 pm
by LanDroid
Galapagos finches caught in act of becoming new species
A population of finches on the Galapagos has been discovered in the process of becoming a new species.
This is the first example of speciation that scientists have been able to observe directly in the field. Researchers followed the entire population of finches on a tiny Galapagos island called Daphne Major, for many years, and so they were able to watch the speciation in progress.
...This new finch population is sufficiently different in form and habits to the native birds, as to be marked out as a new species, and individuals from the different populations don't interbreed.
Rory Galloway
11/23/17
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42103058
Re: Galapagos finches - new species
Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2018 5:06 pm
by Chris OConnor
Interesting. Those of us that don't deny the theory of evolution aren't probably that impressed with speciation finally being observed firsthand. And those that do deny the theory aren't going to accept the findings of these researchers.
Re: Galapagos finches - new species
Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2018 5:15 am
by Litwitlou
Chris OConnor wrote:Interesting. Those of us that don't deny the theory of evolution aren't probably that impressed with speciation finally being observed firsthand. And those that do deny the theory aren't going to accept the findings of these researchers.
Yeah, but still, it's pretty cool.
Re: Galapagos finches - new species
Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2018 1:25 pm
by geo
Interesting story. (Thanks, Landroid) The Galapagos Islands seem to present ideal circumstances under which speciation can occur. The similarities between different kinds of finches make it obvious that speciation does occur. But it seems fairly obvious that even species that diverged a little further back in time are also closely related (like dogs and foxes or apes and monkeys), and we need not fixate on having observed speciation "directly". We didn't see the Grand Canyon being formed either, but we have a pretty good idea how it happened.
Anyway, I'm not sure that we've never observed speciation directly before:
http://www.darwinwasright.org/observati ... ation.html
I was recently reading about the Carolina Chickadee (a bird that hangs out at our bird feeder). It looks very much like a Black-capped Chickadee that lives more to the north. Both Carolina and Black-capped chickadees hybridize in the area where their ranges overlap, but they are otherwise considered two different species, believed to have diverged more than 2.5 million years ago. The zone where they do interbreed is is narrow ribbon only 20 miles wide.
Physically the two species are almost identical, but each differs in some of its habits. Even more interesting (to me) is that the songs of the two birds are different. As such this speciation of chickadees in the United States (and Canada) is quite similar to what's being observed with the finches on the Galapagos Islands. The big difference is that the birds in United States are not separated by water.
http://www.audubon.org/news/identifying ... chickadees
Re: Galapagos finches - new species
Posted: Sun Jul 29, 2018 1:20 am
by crios
A good read on the subject:
The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time by Jonathan Weiner.
Just saying...
