EALING: In an effort to fill in the blanks of Charles Darwin’s famous research into the evolution of Galapagos finches, modern scientists have returned to the region and pick up where the father of evolutionary theory left off.
By sequencing the genomes of more than 100 finches, an international research team has pinpointed the gene that determines how the birds’ beaks develop. The findings, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, help to fill in the details of Darwin’s early research on evolutionary adaptation.
Darwin didn’t realize it at the time, but in observing these finches, he was witnessing signs of what would become a central concept in evolutionary biology: adaptive radiation. In response to changes in the environment or the availability of new resources, species can tend to rapidly develop new and different traits, eventually diversifying into distinct species. With Darwin’s finches, the fragmented environments of the Galapagos islands prompted this diversification, most prominently with the birds’ beaks.
