Galapagos finches caught in act of becoming new species - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14865438
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42103058

    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.

    The research was published in the journal Science.

    The group of finch species to which the Big Bird population belongs are collectively known as Darwin's finches and helped Charles Darwin to uncover the process of evolution by natural selection.

    In 1981, the researchers noticed the arrival of a male of a non-native species, the large cactus finch.

    Professors Rosemary and Peter Grant noticed that this male proceeded to mate with a female of one of the local species, a medium ground finch, producing fertile young.

    Almost 40 years later, the progeny of that original mating are still being observed, and number around 30 individuals.

    "It's an extreme case of something we're coming to realise more generally over the years. Evolution in general can happen very quickly," said Prof Roger Butlin, a speciation expert who wasn't involved in the study.

    ....

Nice.

While speciation has been observed in the lab many times, this is the first time it has been observed in the wild.

It is now undeniable that evolution is a fact, and that this fact can be explained through Darwin’s theory of natural selection.

Also, sounds like a sweet job. Bird watching in the tropics.
#14865466
Abstract
Homoploid hybrid speciation in animals has been inferred frequently from patterns of variation, but few examples have withstood critical scrutiny. Here we report a directly documented example from its origin to reproductive isolation. An immigrant Darwin’s finch to Daphne Major in the Galápagos archipelago initiated a new genetic lineage by breeding with a resident finch (Geospiza fortis). Genome sequencing of the immigrant identified it as a G. conirostris male that originated on Española >100km from Daphne. From the second generation onwards the lineage bred endogamously, and despite intense inbreeding, was ecologically successful and showed transgressive segregation of bill morphology. This example shows that reproductive isolation, which typically develops over hundreds of generations, can be established in only three.
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/e ... ce.aao4593


A hybrid species born through the process of hybridization may not be a new species. The study is about the match between an immigrant finch and a native finch in the Galápagos archipelago. In human terms, it's like a marriage between a British immigrant and a native American in the United States. The mechanism of reproductive isolation prevents members of different species from producing offspring, which is not the case with the mating between an immigrant Darwin’s finch and a resident finch.

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