An international team of researchers has released a landmark study on contemporary evolutionary change in natural populations. Their study uses one of the largest genomic datasets ever produced for animals in their natural environment, comprising nearly 4,000 Darwin's finches. The study has revealed the genetic basis of adaptation in this iconic group.
Ever since Darwin wrote about the finches of the Galápagos Islands, biologists have studied these small songbirds to understand the mechanisms of evolution. One ancestral species has evolved into 18 different species in the last million years. The strength of Darwin's finches as a study organism lies in what they can show about the early stages of speciation. Peter and Rosemary Grant tracked nearly every individual on Daphne Major starting in the 1970s.
These results may surprise human geneticists, where many genetic variants each are only responsible for a small amount of variation in human height, for instance. The researchers collected a drop of blood from the wing vein and banded each bird. This allowed them to track them and determine how long they survived, who they mated with, and their offspring.
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