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The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time ( ISBN 0-679-40003-6) is a 1994 nonfiction book about evolutionary biology, written by Jonathan Weiner. It won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. [1] In 2014, a substantially unchanged 20th-anniversary edition e-book was issued with a preface by the author.
In a 1995 review of the book states "In The Beak of the Finch, Jonathan Weiner vividly describes the excitement of modern evolutionary biology through the eyes and activities of two of its most important students, Peter and Rosemary Grant. " [2]
The finches of the title are the Galapagos or 'Darwin's Finches,' passerine songbirds in the Galapagos Islands. The species are so distinct that when Charles Darwin collected them in the islands he thought they were completely different birds, and it was only when he was back in London in 1837 that the ornithologist John Gould revealed that they were closely allied, reinforcing Darwin's growing view that “species are not immutable.” The adaptations of their numerous species, in three genera, show diverging evolution to exploit several ecological niches in the rugged and dry Galápagos Islands.
Weiner follows the careers of two biologists, Peter and Rosemary Grant, and several of their graduate students, including Dolph Schluter, Trevor Price, James (Jamie) Smith, and Peter Boag. The Grants spent more than thirty years (twenty of which are covered in the book) studying the morphology (especially bill shape), reproduction, survival, and behaviour of entire populations of Galapagos finches. Their work revolutionized scientists understanding of the pace of evolution, proving that evolution can be observed in 'real time'. Weiner describes years of painstaking field work on a desert island among the Galapagos, Daphne Major. Following years of intense drought or flooding, the Grants and their students were able to demonstrate all the necessary requirements for natural selection: traits have fitness consequences, respond to selection, and are heritable. Kim Sterelny (2007) cites this rapid natural selection as illustrating an important point about periods of relative stasis in the punctuated equilibrium hypothesis of Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould: "In claiming that species typically undergo no further evolutionary change once speciation is complete, they are not claiming that there is no change at all between one generation and the next. Lineages do change. But the change between generations does not accumulate. Instead, over time, the species wobbles about its phenotypic mean. Jonathan Weiner's The Beak of the Finch describes this very process". [3]
While the book focuses on the Grant's and Darwin's finches, it also covers work on fruit flies by Dobzhansky (Chaper 12) and Trinidadian guppies led by John Endler (Chapter 6).
In the conclusion the author relates the speed of evolution to the growing resistance of insects to insecticides and of bacteria to penicillin and related anti-bacterial drugs.
The book is well received by biologists, and has been praised for its description of the ups and downs of fieldwork, the excitement of unexpected results, and the growing emphasis on critical statistical analysis to uncover patterns. [4] It received some criticism for over-emphasizing the research by the Grants, e.g. Weiner's claim that they discovered species pairs of sticklebacks in freshwater lakes that were already well-known. [5] But reviews agree that the book is compelling, well written, and an excellent primer on how evolution works. [4] [5]
In evolutionary biology, adaptive radiation is a process in which organisms diversify rapidly from an ancestral species into a multitude of new forms, particularly when a change in the environment makes new resources available, alters biotic interactions or opens new environmental niches. Starting with a single ancestor, this process results in the speciation and phenotypic adaptation of an array of species exhibiting different morphological and physiological traits. The prototypical example of adaptive radiation is finch speciation on the Galapagos, but examples are known from around the world.
In evolutionary biology, punctuated equilibrium is a theory that proposes that once a species appears in the fossil record, the population will become stable, showing little evolutionary change for most of its geological history. This state of little or no morphological change is called stasis. When significant evolutionary change occurs, the theory proposes that it is generally restricted to rare and geologically rapid events of branching speciation called cladogenesis. Cladogenesis is the process by which a species splits into two distinct species, rather than one species gradually transforming into another.
Stephen Jay Gould was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was one of the most influential and widely read authors of popular science of his generation. Gould spent most of his career teaching at Harvard University and working at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. In 1996, Gould was hired as the Vincent Astor Visiting Research Professor of Biology at New York University, after which he divided his time teaching between there and Harvard.
Jonathan Weiner is an American writer of non-fiction books based on his biological observations, focusing particularly on evolution in the Galápagos Islands, genetics, and the environment.
Darwin's finches are a group of about 18 species of passerine birds. They are well known for their remarkable diversity in beak form and function. They are often classified as the subfamily Geospizinae or tribe Geospizini. They belong to the tanager family and are not closely related to the true finches. The closest known relative of the Galápagos finches is the South American dull-coloured grassquit. They were first collected when the second voyage of the Beagle visited the Galápagos Islands, with Charles Darwin on board as a gentleman naturalist. Apart from the Cocos finch, which is from Cocos Island, the others are found only on the Galápagos Islands.
David Lambert Lack FRS was a British evolutionary biologist who made contributions to ornithology, ecology, and ethology. His 1947 book, Darwin's Finches, on the finches of the Galapagos Islands was a landmark work as were his other popular science books on Life of the Robin and Swifts in a Tower. He developed what is now known as Lack's Principle which explained the evolution of avian clutch sizes in terms of individual selection as opposed to the competing contemporary idea that they had evolved for the benefit of species. His pioneering life-history studies of the living bird helped in changing the nature of ornithology from what was then a collection-oriented field. He was a longtime director of the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology at the University of Oxford.
Peter Raymond Grant and Barbara Rosemary Grant are a British married couple who are evolutionary biologists at Princeton University. Each currently holds the position of emeritus professor. They are known for their work with Darwin's finches on Daphne Major, one of the Galápagos Islands. Since 1973, the Grants have spent six months of every year capturing, tagging, and taking blood samples from finches on the island. They have worked to show that natural selection can be seen within a single lifetime, or even within a couple of years. Charles Darwin originally thought that natural selection was a long, drawn out process but the Grants have shown that these changes in populations can happen very quickly.
Icons of Evolution is a book by Jonathan Wells, an advocate of the scientific intelligent design argument for the existence of God and fellow of the Discovery Institute, in which Wells criticizes the paradigm of evolution by attacking how it is taught. The book includes a 2002 video companion. In 2000, Wells summarized the book's contents in an article in the American Spectator. Several of the scientists whose work is sourced in the book have written rebuttals to Wells, stating that they were quoted out of context, that their work has been misrepresented, or that it does not imply Wells's conclusions.
This is a list of topics in evolutionary biology.
Character displacement is the phenomenon where differences among similar species whose distributions overlap geographically are accentuated in regions where the species co-occur, but are minimized or lost where the species' distributions do not overlap. This pattern results from evolutionary change driven by biological competition among species for a limited resource. The rationale for character displacement stems from the competitive exclusion principle, also called Gause's Law, which contends that to coexist in a stable environment two competing species must differ in their respective ecological niche; without differentiation, one species will eliminate or exclude the other through competition.
The vampire ground finch is a small bird native to the Galápagos Islands. It was considered a very distinct subspecies of the sharp-beaked ground finch endemic to Wolf and Darwin Islands. The International Ornithologists' Union has split the species supported by strong genetic evidence that they are not closely related, and divergences in morphology and song. Other taxonomic authorities still consider it conspecific.
Daphne Major is a volcanic island just north of Santa Cruz Island and just west of the Baltra Airport in the Archipelago of Colón, commonly known as the Galápagos Islands. It consists of a tuff crater, devoid of trees, whose rim rises 120 m (394 ft) above the sea.
The Cocos finch or Cocos Island finch is the only one of the Darwin's finches not native to the Galápagos Islands, and the only member of the genus Pinaroloxias. Sometimes classified in the family Emberizidae, more recent studies have shown it to belongs in the tanager family, Thraupidae. It is endemic to Cocos Island, a Pacific island which is approximately 360 miles (580 km) south of Costa Rica.
The medium ground finch is a species of bird in the family Thraupidae. It is endemic to the Galapagos Islands. Its primary natural habitat is tropical shrubland. One of Darwin's finches, the species was the first which scientists have observed evolving in real-time.
The small ground finch is a species of bird in the tanager family Thraupidae. Endemic to the Galápagos Islands, it is common and widespread in shrubland, woodland, and other habitats on most islands in the archipelago. It commonly feeds on small seeds and parasites from the skins of Galápagos land and marine iguanas and Galápagos tortoises.
The vegetarian finch is a species of bird in the Darwin's finch group of the tanager family Thraupidae endemic to the Galápagos Islands. It is the only member of the genus Platyspiza.
Dawkins vs. Gould: Survival of the Fittest is a book about the differing views of biologists Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould by philosopher of biology Kim Sterelny. When published in 2001 it became an international best-seller. A new edition was published in 2007 to include Gould's The Structure of Evolutionary Theory finished shortly before his death in 2002, and recent works by Dawkins. The synopsis below is from the 2007 publication.
Why Evolution is True is a popular science book by American biologist Jerry Coyne. It was published in 2009, dubbed "Darwin Year" as it marked the bicentennial of Charles Darwin and the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the publication of his On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection. Coyne examines the evidence for evolution, some of which was known to Darwin (biogeography) and some of which has emerged in recent years. The book was a New York Times bestseller, and reviewers praised the logic of Coyne's arguments and the clarity of his prose. It was reprinted as part of the Oxford Landmark Science series.
The Española cactus finch, is a species of bird in the tanager family Thraupidae. It is one of Darwin's finches, and is endemic to the Galápagos islands, where it is restricted to Española, Genovesa, and the Darwin and Wolf Islands. This rather dark bird resembles the smaller and finer-beaked common cactus finch, but the two species do not co-inhabit any island.
The Daphne Major finches are a group of Darwin's finches that inhabit Daphne Major island of the Galápagos. The common cactus finch and the medium ground finch are the main species; while the large ground finch and the Española cactus finch are regular immigrants. Most extensively studied by Peter and Rosemary Grant of Princeton University since 1973, the birds are one of the sources of the understanding of bird behaviour, adaptation, and evolution.
