Finches - Evolution in action

OK SO IT'S NOT A GROUND FINCH. BUT IT'S SO FABULOUS I COULDN'T RESIST. (PHOTO: SLANTSIXX)

A short while ago, we published a poll asking if you'd rather have Darwin's finches or Shroedinger's cat as a pet. While Mr Kitty won paws down (68% to 32%), the finches are the ones winning the column inches this week. Apparently, in one short generation, they are demonstrating climate-change-driven evolution. The prosaically named Medium Ground Finch has evolved a smaller beak. Due to a particularly dry few years in 2002 and 2003, birds with a smaller beak were better equipped to find and eat small seeds, and so to survive into mating season. Most of the birds with bigger beaks died, so natural selection had favoured the little beaks. This process normally takes place over thousands and thousands of years, so visible evolution happening over one generation caused skepticism in the scientists who noticed the trend. But they concluded that the stresses of climate change had sped up the process. If they're correct, this is really interesting, but it's also a little unnerving, non?

The abstract from Science is here, more on this story from ABC news here. And a wikipedia article about Darwin and his finches here.

Comments

[Karmen]

It's a zebra finch! Very cool. I used to breed them... that is, I fed them, and they bred like crazy. It has never surprised me that such quick and efficient breeding machines make examples of speedy evolution.

This is definitely unnerving news... although we should expect to see plenty of this, sooner or later. We've been discussing the potentials for decades now, but plenty of people still aren't listening. Sometimes I wonder if the finches will adapt us into the dust.

[Katie]

It is a zebra finch. It's great, isn't it. I think the Ground Finch (medium or not) is boring brown, and I couldn't find a good photo of it.

[Hugh Powell]

This is really interesting work - so interesting that there's already been an acclaimed bit of science writing about it, as you probably already know. Jonathan Wiener's 1995 book Beak of the Finch.

But I think the punch line of this Science article has more to do with competition between two finch species after one found its way over to a new island (just as Darwin had supposed 150 years ago). Either way, tracking minute but consistent changes in beak size over 22 years is phenomenal -- even if the rest of the bird is boring brown.

[Katie]

I wasn't doing the finch down because it's brown. Finches rule. Love finches.

[Ashley]

I don't find it unnerving or even surprising. Just further evidence that ideas like "junk DNA" are fantasies of those who'd like to explain all-things-genetic during their own lifetimes, er, careers.

There was a similar idea in an article in Nature, I think...4 years ago? About anoles turning into a subspecies from environmental pressures in a single generation.