Darwin’s Finches Research Paper

Evolution is one of the main cornerstones of biology and all living things as humans know them. Without evolution, complex modern organisms, such as the humans, would never have emerged and dominate the planet. Although evolution has been observed over a long period of time, by scientists such as Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, it was not solidified and recognized until the revolutionary discoveries made by a young British naturalist by the name of Charles Darwin. Unlike Lamarck, who believed in the inheritance of acquired characteristics, Darwin advocated his theory of revolution with the more modern concept of natural selection.

One of the greatest discoveries of mankind began in 1835 with Darwin’s journey on the H.M.S. Beagle. During his journey, Darwin made stops on the Galapagos Islands near Ecuador. On these islands, he found numerous birds, which he assumed to be finches. The interesting is that all of these finches appeared extremely similar, yet somehow they demonstrated variations in their beaks. He soon discovered that these variations were due to the availability of different food sources that were present on different islands that these finches inhabited. For example, finches with longer, bigger beaks crushed seeds on ground while finches with smaller bills fed on insects and small fruits. Being the brilliant man that Charles Darwin was, he quickly saw the correlation between available resources and these finches. As a result, he collected various specimen to be studied by ornithologist John Gould, who concluded that though the specimen were closely related, they cannot be qualified as the same species anymore (Raven, 2011, p.418).

Although Darwin’s discoveries were truly revolutionary, his journey and studies on the Galapagos...

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...gy, it is still a prevalent driving force in almost all other living things of Earth.

References

Abzhanov, Arhat; Winston P. Kuo, Christine Hartmann, B. Rosemary Grant, Peter R. Grant and Clifford J. Tabin (August 3, 2006), The Calmodulin pathway and evolution of elongated beak morphology in Darwin's finches, Nature UK: Nature Publishing Group

Public Broadcasting Service. (2001). Adaptive Radiation: Darwin's Finches. Retrieved April 20, 2014, from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/01/6/l_016_02.html

Raven, P. H., Mason, K. A., Losos, J. B., Singer, S. R., & Johnson, G. B. (2011). Biology (9thth ed., pp. 418-419). New York City, NY: McGraw Hill.

Schluter, D. (2000). The Ecology of Adaptive Radiation (p. 114). New York City: Oxford University Press. Retrieved April 20, 2014, from http://www.google.com/books?id=Q1wxNmLAL10C&pg=PA10#v=onepage&q=finch&f=false