>>The finches of the Galapagos islands unwittingly played a pivotal role in scientific history, helping Charles Darwin formulate his theories of natural selection. Today, Darwin’s finches are in trouble, threatened by a parasitic fly (introduced to the Galapagos accidentally in the 1960s) that feeds on the blood of hatchlings, sometimes causing entire nests to die. And as Ian Sample reports for the Guardian, a new study shows that even finches that survive the parasite suffer a worrying long-term effect: damage to the nostrils that warps the birds’ love songs, making it difficult for them to find mates.<<

>>All this mating confusion among Galapagos finches could “herald the collapse of species lineages,” Peters and Kleindorfer write. Hybridization, they elaborate, “could potentially produce a new species, phase out one of the species, or cause the collapse of the two existing species into one.” <<

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/parasites-are-ruining-lovesongs-darwins-finches-180972408/

PermeateFree said:

>>The finches of the Galapagos islands unwittingly played a pivotal role in scientific history, helping Charles Darwin formulate his theories of natural selection. Today, Darwin’s finches are in trouble, threatened by a parasitic fly (introduced to the Galapagos accidentally in the 1960s) that feeds on the blood of hatchlings, sometimes causing entire nests to die. And as Ian Sample reports for the Guardian, a new study shows that even finches that survive the parasite suffer a worrying long-term effect: damage to the nostrils that warps the birds’ love songs, making it difficult for them to find mates.<<

>>All this mating confusion among Galapagos finches could “herald the collapse of species lineages,” Peters and Kleindorfer write. Hybridization, they elaborate, “could potentially produce a new species, phase out one of the species, or cause the collapse of the two existing species into one.” <<

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/parasites-are-ruining-lovesongs-darwins-finches-180972408/

Attacking the babies would make it almost impossible to prevent

Cymek said:

PermeateFree said:

>>The finches of the Galapagos islands unwittingly played a pivotal role in scientific history, helping Charles Darwin formulate his theories of natural selection. Today, Darwin’s finches are in trouble, threatened by a parasitic fly (introduced to the Galapagos accidentally in the 1960s) that feeds on the blood of hatchlings, sometimes causing entire nests to die. And as Ian Sample reports for the Guardian, a new study shows that even finches that survive the parasite suffer a worrying long-term effect: damage to the nostrils that warps the birds’ love songs, making it difficult for them to find mates.<<

>>All this mating confusion among Galapagos finches could “herald the collapse of species lineages,” Peters and Kleindorfer write. Hybridization, they elaborate, “could potentially produce a new species, phase out one of the species, or cause the collapse of the two existing species into one.” <<

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/parasites-are-ruining-lovesongs-darwins-finches-180972408/

Attacking the babies would make it almost impossible to prevent

Just another thing we have stuffed up, despite being a basic step in proving evolution.

> The finches of the Galapagos islands unwittingly played a pivotal role in scientific history, helping Charles Darwin formulate his theories of natural selection.

Actually the mockingbirds, but for many decades it was thought to be the finches.

mollwollfumble said:

> The finches of the Galapagos islands unwittingly played a pivotal role in scientific history, helping Charles Darwin formulate his theories of natural selection.

Actually the mockingbirds, but for many decades it was thought to be the finches.

>>Mentioning finches in the 1845 edition of The Voyage of the Beagle, Darwin wrote, “Seeing this gradation and diversity of structure in one small, intimately related group of birds, one might really fancy that from an original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one species had been taken and modified for different ends. … “

Darwin began to realize that island isolation of mockingbirds and finches must have resulted in their adaptation to the varying island habitats through a gradual separation into differing species. He believed that the finches and the mockingbirds each derived from an ancestor in South America and maybe elsewhere.

Due in no small measure to the variation in finches, the concept of evolution — that diversity of species gradually evolves through a process of natural selection – began to take shape in Darwin’s mind.<<

https://www.chron.com/life/article/Mockingbirds-finches-origins-of-Darwin-s-2078202.php

PermeateFree said:

mollwollfumble said:

> The finches of the Galapagos islands unwittingly played a pivotal role in scientific history, helping Charles Darwin formulate his theories of natural selection.

Actually the mockingbirds, but for many decades it was thought to be the finches.

>>Mentioning finches in the 1845 edition of The Voyage of the Beagle, Darwin wrote, “Seeing this gradation and diversity of structure in one small, intimately related group of birds, one might really fancy that from an original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one species had been taken and modified for different ends. … “

Darwin began to realize that island isolation of mockingbirds and finches must have resulted in their adaptation to the varying island habitats through a gradual separation into differing species. He believed that the finches and the mockingbirds each derived from an ancestor in South America and maybe elsewhere.

Due in no small measure to the variation in finches, the concept of evolution — that diversity of species gradually evolves through a process of natural selection – began to take shape in Darwin’s mind.<<

https://www.chron.com/life/article/Mockingbirds-finches-origins-of-Darwin-s-2078202.php

I’ve read Darwin’s “Voyage of the Beagle”. I thoroughly recommend it.

Darwin didn’t need a cable car to get up Mt Wellington.

sarahs mum said:

Darwin didn’t need a cable car to get up Mt Wellington.

Did he go up there?

roughbarked said:

sarahs mum said:

Darwin didn’t need a cable car to get up Mt Wellington.

Did he go up there?

You know where they need a cable car? Mt. Everest.

Make it so that every Tom, Dick, and Harriet can go up there and come back, so all the rich poseurs aren’t able to label themselves as something ‘special’ for having been there.

captain_spalding said:

roughbarked said:

sarahs mum said:

Darwin didn’t need a cable car to get up Mt Wellington.

Did he go up there?

You know where they need a cable car? Mt. Everest.

Make it so that every Tom, Dick, and Harriet can go up there and come back, so all the rich poseurs aren’t able to label themselves as something ‘special’ for having been there.

Nah. Let Darwin be.

Ian said:

captain_spalding said:

roughbarked said:

Did he go up there?

You know where they need a cable car? Mt. Everest.

Make it so that every Tom, Dick, and Harriet can go up there and come back, so all the rich poseurs aren’t able to label themselves as something ‘special’ for having been there.

Nah. Let Darwin be.

and leave Everest to bury its own dead.

captain_spalding said:

roughbarked said:

sarahs mum said:

Darwin didn’t need a cable car to get up Mt Wellington.

Did he go up there?

You know where they need a cable car? Mt. Everest.

Make it so that every Tom, Dick, and Harriet can go up there and come back, so all the rich poseurs aren’t able to label themselves as something ‘special’ for having been there.

“Because when everyone’s super, no one is, mwahahahaha”

Arts said:

captain_spalding said:

roughbarked said:

Did he go up there?

You know where they need a cable car? Mt. Everest.

Make it so that every Tom, Dick, and Harriet can go up there and come back, so all the rich poseurs aren’t able to label themselves as something ‘special’ for having been there.

“Because when everyone’s super, no one is, mwahahahaha”

you’re incredible!

ChrispenEvan said:

Arts said:

captain_spalding said:

You know where they need a cable car? Mt. Everest.

Make it so that every Tom, Dick, and Harriet can go up there and come back, so all the rich poseurs aren’t able to label themselves as something ‘special’ for having been there.

“Because when everyone’s super, no one is, mwahahahaha”

you’re incredible!

I see what you did there.

ChrispenEvan said:

Arts said:

captain_spalding said:

You know where they need a cable car? Mt. Everest.

Make it so that every Tom, Dick, and Harriet can go up there and come back, so all the rich poseurs aren’t able to label themselves as something ‘special’ for having been there.

“Because when everyone’s super, no one is, mwahahahaha”

you’re incredible!

What’s incredible is that you got the ref

Arts said:

ChrispenEvan said:

Arts said:

“Because when everyone’s super, no one is, mwahahahaha”

you’re incredible!

What’s incredible is that you got the ref

He’s art of the incredibles.

Charles Darwin in Hobart Town

https://www.utas.edu.au/library/exhibitions/darwin/hobart.html

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