Dennis Sweitzer mentioned the finches of the Galapagos Islands in his
discussion on natural selection. I just finished reading an excellent
book describing a long running and thorough study of the effect of
selective forces on the finches, "The Beak of the Finch" by Jonathan
Weiner. The bottom line is that natural selection is now a well documented
cause of both speciation and extinction among the finches. Of course,
the "speciation" was rather limited in scope, amounting to rather
modest diversification and isolation in beak size and body mass. The
scientific studies described in the book demonstrate that natural selection
is on sound scientific grounds, but they do not place a bound on how far
this "micro"-evolution could go, given time.
The book is well-written and interesting (it won the 1995 Pulitzer
Prize for general non-fiction) and I highly recommend it. A real review
can be found at http://bluestem.prairienet.org/gpf/finchbeak.txt for
those interested...
Regards,
John.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Dr. John C. Eidson
MIT Lincoln Laboratory phone : (617) 981-3520
244 Wood Street, B-370 fax : (617) 981-0695
Lexington, MA 02173-9108 e-mail : eidson@ll.mit.edu
"Opinions, interpretations, conclusions, and recommendations are those
of the author and are not necessarily endorsed by the United States
Air Force or MIT Lincoln Laboratory."
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