I'm just finishing up Weiner's _The Beak of the Finch_ that describes the
work of Peter and Rosemary Grant in documenting rapid evolution among the
Galapagos finches in the wild. Now I know that some of you will dismiss
this work as uninteresting and unimportant on the "big" questions about
evolution. But I'm quite intrigued by the conclusion that ordinary
neo-Darwinian natural selection and divergence works on the itty-bitty
variations that are present and that it works very rapidly (e.g. just a few
generations under extremely stressful conditions).
I think that the message of the book (other examples besides the finches
are discussed) is that evolution is not slow under certain conditions and
that fairly traditional Darwinian principles do in fact work.
Has anyone else has read the book? What do you think of it?
Terry G.
_____________________________________________________________
Terry M. Gray, Ph.D. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Calvin College 3201 Burton SE Grand Rapids, MI 40546
Office: (616) 957-7187 FAX: (616) 957-6501
Email: grayt@calvin.edu http://www.calvin.edu/~grayt