The beak of the finch
On a desert island in the heart of the Galapagos archipelago, where Darwin received his first inklings of the theory of evolution, two scientists, Peter and Rosemary Grant, have spent twenty years proving that Darwin did not know the strength of his own theory. For among the finches of Daphne Major, natural selection is neither rare nor slow: it is taking place by the hour, and we can watch. In this dramatic story of groundbreaking scientific research, Jonathan Weiner follows these scientists as they watch Darwin's finches and come up with a new understanding of life itself. The Beak of the Finch is an elegantly written and compelling masterpiece of theory and explication in the tradition of Stephen Jay Gould. With a new preface.
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5recommend
10mentions
8people
2013–2022years
70% recommend30% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- "The Selfish Gene" shifted my perspective on the drivers of evolution>
"The Beak of the Finch" shifted my perspective on evolutionary timeframes.
"The Design and Evolution of C++" had an inverse impact on my appreciation of academic programming language design.
- > Neither do we say that chihuahua's and labradors have evolved into their present form.
This is artificial selection. When it occurs naturally, it's called Natural selection & it's the basis of evolution. The mechanism of both artificial and natural selection is the same -- increase of a trait in the population by selecting only animals with that trait to reproduce. Speciation is merely a result of this process.
Btw the pulitzer winning book "The beak of the finch" discusses how evolution actually doesn't need many generations to happen. What it needs is selection pressure -- events (such as severe draught) that force natural selection to happen within a handful of generations. It's a fascinating book on a fascinating study.
- So many. One I remember very fondly is "The beak of the Finch". https://www.amazon.com/Beak-Finch-Story-Evolution-Time/dp/06...
- The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner describes (extremely well, it´s a great book to read btw.) the evolution of Finch beaks on the Galapagos Islands. There was one particular Finch/beak size that had relatively small families and population growth, and was clearly being outcompeted by other, better adapted Finches.
Until there was a severe drought, when that type of beak was able to take advantage of a neglected source of foods, which wasn´t accessible to the other Finches - who were more sucessful, but only when there was abundant easy food. After the resultant die-off this particular Finch subtype dominated of course.
A lot of the discussion of evolutionary traits implicitly assumes an adaption to an unchanging environment, but that is very unlikely to be the actual situation, especially as in adapting, the adaption itself can change the larger environment.
- For people interested in this kind of work, I recommend The Tangled Tree, the biography of Carl Woese, who discovered Archaea: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/13/books/review/david-quamme...
Evolution is interesting but up and down from this level of the tree of life too. I also loved reading "The Beak of the Finch" to learn about evolution in macroscopic metazoans.
- If you have never read "The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time" [1], do yourself a favor and get a copy asap. Not only is it a realy good read on the work of the Grants and their team, it is one of the very best pop-science books I have ever read. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Beak-Finch-Story-Evolution-Time/dp/06...
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