Charles Darwin and Galapagos Finches

David Lack and Darwin’s Finches

David Lack and Darwin’s FinchesToday's entry was written by Thomas Burnett. You can read more about what we believe here.

Note: Not only are evolution and biblical faith compatible, but committed Christians have been at the forefront of evolutionary science ever since Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859. This week we'll examine the lives of two devout Christians—David Lack and Asa Gray—who each made an enduring impact on modern biology. Today we feature the first of two posts on British ornithologist David Lack.

Darwin’s Finches?

Lobby of the National Academy of SciencesDarwin’s finches are some of the most visible and recognizable symbols of evolution in the world today. Biology textbooks feature them prominently, and the National Academy of Sciences has enshrined them in the entrance of their headquarters in Washington, DC. Surely the finches that Darwin collected on the Galápagos islands were a central feature of his evolutionary theory, right?

Lobby of The National Academies Building. Courtesy of CPNAS. Photo by Robert Lautman

Actually, the Galápagos finches are never even mentioned in Darwin’s famous work On the Origin of Species.Large Cactus Finch–the Galapagos. assing.2

It was only in 1845, in the second edition of The Voyage of the Beagle, that Darwin included a tantalizing sentence about the Galápagos finches:

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.3

However insightful this statement may have been, Darwin never published anything else about the Galápagos finches for the rest of his life. Nor did he publically present these birds as direct evidence for this theory of evolution.4

David Lack's illustration of 14 FinchesIf these finches were so important to Darwin’s evolutionary theory, why did he remain silent about them? One of his comments in The Voyage of the Beagle provides us with a clue:

Unfortunately most of the specimens of the finch tribe were mingled together; but I have strong reasons to suspect that some of the species of the subgroup Geospiza are confined to separate islands.5

When Darwin was exploring the Galápagos himself in 1835, he had not formulated his theory of evolution yet, and thus he did know what data would be necessary to make definitive conclusions about finch evolution. In particular, he did not keep careful track of which of his specimens came from which islands. Moreover, as was customary among naturalists at that time, Darwin only collected a small number specimens—he brought home only 31 finches and 64 total birds from the Galápagos.6

Source: biologos.org

Peachtree Publishers Young Charles Darwin and the Voyage of the Beagle
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Start your study of biology with a perusal of

by ddacg

Wikipedia then hit the libraries. There is plenty of proof of new species being created.
Observed instances
Island genetics, the tendency of small, isolated genetic pools to produce unusual traits, has been observed in many circumstances, including insular dwarfism and the radical changes among certain famous island chains, like Komodo and Galapagos, the latter having given rise to the modern expression of evolutionary theory, after being observed by Charles Darwin. Perhaps the most famous example of allopatric speciation is Darwin's Galápagos Finches.
Here is a quick link to start you off :)

Snatching turtles

by ats54

Hitherto unknown manuscripts of Charles Darwin have been unearthed from under many layers of the settled dust of time over it.
It talks about Galapagos, where the females are never let ashore by local fishermen. Because of the snatching turtles.
Darwin had got his insight of the separation of species not so much from the Galapagos finches, but from the resemblance between Snatching turtles of Galapagos, drop bears of Australia, the Sasquatshewan Yeti in Canada, and the Loch Ness monster.
The snatching turtles. They crawl into women's private parts, dwell there, enjoy the damp warmth, see the sights, and when they leave, they take all empty space from the snatch with themselves

(2) fin

by 1pushkick

(e) Even the probability of complex molecules necessary for the evolution of life coming into existence is next to zero, cells as complex as factories is even less, and living organisms with parts depending upon each other for usefulness is certainly zero. (f) The finches of the Galapagos Islands which Charles Darwin claimed evolved differently on different islands were actually naturally selected from existing varieties by their food supply. (g) Many natural processes which scientists have measured to be occurring today if projected millions or billions of years into the past would yield results today not observed

Charles Darwin and the secrets of the Galapagos Islands  — ABC Online
The Galapagos Islands are famous for their abundance of wildlife, which inspired Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Robyn Williams retraces Darwin's footsteps and discovers that not all that much has changed off the coast of Ecuador.

Yale University Press The Young Charles Darwin
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