Peter and Rosemary Grant

So they're, they're gene- they're inherited genetically, but led by evolution.

Uh, there's another study of Darwin's finches in the Galapagos carried, uh, carried out by Peter and Rosemary Grant, um, who, who looked at speciation over forty years in Darwin's finches, and what they saw is similar.

It's that the, uh, populations of finches separated behaviorally long before they were genetically distinct.

They s- they, they divided themselves into different populations and stopped reproducing together long before they were, they were incompatible genetically.

Um, so he did a study of another, I mentioned another study of Darwin's finches, but, um, but Mike, uh, did one of Darwin's finches showing epigenetic differences between species of Darwin's finches living in urban environments in, uh, the Galapagos versus ones living in rural environments.

And h- uh, what he shows in that paper is that the epigenetic changes are much faster, and so they, they kind of lead the way, and then genetic changes follow.

A little bit also like what Peter and Rosemary Grant, um, I think showed, uh, in their study.

And so, so, so the point is that epigenetic changes are a part of the, of the process.

Now, you'll

remember, I hope, a few weeks ago when I told you about Peter and Rosemary Grant, the evolutionary biologists slash lovebirds who have studied Galapagos finches since the 1970s.

One of their greatest contributions came in 2009 when studying finches on the island of Daphne Major.

They discovered that the offspring of an immigrant finch from another island and a Daphne Major finch had become a new species in less than 30 years.

So here's a little biological love story for all you romantics out there.

Peter and Rosemary Grant, two British evolutionary biologists, they are in fact a married couple, have since the early 1970s been spending six months of each year together on a secluded island in the Galapagos studying Darwin's finches, trying to catch them in the act.

of evolving.

These are, mind you, the same animals that Darwin studied, and the ones that he said were evolving at an imperceptibly slow pace.

The island in the Galapagos that the Grants hang out on is called Daphne Major, and when they started their research in 1973, it was occupied by two different finch species, the medium ground finch and the cactus finch.

But in 1981, another finch arrived on Daphne Major from a nearby island.

It was a groundfinch-cactusfinch hybrid, and it was a whole lot bigger than either of the local finches.

Its beak was also extra wide, and its song was like a mashup of the jams groundfinches sang on its home island and the ones sung on Daphne Major.