Part 1 Questions: Evolution In The Flesh

Chapter 1 - Daphne Major

1. What measurements do the Grants take on each finch?

2. How does Darwin describe natural selection?

a. Did Darwin ever observe natural selection in action?

b. Why did Darwin believe we could never "watch" natural selection in action?

3. Why are the finches on Daphne Island such an ideal population to study?

Chapter 2 - What Darwin Saw

1.     How many species of finch are found in the Galápagos?

2.     Why are the Galápagos finches referred to as nature's "most famous toolkit?"

3.     What hints do we have that Linné wondered about evolution?

4.     How did Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology influence Darwin?

5.     How did John Gould's discovery that there were 14 (13) species of finches on the Galápagos help spark Darwin's revolutionary ideas?

6.     Why did Darwin begin the Origin with a detailed description of pigeon breeding?

Chapter 3 - Infinite Variety

1.     Why might "Barnacle Bill" have been a good nickname for Charles Darwin?

2.     What is Darwin's explanation for the lack of transitional forms between species?

3.     Describe the large, medium, and small ground finches with respect to their beaks. What kind of adaptations do you think the finches' beaks represent?

4.     How does the variation in populations of Darwin's finches compare with variation among populations of other birds, like sparrows?

5.     Why is the study of variation so important to evolutionary biology?

Chapter 4 - Darwin's Beaks

1.     Why did 19th and early 20th century biologists fail to recognize the importance of variation in beak size among Darwin's finches in the Galápagos?

2.     How did David Lack's observation of the distribution of finch species in the Galápagos lead him to conclude that natural selection had indeed been at work?

3.     How did the finches' feeding behavior change during the dry season?

4.     What are the three requirements of Darwin's theory of natural selection that are found in populations of Darwin's finches?

Chapter 5 - A Special Providence 

1. How did the drought of 1977 affect the feeding behavior of finches on Daphne Island?
2. Why didn't the Grants and Peter Boag and Laurene Ratcliffe immediately recognize the episode of natural selection at work during the drought?
3. How did natural selection change the morphology of the finch populations on Daphne Island from 1977 to 1978?

Chapter 6 - Darwin's Forces

1.     Discuss the "costs and benefits" of black plumage among male Darwin's finches?

2.     Provide a "cost-benefit analysis" of John Endler's guppies of South America with respect to their colorful spots.

3.     Describe Endler's "natural" selection experiments with guppies. What did he show?

Chapter 7 - Twenty-five Thousand Darwin's

1.     What was the selection response in the aftermath of El Niño on Darwin's finches?

2.     How have biologists reconciled the apparent paradox of rapid evolution in the short term with much slower evolutionary rates measured in the fossil record?

3.     Do the results on natural selection in Darwin's finches and British Columbian sparrows change your view of a species? If so, how?