Certain species, and how they differed from one island to another; in this case, specifically, finches and tortoises.
he study finches on his way back
charles Darwin was an amazing person
Charles Darwin studied the unique flora and fauna of the Galapagos Islands, focusing on the variations among the finches and tortoises that helped him develop his theory of evolution by natural selection. His observations of these species' adaptations to their environments were crucial to his groundbreaking work on the origin of species.
Based on the study by Abzhanov et al. (Bmp4 and Morphological Variation of Beaks in Darwin's Finches. Science 2004 ), the differences in beak shape is partly determined by the expression of a signaling factor (Bmp4). Finches that have larger and broader beaks were shown to express Bmp4 earlier in development and at higher levels. Finches with different shaped beaks were able to exploit different food sources and this allowed the many beak shapes to remain present. After hundreds (or thousands) of years, the birds diverged and became different species.
The Galapagos Islands, which are about 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador.
Charles Darwin is known for his studies aboard the HMS Beagle. He went all around the world to study different species and formed the theory of evolution.
All the species of finches on the Galapagos Islands appear morphologically very similar, varying mostly in terms of beak size and behavior; they all look very much like a species of finch from the mainland of South America. This suggests that all the finches on the Galapagos are descended from one original colonist species that went through an adaptive radiation. Because of the small, isolated environment of the Galapagos, the finches have become the topic of extensive study into natural selection. The studies that have been conducted on the finches show strong selection for larger beaks during droughts. These data show that climatic changes can have profound effects on the morphology of a species and potentially lead to the formation of new species. When Darwin visited the Galapagos, he observed and collected some of the finch species, believing that they represented a very diverse set of birds that were not closely related. Their significance was not recognized until later, when ornithologist John Gould pointed out that the birds were all closely related finches (Desmond and Moore 1991). But because Darwin originally collected some of the specimens and because the finches showed so much evidence for evolution and natural selection, they have been dubbed "Darwin's finches." This has led many people to conclude (mistakenly) that Darwin's theory of evolution was specifically inspired by the finches The zoologist Thomas Bell showed that the Galápagos tortoises were native to the islands. By mid-March, Darwin was convinced that creatures arriving in the islands had become altered in some way to form new species on the different islands, and investigated transmutation while noting his speculations in his "Red Notebook" which he had begun on the Beagle. In mid-July, he began his secret "B" notebook on transmutation
The subtle differences between the beaks of Galapagos finches, and their distribution over the different islands helped Darwin to formulate his theory of Natural Selection. We know that this is true because it is constantly observable in the world around us.
•The overall observations he made were Survival of the Fittest. He observed the finches beaks from the mainland and from the islands. He realized that finches were all the same species, however they adapted in their own special way.
He mainly studied birds; finches were the main ones he studied.
He didn't do the study of the Galapagos Finches. The people who studied these birds were biologist Peter Grant and Rosemary Grant. They looked at beak size and shape. The finches are commonly called Darwin's finches, however, they really were not studied by him. They used to finches to study Darwin's Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. In order for NS to occur there must be variation in a population, variations must be heritable, the species must be reproductively successful, and the survival and reproduction of an individual must be nonrandom. The Grants came up with 4 postulates based on the NS model. 1. Is the finch population variable? 2. Is some off the variation among individuals heritable? 3.Do individuals vary in their reproductive success? 4. Are survival and reproduction nonrandom? The overall conclusion that they made was that: when all four of Darwin's postulates are true in a population, the population will evolve; and that evolution an occur over a short period of time.