Few people have the tenacity of ecologists Peter and Rosemary Grant, willing to spend part of each year since 1973 in a tent on a tiny, barren volcanic island in the Galapagos. Even fewer would have ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. GrrlScientist writes about evolution, ecology, behavior and health. Seeing this gradation and diversity of structure in one small, ...

To understand the genetic basis of the species-specific beak morphologies, we previously performed a comparative candidate gene analysis with developmental genes known to be associated with ...

After visiting the Galapagos, Charles Darwin proposed that species who compete for the same, limited food resources tend to diverge from each other to reduce competition. Seed-eating finches have ...

One of the most iconic observations in biology is Charles Darwin's study of the finches of the Galapagos Islands, and his realization that they had all arisen from the same ancestral bird population.

In a new study, researchers demonstrate that simple changes in beak length and depth can explain the important morphological diversity of all beak shapes within Darwin's famous finches. Broadly, the ...

I never thought I’d care so much about such a tiny and seemingly trifling thing as a bird’s beak. Especially a beak located on a paltry hunk of rock in the middle of an ocean half a world away.

Why is Christian Science in our name? Our name is about honesty. The Monitor is owned by The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and we’ve always been transparent about that. The church publishes the ...

Biologist have compared the genes of large-beaked Cameroonian finches to those of their smaller-beaked counterparts, found the answer to a 20-year old mystery: 300,000 base pairs, apparently inherited ...

“Darwin knew that breeders could shape not only animals’ bodies but their very instincts Darwin was impressedby the work it took to maintain fancy lines of pigeons. If breeders crossed their birds ...

Few people have the tenacity of ecologists Peter and Rosemary Grant, willing to spend part of each year since 1973 in a tent on a tiny, barren volcanic island in the Galapagos. Even fewer would have ...