Charles Darwin Oration 2016: Evolution in Action: Charles Darwin and the Galápagos Finches скачать в хорошем качестве

Charles Darwin Oration 2016: Evolution in Action: Charles Darwin and the Galápagos Finches

In his seminal book the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin established the scientific basis for understanding how evolution of species occurs by natural selection. To explain how species form he envisioned a three-step process: colonisation, involving the expansion of a population into a new environment; divergence, when populations become adapted to novel environmental conditions through natural selection; and finally, the formation of a barrier to interbreeding between divergent lineages. Charles Darwin showed characteristic insight by suggesting that investigations of what we now call very young adaptive species radiations might provide windows through which we can view the evolutionary processes involved. Since Darwin’s time the fields of genetics, behaviour and ecology have continued to illuminate how and why species evolve. The 2016 Charles Darwin Oration by Professors Rosemary and Peter Grant presents and discusses the progress that has been made in our understanding of speciation with particular reference to the young radiation of Darwin’s Finches in the Galápagos Archipelago. It draws upon the results of the Grant’s more than forty years of field study of finch populations on the Galápagos Islands, combined with laboratory investigations of the molecular genetic basis of beak development in Darwin’s finches. For more information, go to: https://www.cdu.edu.au/moocs/evolution