The Galapagos Islands

In 1976 there was a drought that caused many finches to die off in the Galapagos islands. Two scientists, Rosemary and Peter Grant, studied the island for 6 months each year for 5 years. They recorded, that during the dry season of 1976, there was not even a centimeter of rainfall. On average, rainfall during the dry season is about 12 centimeters. This drought continued through both seasons of 1977. During the wet season there was 25 centimeters of rainfall and 0 centimeters of rainfall during the dry season. The average rainfall during wet seasons at the Galapagos islands is 179 centimeters. Taken this information you can see how little rainfall can have a large effect on the ecosystem. The water deprived plants had a harder time producing

Over the last several years, evolution has been playing an increasingly important role in determining how various species are evolving. This is because ecology will have an impact on how quickly a particular organism is able to adapt (with: the unique challenges for a particular environment). To determine the effect that this is having requires carefully examining different species over the course of many years. This will be accomplished by comparing these changes on Darwin and Wallace Islands. Once this occurs, is when specific insights will be provided that are highlighting the underlying challenges affecting the development of organisms. This is the point that these transformations will be evident among the various life forms. (Fasolo, 2011, pp. 53 68)

As seen with Anolis, single species of organisms have the ability to undergo adaptive radiation and become new species by filling niches in a given environment. This is prevalent not only in Anolis, but other model organisms as well, such as finches, sticklebacks, and cichlids. All of these organisms have gone through the similar mechanisms and processes to evolve into different species. Alike to Anolis, they have gone through reproductive isolation, adaptation, and convergent evolution. Due to a poor fossil record of Anolis, the other model organisms may give better outlook on how they have diverged overtime. Further investigations on all of these organisms and their evolutionary mechanisms would not only give better a better idea of ecological speciation, but more comprehension on the origin of all

The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner explores evolution through the most famous examples in history—the finches of the Galápagos Islands. Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection and the process of evolution are applied directly to what scientists refer to as Darwin’s Finches. Weiner follows scientists Peter and Rosemary Grant as they study the finches in real time on the Galápagos. Years of previous work, study and data is collected and analyzed. Different species of animals are observed and explained throughout history. The Grants have one goal, and that is to find the origin of the species, how organisms first began. They find that it really is about the “survival of the

The Evolution Lab simulates environmental situations to determine effects on evolution over periods of time. This lab experiments with the evolution of finches on two different islands over 100, 200, and 300 years. By manipulating parameters that influence natural selection, the effects that natural selection have on the evolution process can be studied.

2. It is made up of thirty-six islands. Most of the people live on Tortola, the largest island.

The Galapagos Islands consists of thirteen major islands and over a hundred smaller islands located along the Ecuadorian coast. The islands are home to a variety of unique species such as sea lions, sharks, rays, and 26 different species of native birds. Thirteen of these birds are Darwin’s finches. These finches are known to be the “world’s fastest-evolving vertebrates” due to their bodies quickly adapting to the rapidly changing environment (Robertson, N.D. , para.1). Their DNA chemical makeup causes these adaptations to occur. The finch’s most noticeable feature is their evolutionary adaptations, due to the briskly changing environments.

The Hawaiian Islands were created from volcanoes over the millions of years. The Islands sit on the Pacific Ocean plate and the way these islands were formed was from the hotspots in the earth’s crust and from the underwater volcanoes that soon rise to make land. There is roughly eight islands and I believe there will be more islands created in the future and they will keep shifting northwest. The first island is the oldest and roughly near 5 million years old, while the younger ones aren’t as old. Erosion is a common thing throughout the earth but for the Hawaiian Islands it’s changed the way the structure of the volcanoes and the island as a whole. The main reason why the islands are growing is from the lava the pours out of the volcanoes and builds layers upon layers and expands which expands the land. There is enough supply of lava that comes from the mantle since it’s still an active hot spot and will always be a hotspot.

Based on Travel Nation, Guadalupe Island, as well as Isla Guadalupe, has turned into a best discovering location for excellent white fanatics in the last 12 years about. Crystal-clear underwater visibleness and also hot water temps (averages range between sixty seven to seventy two degrees) make that a particularly attractive dive place, and a top place to go for large-game fishing.

Peru is an ever-changing climate system due to the mixture of terrain and climate that consist of everything from tropical forest in the east and deserts in the west. Additionally, in the Andes Mountains the temperature is always much colder than the rest of the Country and is located in the center of the Country. Peru maintains a stable southern hemisphere climate, one that is near reversed of the northern hemisphere with the summer months being December through February and the winter following in July through September. However, off the coast of South America an event changes the weather that happens every 2-7 years. The local citizens have named this event El Nino, which means "The Little Boy" due to its occurrence in December. During El Nino, the waters off Peru's coast begin to warm and cause large numbers of fish to die, effecting the wildlife and local population greatly. The fishers that live on the coast of Peru suffer tremendously due to the fish that die off are their main source of food and food production during this event. Additionally,

The island of Hispaniola was founded by Christopher Columbus in 1842 and claimed for Spain. The island was neglected by its mother country due to the lack of minerals on the island. The French

It is important to understand the various cycles our atmosphere goes through due to how they affect our daily lives. The ENSO Cycle has a large impact globally and locally in California as we have seen with the long-term drought Southern California is currently in. The ENSO cycle can be defined by sea surface temperature (SST) anomaly in the Pacific Equatorial Area known as Nino 3.4 region (5oN-5oS, 120o-170oW). Unusually cooler waters (-.5 degrees centigrade) occurring for three consecutive months outlines a La Niña. La Niña’s bring wetter weather to Australia and Indonesia but often leaves the Eastern Pacific dry. Unlike La Niña’s, unusually warm water (+.5 degrees centigrade above average) occurring for 3 consecutive month’s outlines an

Two anoles on different islands can have similar traits as long as their ecological niches are similar, however geographic isolation was the cause to have 3 different species evolving. They might have evolved by having swam, floated on natural rafts, or the islands may have been connected at one point. Therefore, lizards on the same island are more closely related to each other than lizards that have similar body shapes and live in the same type of habitat. Lizards from the same island are more closely related to one another than to similar looking lizards from other islands. For example, a grass-bush anole from Puerto Rico is more related a trunk-ground anole also from Puerto Rico, than it is to a grass-bush anole from Hispaniola. This shows that the same type of anole lizards evolve independently on each of the islands. However, there was a point in time whereas the anole species from the four Caribbean islands all evolved from one common ancestor. The cladogram produced shows that species from separate islands and ecomorphs, for example the A. cybotes from Hispaniola and the A. occultus from Puerto Rico, are more closely related to each other than they are to L. carinatus, which belongs to a different genus of lizards. The DNA evidence gathered from anoles from the four islands is able to determine the ancestry of a single species that inhabited the Caribbean allowed for diversity of new species in the

When that happens over many generations a species’ gene pool changes to only include the traits that are a best fit for ensuring survival of that species, and a new species may evolve. In the case of the Galapagos finches Darwin studied, biologists have since found that one of the differences was their beak size, which were adapted to the specific seeds available to the finches as food on the different islands. This would support this principle as only the birds able to eat the local seeds would be able to survive to reproduce, thus over many generations, new finches with a variety of different beak sizes would “evolve”. The

While on the Galápagos Islands, Darwin kept notebooks about all the species there, and he noticed the variety of tortoises on the island who were essential in explaining his theory of evolution. There are several species of tortoise present on the Galápagos Islands that are all very closely related, but slightly different. There are eleven presently surviving subspecies of Galápagos tortoises; furthermore, six of the eleven are found on different islands in the archipelago, and the other five are all found on a single island on five separate volcanoes with their own mini-ecosystems (PNAS). Although all of the species of Galápagos tortoise is different, they each have small differences that can include maximum adult size, shell shape, and the length of the neck and limbs. The tortoises of the islands are most closely related to the Chaco tortoises along the western coast of South America, and they most likely came to the Galápagos by “rafting” across the water (PNAS). Similar to the tortoises, Darwin observed that the Finches on the islands also had changed to match the environment. Spread among the islands were fourteen subspecies of finch whose