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The bird is a member of the G. fortis species, one of two species that interbred to give rise to the Big Bird lineage. See story NNBIRD. Researchers used a scan electron microscope to find where bacterial cells and particles attach to a flies body. See story NNFLY. New species can develop in as little as two generations and the findings would have left Charles Darwin excited , researchers revealed. Scientists say the arrival 36 years ago of a strange bird to a remote island in the Galapagos provides direct genetic evidence of their claims. The newcomer, which belonged to one species, mated with a member of another species on the small island of Daphne Major in the Pacific Ocean. This produced a new species, known as the “Big Birds”, that now consists of roughly 30 birds, according to researchers from Princeton University and Uppsala University in Finland. The study, published in the journal Science, followed work carried out over the last four decades on Darwin’s finches in the Galapagos Islands. Rosemary Grant, senior biologist at Princeton in the US, said: "Through our work on Daphne Major, we were able to observe the pairing up of two birds from different species and then follow what happened to see how speciation occurred." The newcomer, a male with an unusual song which was larger in size than the three resident species on the island, was spotted in 1981. Peter Grant, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton, said: "He was so different from the other birds that we knew he did not hatch from an egg on Daphne Major.” The researchers took a blood sample and released the bird, which later bred with a resident medium ground finch of the species Geospiz fortis, starting a new lineage.

Big Galápagos Birds Can Develop in as Little as Two Generations

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