In the sunbaked Galápagos Islands, a male finch perches on a branch, hearing what sounds like another bird’s song. But something’s not quite right. The song is slower and deeper, like a familiar tune ...

The beaks of Darwin's medium ground finches can evolve to crush the shells of hard seeds. Credit: Andrew Hendry They say that hindsight is 20/20, and though the theory of ecological speciation—which ...

AMHERST, Mass. – They say that hindsight is 20/20, and though the theory of ecological speciation — which holds that new species emerge in response to ecological changes — seems to hold in retrospect, ...

Scientists simulated how drought conditions could change the song of Darwin’s medium ground finches by digitally modifying recordings to mimic what would happen as their beaks grew larger over ...

"I started working with these birds 25 years ago," says Jeffrey Podos, professor of biology at UMass Amherst and the paper's senior author. " In my very first publication on the finches, back in 2001, ...