Question

Read the scenario and answer the accompanying questions.

Today, finches occupy every continent except Australia, most eating seeds, a diet for which their bills are well-adapted. Over the past several million years, the 13 Galapagos finches have come to occupy the varied Galapagos islands. Finches found on these islands have very different bill shapes and feeding behaviors than finches found on the nearby mainland. Darwin gathered a considerable amount of field data on these finches and their habitats in order to propose his findings.
Determining that there were 13 different species of finches, Darwin proposed that they arose by ________.

Answer 1

adaptive radiation, which is the process where a single ancestral species evolves into many different species, each adapted to a specific set of environmental conditions or habitats. In the case of the Galapagos finches, the varied habitats on the different islands led to the evolution of different bill shapes and feeding behaviors in the finches, allowing them to exploit different food sources and niches. Darwin's study of the finches and their habitats was crucial in developing his theory of evolution by natural selection.