Birth of New Finch Species
Nov/09BC
Source: WIRED
On one of the Galapagos islands whose finches shaped the theories of a young Charles Darwin, biologists have witnessed that elusive moment when a single species splits in two.
In many ways, the split followed predictable patterns, requiring a hybrid newcomer who’d already taken baby steps down a new evolutionary path. But playing an unexpected part was chance, and the newcomer singing his own special song.
This miniature evolutionary saga is described in a paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It’s authored by Peter and Rosemary Grant, a husband-and-wife team who have spent much of the last 36 years studying a group of bird species known collectively as Darwin’s finches.
The finches — or, technically, tanagers — have adapted to the conditions of each island in the Galapagos, and they provided Darwin with a clear snapshot of evolutionary divergence when he sailed there on the HMS Beagle. The Grants have pushed that work further, with decades of painstaking observations providing a real-time record of evolution in action. In the PNAS paper, they describe something Darwin could only have dreamed of watching: the birth of a new species.
Scientists Discover ‘Giant’ orb web spider
Oct/09BC
There seems to be a spider buzz going around in the scientific community. Earlier this month scientist discover the vegetarian spider and now in South Africa and Madagascar they have found a rare web spider.
The new spider had been named Nephila komaci and according to the Plos One journal, it is the largest golden orb spinning spider known to science. Females of this group of species are only “giants”, with a leg span of up to 12cm (4.7in); the male spiders are tiny by comparison. Scientists who discovered these new species say that the female spiders are capable of spinning webs that reach up to 1m (3ft 3in) in diameter.
Read more about the ‘Giant’ orb web spider at BBC.com.