In Galapagos Finches, Biologists Catch Evolution in the Act

On the Galapagos Islands, where Charles Darwin's observations led to his evolutionary theory, scientists are now reporting that they're witnessing a single species splitting into two, according to a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. A husband and wife team, Peter and Rosemary Grant of Princeton University, have spent the past 36 years studying Darwin's finches, technically know as tanagers. Darwin's observations of the birds during his voyage to the Galapagos on the HMS Beagle helped him arrive at the idea of evolutionary divergence: when different populations of a single species become geographically isolated, and evolve in different directions.