Charles Darwin, an English naturalist and geologist discovered the different Galapagos islands. He strolled through each of the islands taking notes and observations and noticed that there were 6 different kinds of finches, which were a type of bird. They oddly, each had different beaks, but similar bodies showing that they were once a species that has evolved into these 6 different kinds of finches.

He inferred that these animals were different because of the resources that were in their surroundings. This species were separated from geographic barriers and undesirably came into different islands with different stressors to adapt to. They gained variant traits because of the different stressors in their different islands which made different species, showing allopatric speciation. Some traits came out to be advantageous in their survival and helped them breed and pass down these traits from generation to generation. This type of evolution is called natural selection. They adapted into these traits and their environment gaining their beaks and advantageous traits.

The stressors that changed this species were the environment, prey and predator, and reproduction. Since they evolved through so many stages, they had physical differences and genetic issues which blocked the mating with the finches from the other islands which is known as reproductive isolation.

From my perspective I think they best way to explain the evolution is through DNA and fossils. To discover and support their point on evolution of the finches, they had to dig up some parts of the islands to see the bone structure and how deep it went beneath the floor. They probably found the deepest bones from the island of where the original finches came from. These finches were the first ones then the finches separated from allopatric isolation, not sympatric isolation because they formed new species in different regions, and the bones of the new finches were probably closer to the top because they haven’t been surviving in those islands as long as the prototypes have.

If you picture this in layers, you would see the original finches way at the bottom and the new forms of finches closer to the top. Also, when you look at the bones you might be able to see different shapes and sizes which show evolution. When Darwin discovered the Galapagos Islands and the different species of finches, he probably took samples of the DNA from the finches and tested them out. Seeing as they couldn’t even mate with each other because of the genetic issue, they were doubtlessly different from each other. The new advantageous traits they gained were passed down to their offsprings changing their genetics from the original.

This shows the sign of evolution because if these finches birds didn’t change, first of all they would be able to mate, and second of all, the DNA should match 99.99 percent or close to that point which I doubt happened. The finches were an example of evolution through natural selection.

<David Yang/ N. h Hollywood High 11th>