In Galapagos Finches, Biologists Catch Evolution in the Act

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. 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 [Wired.com]. The process has been taking place with the help of a little bit of chance and a special song.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2009/11/17/in-galapagos-finches-biologists-catch-evolution-in-the-act/