Galapagos finches

I think the Grants' work just reinforces the concept that ol' Mother Nature is a lot messier than we humans would like her to be - we want a species to be a single thing that we can hold the archetype for in our hand, and reality just isn't that way. Johnathan Weiner's The Beak of the Finch is a pretty readable summary of the Grants' studies, BTW.

The physical (as opposed to geographical) barrier to interbreeding of chihuahuas and St Bernards is a tad higher than that between any two populations of humans, don't you think?

In the 1992 paper - Science, vol 256, pp 193-197 - the Grants write, after discussing by name the three species of Geospiza on the island Daphne Major That's the only mention I can find there of the total number of species. Tamara, PM or email me if you want a copy of the whole paper - copyright laws won't let me post it here.

You're welcome, Tamara. But try to avoid the appearance of "quote mining" - it'll bring you grief in these here parts. The Grants do, indeed, write "The discovery of superior hybrid fitness over several years suggests that the three study populations of Darwin's finches [on Daphne] are fusing into a single panmictic population, and calls into question their designation as species."
But the next sentence is "Over the long term, fusion is unlikely." The next paragraph summarizes some reasons for this opinion. And the major portion of the paper describes just how common hybridization is among the birds: 9.2% of all species have been documented to crossbreed in the wild, with the number rising to 40%+ in the order that contains ducks and geese. Darwin's finches aren't some odd outlier to the "rules" - they're just exceptionally well studied.

I can do that. The point mutation that led to hemoglobin C in the Mossi and related peoples of West Africa. They make a variant form of hemoglobin - somewhat like that of sickle-cell anemia - that makes homozygotes nearly immune to ill effects from malaria. And most folks with HbC never know they have it.Of course, the hemoglobin S or sickle-cell mutation also adds "informational content," for English definitions of those words, to the genome. Two kinds of hemoglobin require more "instructions" to manufacture than one kind does. And how were they "genetically information rich?" Tetraploid? Hexadecaploid? How many alleles did they have for various traits like the wrinkled vs smooth seeds in Mendel's peas? Ah, but that "axiom" has been disproved by a couple of dozen or more separate lines of investigation from biology, geology, chemistry, astronomy, and physics. No flood. 45,000 varves in Lake Suigetsu and the Cariaco Basin. 700,000 layers in the ice in Antarctica.But I'm veering off from finches......See you around the forums!

What does "harmful or neutral" have to do with the amount of information? Is there "information" on the television news? Is it all cheerful happy stuff, or do plane crashes count as information also?Does a village in Burkina Faso whose inhabitants have two genetically specified varieties of hemoglobin in their blood have less, more or the same amount of genetic "informational content" as the neighboring village that has only one variety?

268 feet of ice, perhaps? And fifty years? In an actively flowing Greenland glacier in the snowiest part of the island?
The Lost Squadron (1932) — Pre-Code Hollywood GemEdited by Coragyps, : No reason given.