Galapagos Icon of Evolution


 
In 1835, the Galapagos Islands piqued a young British naturalist’s endless curiosity. Equipped with technologies not much beyond a clock, compass, measuring tape, scale, thermometer, clinometer, and microscope, the experience eventually propelled Charles Darwin to propose a new world-shattering theory of evolution in his 1859 book–The Origin of Species. Since then, technological advances have revolutionized scientific investigations upending Darwin’s finches with a new Galapagos icon of evolution.

For the first time, the genome of one of the most unique birds on the iconic islands, the cormorant (pictured), has been sequenced. Unique in that of the more than forty known cormorant species in the world, the Galapagos Islands cormorant is the only species incapable of flying. To explore the genetic reasons, scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, have been studying the genome of the flightless Galapagos cormorants associated with the bird’s loss of flight.

 

 

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