Male variable seedeater (Sporophila corvina). (Credit: Mdf via Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons license.) |
By ScienceDaily, December 8, 2011
A study of South
American songbirds completed by the Department of Biology at Queen's University
and the Argentine Museum of Natural History, has discovered these birds differ dramatically
in colour and song yet show very little genetic differences, indicating they
are on the road to becoming a new species.
"One of
Darwin's accomplishments was to show that species could change, that they were
not the unaltered, immutable products of creation," says Leonardo
Campagna, a Ph.-D biology student at the Argentine Museum of Natural History in
Buenos Aires, who studied at Queen's as part of his thesis. "However it is
only now, some 150 years after the publication of his most important work, On
the Origin of Species, that we have the tools to begin to truly understand all
of the stages that might lead to speciation which is the process by which an
ancestral species divides into two or more new species."
For decades
scientists have struggled to understand all of the varied forces that give rise
to distinct species. Mr. Campagna and his research team studied a group of nine
species of South American seedeaters (finches) to understand when and how they
evolved.
The study found
differences in male reproductive plumage and in some key aspects of the songs
that they use to court females. Now, the group is looking to find the genes
that underlie these differences, as these so-called candidate genes may well
prove to be responsible for the evolution of a new species. This will allow
researchers to gain insights into evolution.
"Studies like
ours teach us something about what species really are, what processes are
involved and what might be lost if these and other species disappear."
Campagna's research
co-supervisor is Stephen Lougheed, Acting Director of QUBS and an associate
professor in the Department of Biology. QUBS has been a pivotal part of
research and teaching at Queen's for more than six decades and hosts
researchers from both Canadian and international institutions. Research at QUBS
has resulted in more than 800 publications in peer-reviewed journals and more
than 200 graduate and undergraduate theses.
The
findings were recently published in the Proceedings of The Royal Society.
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