One of the most successful studies in showing evolution by natural selection is the one done by Peter and Rosemary Grant on the Galápagos islands; these scientists studied a bird that was referred to by the common name of finch.

A. True

B. False

True

Explanation:

Peter Raymond Grant and Barbara Rosemary Grant are British married couple and evolutionary biologists. They are recognised for their research with Darwin's finches on Daphne Major, one of the Galápagos Islands. From 1973, the Grants do allocate six months of every year to trapping, tagging, and collecting blood samples from finches on the island. Their ecperimental study result showed that natural selection can be observed within a single lifetime, at times in a couple of years. Charles Darwin basically had the idea of natural selection been too long, drawn out events. The Grants proved that these variations in populations can occur swiftly.

At first, the Grants noticed how drought affected the food availability in 1977 for a period of 551 days the islands. Plants began to die and finches began to get hungry as their was scarcity of food (the tiny seeds). Medium ground finches with larger beaks were able to find another food source such as cracking open larger seeds while the smaller-beaked birds experienced starvation and death.

In 1978 the Grants did another study on the effect of the drought on the next progeny of medium ground finches. They determined the offspring beak size in comparison to previous (pre-drought) generations. They observed the offsprings' beaks was at 3 to 4% bigger when compared with their grandparents'. The Grants had observed natural selection in reality.