DARWIN'S FINCHES : an essay on the general biological theory of evolution 1961

Description: DARWIN'S FINCHES an essay on the general biological theory of evolution by DAVID LACK DIRECTOR OF THE EDWARD GREY INSTITUTE OF FIELD ORNITHOLOGY. OXFORD HARPER TORCHBOOKS / The Science Library HARPER & ROW, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK This book was first published in 1947 by the Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, and is here reprinted by arrangement. First HARPER TORcHBook edition published 1961 PREFACE TO THE TORCHBOOK EDITION A condition of the present reprint is that the text should not be changed. The reader may therefore be reminded that this text was completed in 1944 and that, in the interval, views on species-formation have advanced. In particular, it was generally believed when I wrote the book that, in animals, nearly all of the differences between subspecies of the same species, and between closely related species in the same genus, were without adaptive significance. I therefore specified the only exceptions then known (see pp. 39, 65-66, 79-80, 88-90 and 143) and reviewed the various ideas as to how non-adaptive differences might have been evolved (see pp. 122-123). Sixteen years later, it is generally believed that all, or almost all, subspecific and specific differences are adaptive, a change of view which the present book may have helped to bring about. Hence it now seems probable that at least most of the seemingly non-adaptive differences in Darwin's finches (see pp. 43-44, 77-79 and 117) would, if more were known, prove to be adaptive. Another cautionary note may be added. In Chapter XI, I followed the traditional view, still generally accepted, that the ancestor of Darwin's finches was a true finch. But if a warbler-like bird can be evolved from a finch, so can a finch-like bird from a warbler, and that most of the Geospizinae are finch-like might perhaps mean, not that their common ancestor was a finch, but that there were more vacant niches in the Galapagos for finches than warblers. Further, the only living species which possesses characters from which all the rest might be derived is the Cocos-finch Pinaroloxias, which in beak comes closest to the warbler-finch Certhidea but in plumage resembles Geospisa, especially the sharp-beaked ground-finch G. difficilis. I wish to imply here not that Pina-roloxias is necessarily ancestral, but that the question of which of Darwin's finches look most like their common ancestor is entirely open. Without fossil material to give perspective in time, it is impossible to be sure of which species are near the base and which near the top of the evolutionary tree. Oxford December, 1960

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