Weight increases significantly with increased beak size, even after accounting for the correlated variation in overall size (as measured by the two skeletal variables). The beak measurements are very highly correlated with each other, so (1) it is impossible to disentangle their relationships with weight, and (2) they are redundant so that if one is in the model neither of the others explains m...

Invasive alien parasites and pathogens are a growing threat to biodiversity worldwide, which can contribute to the extinction of endemic species. On the Galápagos Islands, the invasive parasitic fly Philornis downsi poses a major threat to the endemic avifauna. Here, we investigated the influence of this parasite on the breeding success of two Darwin's finch species, the warbler finch (Certhide...

Species hybridization can lead to fitness costs, species collapse, and novel evolutionary trajectories in changing environments. Hybridization is predicted to be more common when environmental conditions change rapidly. Here, we test patterns of hybridization in three sympatric tree finch species (small tree finch Camarhynchus parvulus, medium tree finch Camarhynchus pauper, and large tree finc...

Convergence at the community level occurs when whole groups of organisms become more similar than their ancestors in a similar environment. I suggest a method for indirectly assessing community convergence, and apply it to several characteristics of finch communities in different habitats worldwide. The method is based on the analysis of variance, and has several advantages over other indirect ...

The perception of song is vital to the reproductive success of both male and female songbirds. Several neural structures underlying this perception have been identified by examining expression of immediate early genes (IEGs) following the presentation of conspecific or heterospecific song. In the few avian species investigated, areas outside of the circuit for song production contain neurons th...

We compared the frequencies of non-synonymous, synonymous and non-protein coding SNPs in the House Finch and poultry populations by comparing three groups of SNPs. The first type were polymorphisms that likely arose in the House Finch MG lineage, as they are fixed in the poultry MG strains but are polymorphic amongst the House Finch ones. The second group are those SNPs that likely arose in the...

his essay considers environmental and lifestyle factors in natural selection during the three hundred thousand generations that separate us from a great ape ancestor. Humans have the T evolved greatest life expectancy (LE) among the primates (fi g. 1). The LE at birth of pre-industrial humans, ca. 30–40 years, is twice that of the four extant great ape species (Finch 2007, 2010a; Finch and Aust...

The pale-headed brush-finch (Atlapetes pallidiceps) is threatened with extinction due to habitat loss, but very little is known about its ecological requirements. We used multiple logistic regression to study habitat selection of this species at landscape, territory, and nest site scales in order to make recommendations about effective management. Habitat selection by the sympatric stripe-heade...

The Bengalese finch song has been widely studied for its unique features and similarity to human language. For computational analysis the songs must be represented in songnote sequences. An automated approach for this purpose is highly desired since manual processing makes human annotation cumbersome, and human annotation is very heuristic and easily lacks objectivity. In this paper, we propose...