Darwin had Galapagos finches. Norway has… house sparrows?
63 Degrees North26 Feb 2021

Darwin had Galapagos finches. Norway has… house sparrows?

The different species of Galapagos finches, with their specially evolved beaks that allow them to eat specific foods, helped Charles Darwin understand that organisms can evolve over time to better survive in their environment.

Now, nearly 200 years later and thousands of miles away, biologists are learning some surprising lessons about evolution from northern Norwegian populations of the humble house sparrow (Passer domesticus).

Darwin’s finches evolved on the exotic, volcanic Galapagos Islands. NTNU’s house sparrows are dispersed over a group of 18 islands in Helgeland, in an archipelago that straddles the Arctic Circle.

Every summer since 1993, when NTNU Professor Bernt-Erik Sæther initiated the House Sparrow Project, a group of biologists has travelled to the islands collect data on the sparrows. They capture baby birds, measure different parts of their bodies, take a tiny blood sample, and then put a unique combination of coloured rings on their legs that help researchers identify the birds throughout their lifetime.

Those decades of research have given researchers information that can be helpful in managing threatened and endangered species. They have also done some experiments where they made evolution happen in real time — and then watched what happened when they let nature run its course.

And then there was the series of experiments where they learned more than you might want to know about sparrow dating preferences, and about rogue sparrow fathers who court exhausted sparrow mothers — and then fathered children with the cute little she-bird next door.

Our guests for today’s show were Henrik Jensen, Thor Harald Ringsby and Stefanie Muff.

You can find a transcript of the show here.

Selected academic and popular science articles:

From NTNU’s online research magazine, Norwegian SciTech News:

Why aren’t house sparrows as big as geese?

Inbreeding detrimental for survival

Why house sparrows lay big and small eggs

On Darwin

Darwin, Charles (1859) On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. London: J. Murray.

Weiner, J. (2014). The beak of the finch: A story of evolution in our time. Random House.

Sulloway, F. J. (1982). Darwin and his finches: The evolution of a legend. Journal of the History of Biology, 15, 1-53.

Sulloway, F. J. (1982). Darwin's conversion: the Beagle voyage and its aftermath. Journal of the History of Biology, 15, 325-396.

Academic articles from the House Sparrow Project:

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episoder(35)

What babies can tell us – and why we need to listen

What babies can tell us – and why we need to listen

If you've ever seen an infant lying on its back, you've surely seen them endlessly waving their arms and legs in seemingly haphazard ways. And crying? To the uneducated eye and ear, it does all seem a...

27 Des 202541min

ENCORE: When the doctor is out

ENCORE: When the doctor is out

ENCORE: This episode was first published in Oct. 2023. Sierra Leone used to be the most dangerous place in the world to give birth. Without enough doctors to do C-sections, women and babies were dying...

18 Sep 202534min

ENCORE: Running rats and healing hearts

ENCORE: Running rats and healing hearts

ENCORE: This episode was first published in Sept. 2023.In 1998, a young Norwegian exercise physiologist found that a technique he had used to help Olympic athletes could help heart patients too. But h...

14 Aug 202534min

Walrus tusks were Viking age gold

Walrus tusks were Viking age gold

Historians have floated a half-dozen theories for why Viking Greenland settlements suddenly vanished in the 1300s and 1400s, after nearly 500 years of occupation. Was it climate change, the Black Deat...

10 Jul 202530min

An accidental discovery: From failed experiment to new antibiotic

An accidental discovery: From failed experiment to new antibiotic

NTNU professor Marit Otterlei nearly threw out the contaminated cell culture where she and her colleagues were testing a new cancer drug.The problem arose on a hot summer day, in Trondheim, in a count...

13 Jun 202528min

New clues from old bones: Norwegian Vikings were very, very violent

New clues from old bones: Norwegian Vikings were very, very violent

We may think the Vikings were all the same, but it turns out that Viking violence wasn’t the same everywhere. New research shows that Norwegian Vikings were buried with 50 times more weapons—and had ...

15 Apr 202531min

Old flames die hard – the saga of solar cookers

Old flames die hard – the saga of solar cookers

Jimmy Chaciga, a PhD research fellow at Makerere University in Uganda, thinks he has what it will take to get Ugandan households to adopt solar-powered cookers. First, cookers need to be simple to ope...

14 Feb 202521min

From Running Rats to Brain Maps: A Nobel Odyssey

From Running Rats to Brain Maps: A Nobel Odyssey

When the phone rang 10 years ago while Norwegian neuroscientist May-Britt Moser was in a particularly engaging lab meeting, she almost didn't answer it.Good thing she did! It was Göran Hansson, secret...

26 Nov 202437min

Populært innen Vitenskap

fastlegen
tingenes-tilstand
rekommandert
jss
liberal-halvtime
rss-rekommandert
villmarksliv
sinnsyn
rss-paradigmepodden
pod-britannia
forskningno
fjellsportpodden
dekodet-2
rss-overskuddsliv
rss-lundqvist-podden
tomprat-med-gunnar-tjomlid
hva-er-greia-med
rss-nysgjerrige-norge
utenrikshospitalet
tidlose-historier