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Chapter 13
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Beak of the Finch, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Natural Selection and Evolution as Ongoing Processes
Nature and Humanity
Evolution, the Modern Era, and Nature’s “Resistance Movement”
The Interconnectedness of Species and Ecosystems
Hybridization and Specialization
Summary
Analysis
The Grants are meticulous in gathering, storing, and interpreting data. They’ve been able to verify, through computing, the hypotheses about evolution they’ve observed in action in the Galápagos. It is not, they’ve shown, impossible to test the theory of evolution by natural selection. And it’s only through data that the Grants have been able to see the “coasts” and “pendulums” that are invisible to the naked eye.
While the Grants might observe something interesting in the wild, it’s only through analyzing their data carefully that they’re able to understand the minutiae of what’s happening each day on the island of Daphne Major. This shows that while selection, hybridization, and evolution are indeed ongoing processes, they are intricate and ever-changing ones.
Themes
The Grants’ discovery of the rise and fall of mixed breeds of finches doesn’t take away from the theory of natural selection—in fact, it shows clearly that the finches are “new beings” on Earth, and that intense selection pressures continue to shape their creation. If natural selection weren’t at work, the many species of finches would vanish into one.
While it might seem that hybridization means that natural selection isn’t at work, the opposite is in fact true. This passage illustrates how selection keeps the species distinct and powers new species to branch off and develop specialized traits, again underscoring that evolution is constantly ongoing from generation to generation.
Themes
To observe the finches is to see the process of evolution at work—the finches are unfinished. Now, roughly one in 10 finches born on Daphne Major are hybrids—and the hybrids are doing better than any other species. This means that the individuality of the different species is threatened. The species still aren’t completely, distinctly carved—so it is the delicate tension between fission and fusion that keeps them separate.
Hybrids are doing well on the islands because they’re much more varied and adaptable than their highly specialized counterparts. So changes in the ecosystem and the weather are important in terms of keeping the species distinct. The finches remain heavily influenced by their environment in all aspects of their lives.
Themes
Adaptive radiation is part of the answer to why there are so many species of animals on the planet. In Hawaii, a single finch has radiated into more than 40 species with 40 different beaks. The same has happened with fruit flies there: some are predatory, some parasitic, some nectivorious (which means they eat nectar) and some herbivorious (which means they eat plants). Cichlid fish in East Africa, too, have evolved from one species into about 200.
All of these radiations taking place in nature prove that evolution is still in action, animating every moment in the history of life. The creation of new species allows a certain genus of animal, insect, or plant to survive, multiply, and thrive. So adaptive radiation, hybridization, and specialization are all key components of the evolutionary process and the sustenance of the world’s ecosystems.
Themes
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As the Grants’ sabbatical year winds down, they marvel over the idea that new species of finches could still take off—an evolutionary response to the increasing hybridization could yet happen, and a new species could form. As Weiner listens to the Grants discuss this possibility, he observes that they become extremely excited by the potential for evolution—but then mutually decide that only more numbers and measurements will reveals for sure what eventually happens to the finches.
The Grants never put pressure on their research to show them a certain outcome—even if it’s an outcome they’re really excited about. The Grants know that as human beings, they have a responsibility to nature—and that responsibility informs how they conduct their research, their analysis, and the thinking and writing that allows them to draw conclusions about what the finches are showing them.
Themes
