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Peter and Rosemary Grant studying birds in 2007

Peter Raymond Grant (born October 26, 1936) and Barbara Rosemary Grant (born October 8, 1936) are a married couple from Britain. They are famous scientists who study evolution. They are professors at Princeton University. They are best known for their amazing work with Darwin's finches on a special island called Daphne Major. This island is part of the Galápagos Islands.

Since 1973, the Grants have spent six months every year on Daphne Major. They catch, tag, and take tiny blood samples from finches. Their research shows that natural selection can happen very quickly. It can even happen within a few years. Charles Darwin first thought natural selection was a very slow process. But the Grants proved that these changes in animal groups can happen fast.

In 1994, they received the Leidy Award. The Grants were also the main topic of a book called The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time by Jonathan Weiner. This book won a big award, the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, in 1995.

In 2003, the Grants won the Loye and Alden Miller Research Award together. They also won the 2005 Balzan Prize for Population Biology. The Balzan Prize said they were honored for their "remarkable long-term studies". These studies showed "evolution in action" in the Galápagos finches. They proved how fast changes in body and beak size happen. These changes are due to natural selection and changes in food supply. Their work has been very important in the fields of biology and ecology.

The Grants are both Fellows of the Royal Society. Peter became a Fellow in 1987, and Rosemary in 2007. In 2008, they received the Darwin-Wallace Medal. This medal is given out every fifty years. In 2009, they won the Kyoto Prize. This is an international award for big contributions to science. In 2017, they received the Royal Medal in Biology. This was for their research on Darwin's finches. It showed that natural selection happens often and evolution is fast.

Early Life and Education

Rosemary Grant's Journey

Barbara Rosemary Grant was born in Arnside, England in 1936. When she was young, she collected plant fossils. She compared them to plants living today. At age 12, she read Darwin's famous book, On the Origin of Species.

Even though she was told that studying science was not for women, she kept going. She graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1960. She earned a degree in Zoology. She then studied genetics. Later, she planned to study fish populations. This plan changed when she took a biology teaching job. This was at the University of British Columbia. There, she met Peter Grant.

Peter Grant's Path

Peter Raymond Grant was born in 1936 in London. He moved to the countryside during World War II to avoid bombings. He collected plants and insects while at school. He went to the University of Cambridge. Later, he moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He started working on his PhD in Zoology at the University of British Columbia. Peter met Rosemary after starting his research. They got married a year later.

Their Amazing Research on Finches

Why Daphne Major is Special

For his PhD, Peter Grant studied how ecology (how living things interact with their environment) and evolution are connected. The Grants traveled to the Tres Marias Islands in Mexico. They studied birds there. They compared beak length and body size of birds on the islands to those on the mainland. They found that birds on the islands often had larger beaks. This was because of the different foods available.

Later, in 1965, Peter Grant started working at McGill University. He developed a way to test how species compete for resources. He studied rodents like voles and mice. He found that competition for space is common among many rodent species. This competition can be caused by reproduction, food, space, or new species arriving.

Daphne Major, in the Galápagos Islands, was a perfect place for their studies. It was isolated and no humans lived there. Any changes to the land or environment would be natural. The island had seasons of heavy rain and long droughts. These changes affected the types of food available to birds. The Grants would study these changes for many years.

Starting the Long Study

In 1973, the Grants went to Daphne Major. They thought it would be a two-year study. Their goal was to understand evolution and how new species form. There are thirteen species of finch on the Galápagos Islands. These birds are great for studying adaptive radiation. This is when one species evolves into many different species.

Each finch species has a beak shape specific to its diet. This diet depends on the food available. Finches are also easy to catch. The Grants tagged, measured, and took blood samples from the birds. What started as a two-year study continued until 2012!

How Droughts Change Beaks

During the rainy season of 1977, only 24 millimeters of rain fell. This was very little. Two main finch species were hit hard, and many birds died. The lack of rain meant food became scarce. Small, soft seeds ran out, leaving only larger, tougher seeds. Finches with smaller beaks struggled to find food.

The next two years showed that natural selection could happen very fast. Smaller-beaked finches died off because they couldn't eat the large seeds. Finches with larger beaks could eat the seeds and reproduce. The finch population after the 1977 drought had "measurably larger" beaks.

The Story of Big Bird

In 1981, the Grants found a bird they had never seen before. It was heavier than other ground finches. They called this bird Big Bird. It had many unique traits. It had a strange call and extra glossy feathers. It could eat both large and small seeds. It could also eat nectar, pollen, and seeds from cacti.

Even though hybrids (birds from two different species) can happen, most birds on the island stick to their own species. Big Bird lived for thirteen years. It first bred with local finches. But its descendants have only mated among themselves for the past thirty years. This is seven generations!

Scientists first thought Big Bird came from Santa Cruz Island. However, in 2015, DNA analysis showed it came from Española Island. This island is over 100 kilometers from Daphne Major. Big Bird was an Española cactus finch (G. conirostris).

Big Bird's descendants and local finches (G. fortis) have become a new, distinct species. This is the first time scientists have directly seen a new species form in the wild. DNA studies helped scientists track changes in the birds' genes. Genes for beak shape (ALX1) and beak size (HMGA2) were key in separating the new species. Genes related to the finches' song might also be involved.

Rainy Seasons and Beak Changes

From 1982 to 1983, El Niño brought eight months of steady rain. Daphne Major usually gets only two months of rain. This excessive rain changed the plants growing on the island. The seeds changed from large, hard ones to many small, soft ones. This gave birds with smaller beaks an advantage when another drought hit. Small-beaked finches could eat all the small seeds faster.

In 2003, a drought similar to 1977 happened. But by then, a large ground finch (Geospiza magnirostris) had started breeding on the island. This species eats similar foods to the medium ground finch (G. fortis). So, they competed for food. After the 2003 drought, the medium ground finch population had smaller beaks on average. This was different from the 1977 drought. Scientists think this was because of the large ground finch. Smaller-beaked medium ground finches might have survived better. They didn't have to compete with the large ground finches for big seeds. This is an example of character displacement.

What We Learned from the Grants

The Grants' 40-year study taught us three big lessons about evolution.

  • First, natural selection is always changing. By studying the island during both very wet and very dry times, they showed how populations change.
  • Second, evolution can happen quite fast. It doesn't take millions of years. These changes can be seen in just a few years.
  • Third, and most importantly, what natural selection favors can change over time. Some years, birds with larger beaks are favored. Other years, when there are many small seeds, birds with smaller beaks are favored.

In their 2003 paper, the Grants concluded that selection changes direction. Because of this, the medium ground finch and the cactus finch have not stayed the same. Their average beak and body sizes are different today than when the study began. The Grants also said that these changes could not have been predicted. They directly saw the finch species evolve because of Daphne Major's changing and tough environment.

Awards and Recognition

Peter and Rosemary Grant have received many awards for their important work.

Received jointly

Since 2010, Rosemary Grant has been honored annually by the Society for the Study of Evolution. They have a competition called the Rosemary Grant Graduate Student Research Award. It helps students in their early PhD studies. It helps them collect data or expand their research.

Books

  • Grant, Peter R (2023). Enchanted by Daphne: The Life of an Evolutionary Naturalist. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN: 978-0-6912-4624-6

The Grants' work was the subject of the book The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time. This book won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1995.

External links

  • Peter Grant's webpage
  • Rosemary Grant's webpage
  • Royal Medal 2017



de:Peter Raymond Grant ru:Грант, Питер Рэймонд

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