1. What is the “mystery of mysteries?

The question: How new species form

2. The Grants’ study on the island of Daphne Major studied what organisms?

Their study on Daphne Major mainly focused on famed Galapagos Finches

3. Where did the 13 species of finches on the islands come from?

They could be came from the main island seperately

4. How did the Grants catch the finches?

They rose at 5:30 every morning to net the island’s middle gound finches

5. What features did they measure?

They measure the size and shape of the birds’ beaks and their weight

6. What happened in 1977 to the island?

There was a terrible drought and no rain for 18 months

7. What type of birds were more likely to survive after this event?

Only the birds with large beaks can survive, since the seeds were large

8. After the El Nino event in 1983, which birds were more likely to survive?

El Nino event represented a calamity that brought more than 10 times of rain to the island, the
birds with small beaks tended to survive, since the seeds became small

9. What keeps different species from mating on the Galapagos islands?

When the species separated geographically and underwent enough changes, they would not mate
with another same specie living afar

10. The most likely scenario explaining the different finches on the islands is that:

Different birds migrated to different islands

11. Examine the graph below. Summarize what happened to the finch population between 1976
and 1978.

A year after 1976, a terrible drought came and made the ground seeds larger. Only the birds with
large beaks were able to survive this condition. When natural selection occurs, birds with longer
beaks passed their genetic information to their offspring, making them possible to survive.

As a result, the length of beaks increase among finches from 1976 to 1978.

12. Why did the finch populations change from 1976 to 1978?

Due to the drought, the finches with originally short beaks died out by time, so the population de-
crease immediately. However, when long-beak finches were adopted to the condition and repro-
duce long-beak offspring, the population slowly increase.