Darwin’s finches show enormous diversity in beak shape and size that varies with diet. The EU-funded Finch Evo-Devo project has used genomics plus – transcriptomics – to explain how 15 species of finch evolved from a single ancestor which landed on the Galapagos Islands.
According to evolutionary developmental genetics, or ‘evo-devo’, most adult biological shapes can be already seen during embryonic development (i.e. before birth/hatching) as animals are being formed. A classic example is the transient appearance of gills and a tail in humans, only to be lost later on in the process.
Further details: Finch beaks go ‘evo-devo’