Research Programs

[GregH]

I thought I'd see what was happening in academia regarding finches and did a search that I'll try to keep updating. Others may like to review these programs and report back on the following:
1. Crimson finches at Virginia Tech and the Australian Wildlife Conservancy
2. The Save the Gouldian Fund
3. The Black Throated Finch Recovery Project and Recovery Plan and Birds Australia involvement
4. Darwin's Finches researched by Jody O'connor
5. Simon Griffith's Avian Behavioural Ecology Group at Macquarie University
6. Steven Garnet's completed project Decline of crimson and star finches in Queensland
7. Edwards Lab at Havard university on House Finches
8. National Institute of Health (USA) Zebra Finch Genome Resources and here'sthe initial Sequencing Proposal
9. Birding Australia's report on Zebrafinch breeding
10. Blog discussing the wild Rosy Finch in Colorado
11. Simon Griffith's paper The Zebra Finch : the ultimate Australian supermodel
12.

[jusdeb]

I watched a doco a long time ago about Darwins study of 1 specie of finch that had been separated by some natural event that meant the birds continued evolving on 2 different islands in the Gallapagos.
One island had small seeds which the birds made their main food and the other island had larger seeds . It goes on to show how in a very short time both birds evolved differently mainly in beak sizes in order to eat the available seeds.
Was quite an interesting programme .

Thats all

[desertbirds]

Have you seen the footage of the finches on those islands that feed on seal afterbirth ?

[jusdeb]

No .... would like to though .

[GregH]

I've kept adding to the initial post and will probably create a separate area for research. Just continuing the Darwin's finch discussion I found a Youtube link to a story concerning University of Adelaide's Research program on these birds.

[Diane]

I did try ages ago to get permission to include an article on this finch in the newsletter, but the tv station that owned the rights to the documentary and the article wanted cash for the article so that was out of the question.
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