1. Betsy Sanford 7th Grade Life Science Lost Mountain Middle School
Bird Beaks Inquiry
Betsy Sanford
7th Grade Life Science
Lost Mountain Middle School

3. Image: University of Baltimore

6. Your Task
Use the provided materials to create a lab that shows how bird beaks are adapted to different foods.
Materials provided:
forceps (tweezers), clothespins, toothpicks, spoons
bird seed, beads, marshmallows, raisins, noodles
What question(s) are you attempting to answer?
What are the procedures for testing?
How will you collect data?
How will you show data?
How is your lab like other labs in the class?
How is your lab different from other labs in the class?

7. The Galapagos Islands
Located approximately 1000km from the coast of Ecuador, South America.
This is just a little closer than the distance between Chicago and Philadelphia.
Mostly ground between the two U.S. cities.
Mostly deep water between the Galapagos Islands and the coast of South America.

11. Implications
Terrestrial species on these islands won’t have many relatives nearby.
Neighboring islands will have close relatives
but new terrestrial species won’t arrive on these islands from the South American mainland very often.
most of the island species have had plenty of time to differentiate from their nearest living relatives.
Another way of saying this is that there is very little gene flow between the islands and the mainland.

12. Endemics Among the kinds of animals found here and nowhere else:
1 penguin species
1 giant tortoise species
1 marine iguana species
7 species of lava lizard
14 species of sea cucumber
1 species of sea lion
1 species of hawk
several species each of mockingbirds, doves, owls, flycatchers, and yellow warblers

13. The Finches The 13 finch species include:
6 species of ground finches
3 species of tree finches
1 woodpecker finch
1 vegetarian finch
1 mangrove finch
1 Coco Island finch
A warbler finch that looks more like a warbler than a finch (one of the tree finches).
The woodpecker finch actually uses cactus spines to dig grubs out of branches!

14. Galapagos Islands Finches
HHMI video

15. Sources The Visual Dictionary Darwin’s Finches and Natural Selection
Darwin’s Finches and Natural Selection
Cheryl Heinz, Dept. of Biological Sciences, Benedictine University, and
Eric Ribbens, Dept. of Biological Sciences, Western Illinois University
sciencecases.lib.buffalo.edu/cs/files/darwins_finches.ppt
Howard Hughes Medical Institute