Grant 9806449 This award will be used to mobilize a quick response to the El Nino event that has developed in the central Pacific this winter. Dr. Grant and his students have been studying the birds of the Galapagos Islands for more than 20 years. It is expected that this El Nino event, predicted to be one of the largest on record, will result in a dramatically prolonged breeding season for Galapagos finches on the Galapagos Islands. This extended period of favorable conditions may have dramatic effects on the population size and demography of the study populations. Dr. Grant will test hypotheses concerning a) the heritability of life history traits, b) variation in age-specific fitness of hybrid birds, c) the fitness of inbred birds, d) the genetic structure of the two rarest populations which have recently experienced demographic and possibly genetic bottlenecks, and e) paternity of young birds estimated by observations of adults at nests. This study may provide novel insights to the mechanisms associated with evolutionary response to rapidly changing environmental conditions.
