Date published: 2009/12/05
The BBC says:
Bird-feeders, hung in many a garden, can affect the way our feathered friends evolve, say scientists.
European birds called blackcaps follow a different "evolutionary path" if they spend the winter eating food put out for them in UK gardens.
The birds' natural wintering ground is southern Spain, where they feed on the fruits that grow there.
...
Dr Martin Schaefer from the University of Freiburg in Germany led the research.He and his team found that blackcaps that migrated to the UK for the winter were in the very earliest stages of forming a new species.
He explained that some blackcaps (Sylvia atricapilla) would always have migrated "a little further north" than others and eventually "ended up in Britain in the winter".
"But those birds would have had nothing to eat," he said.
It was when garden bird feeders became more popular in the UK, that an evolutionary division began to emerge.
Really, does anyone find any of this surprising? "Humans impact non-humans" is a rather "dog bites man" sort of story. Of course there are also other issues here, such as climate change, but those are also largely induced by humans.
_________________________________________________________
All material not included from other sources is copyright cambridge2000.com.
For further information or questions email: info [at] cambridge2000 [dot] com
(replace "[at]" with "@" and "[dot]" with ".").