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Credit: Pixabay / Sara Price |
Each year thousands of people fill bird feeders with seeds, corn, and nuts to encourage feathery friends to make a stop in their backyard. Bird feeding is especially popular in the United Kingdom where Britons spend nearly double that of other Europeans on bird feeders and birdseed, and half of homes with a backyard boast bird feeders. According to researchers, this seedy proffering is driving the rapid evolution of bird species.To read the rest, perch here: "Don’t Feed the Birds or They’ll Evolve". Also recommended, "Rapid Finch Speciation Counters Evolution".
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Researchers looked at genetic variations in more than 3,000 individual birds from these populations. What they found was a genetic divergence between the groups that was linked to beak shape. Comparisons of populations revealed that British great tits now sport longer beaks than their Dutch relatives.
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