Abstract: Ask anyone interested in birds for an example of adaptive radiations, and they will probably mention the Darwin’s Finches, the evolutionary rock stars of the Galápagos Islands. But did you know about the Nesospiza finches, endemic to Tristan da Cunha in the South Atlantic? Tristan is a small and very isolated archipelago comprising three islands, the two smaller of which are each home to both a small-bodied and small-billed generalist finch and a large-bodied and large-billed specialist finch that feeds exclusively on the seeds of an endemic island tree. But how are these four taxa related, and how did they evolve? And where do the extinct small-billed finches of the third, larger island fit into the picture? I will take you on a trip to the South Atlantic, to see what ecology and a whole lot of DNA detective work can reveal about this remarkable radiation.

Biography: Martin Stervander is a Marie Skłodowska Curie Fellow at the Natural History Museum, where he currently does research on the genomic architecture of convergent evolution of flight loss in island rails (including the Inaccessible Island Rail, neighbour to the Nesospiza finches). Martin did his PhD on speciation in birds at Lund University (Sweden), followed by a postdoc at the University of Oregon (USA). While his main research is focused on understanding the evolutionary mechanisms of speciation and radiation as well as phenotypic convergence, his interests also comprise phylogenetics, taxonomy, and phylogeography. Martin is also an Associate Editor of Ibis and the Managing Editor of BirdLife Sweden’s ornithological journal Ornis Svecica, which—similarly to the Bulletin of the BOC—is available online, at https://os.birdlife.se.

This talk will be in hybrid format (both in person at the Barley Mow, 104, Horseferry Road, London SW1P 2EE, and Zoomed online). You can register to attend in either format although a ticket to attend in person is not mandatory. The Zoom will open at 18:00 to allow everyone to join in good time, attendees will be held in the waiting room until 18:15. The talk will start at 18:30.