Pointed-billed finch

Pointed-billed finch
	Pointed-billed finch ( Geospiza difficilis )
Systematics
Subordination :	Songbirds (passeri)
Family :	Tangaren (Thraupidae)
Subfamily :	Coerebinae
without rank:	Darwin's finches (Geospicini)
Genre :	Ground finches ( Geospiza )
Type :	Pointed-billed finch
Scientific name
	Geospiza difficilis
	Sharpe , 1888

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The pointed-billed ground finch ( Geospiza difficilis ) is a species of songbird native to the Galapagos Islands and widespread there. He is one of the Darwin finches named after Charles Darwin . Six subpopulations or subspecies can be distinguished on the basis of plumage color, beak shape and song , which also differ on the basis of their satellite DNA and which sometimes occur geographically separated.

Subspecies vampire finch

The subspecies Geospiza difficilis septentrionalis was best known as the vampire finch . Besides the vampire bats , it is one of the few vertebrates that feed almost exclusively on the blood of other living things . Vampire finches differ significantly from other pointed-billed ground finches in their song.

Vampire finches are only found on the uninhabited islands of Wolf and Darwin . They drink the blood of other birds such as blue-footed boobies ( Sula nebouxii ) and Nazca boobies ( Sula granti ) by anpicken their skin at the base of the quills, until they bleed. In this way, they can also meet their fluid needs on the waterless islands. It is assumed that the behavior of the finches developed from the pecking with which they free other animals from parasites ( cleaning symbiosis ).

The vampire finches also remove booby eggs, which they roll against stones until they break. Vampire finches are sexually different : the fletching of the males is mainly black, that of the females is gray with individual brown feathers.

Individual evidence

↑ Dolph, Schluter, Peter R. Grant: Ecological correlates of morphological evolution in a Darwin's finch, Geospiza difficilis. In: Evolutio , 38, No. 4, 1984, pp. 856-869 ( PDF ).
^ ^A ^b Peter R. Grant, B. Rosemary Grant, Kenneth Petren: The allopatric phase of speciation: the sharp-beaked ground finch (Geospiza difficilis) on the Galápagos islands. In: Biological Journal of the Linnean Society , 69, No. 3, 2000, pp. 287-317 ( PDF ).
^ Robert I. Bowman, Stephen L. Billeb: Blood-eating in a Galapagos finch. In: Living Bird , 4, 1965, pp. 29-44.

Web links

Commons : Pointed-billed finch ( Geospiza difficilis ) - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Geospiza difficilis inthe IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2013.1. Listed by: BirdLife International, 2012. Retrieved September 23, 2013.

[1] Dolph, Schluter, Peter R. Grant: Ecological correlates of morphological evolution in a Darwin's finch, Geospiza difficilis. In: Evolutio , 38, No. 4, 1984, pp. 856-869 ( PDF ).

[Grant-2] A ^b Peter R. Grant, B. Rosemary Grant, Kenneth Petren: The allopatric phase of speciation: the sharp-beaked ground finch (Geospiza difficilis) on the Galápagos islands. In: Biological Journal of the Linnean Society , 69, No. 3, 2000, pp. 287-317 ( PDF ).

[3] Robert I. Bowman, Stephen L. Billeb: Blood-eating in a Galapagos finch. In: Living Bird , 4, 1965, pp. 29-44.