Geospiza fortis is a seed-eating finch that lives on Daphne Major, a small island in the Galápagos archipelago. Geospiza fuliginosa is a second species of seed-eating finch found in the Galápagos islands, and this species occurs together with G. fortis on a larger island called Santa Cruz. The graphs below show the distribution of beak sizes of G. fortis when it co-occurs with G. fuliginosa vs. when it occurs alone. Based only on these data, you can conclude that (select all that apply).

Question

Geospiza fortis is a seed-eating finch that lives on Daphne Major, a small island in the Galápagos archipelago. Geospiza fuliginosa is a second species of seed-eating finch found in the Galápagos islands, and this species occurs together with G. fortis on a larger island called Santa Cruz. The graphs below show the distribution of beak sizes of G. fortis when it co-occurs with G. fuliginosa vs. when it occurs alone.  Based only on these data, you can conclude that (select all that apply).

BlackTom AI · Accepted Answer

First, observe that the data present beak size distributions for two scenarios: Geospiza fortis when it lives alone on Daphne Major (upper graph) and Geospiza fuliginosa together with G. fortis on Santa Cruz alongside G. fortis (lower graphs). This setup allows us to assess variation within and between the species, as well as potential displacement effects.
Option 1: Beak size is a heritable trait for Geospiza fortis. While beak size shows variation, the graphs do not provide any information about heritability or genetic transmission. Heritability requires pedigree or offspring-parent correlations, not just phenotype distributions. Therefore this statement cannot be concluded from the data given and is not supported.
Option 2: Beak size is a heritable trait for Geospiza fuliginosa. Similar to the first option, the figure shows only phenotypic distributions for fuliginosa in sympatry with fortis on Santa Cruz. There is no information about inheritance patterns or heritability from these plots, so this claim cannot be inferred.
Option 3: There is variation in beak size in BOTH species. Looking at the upper panel (fortis alone) and the lower panels (fuliginosa and fortis when co-occurring), both species exhibit a spread of beak sizes rather than a single fixed value. This demonstrates within-species variation in beak size for fortis, and the fuliginosa distribution clearly shows variation as well. Hence, this statement is supported by the data.
Option 4: The beak size of Geospiza fortis differs in sympatry and allopatry in a way that is consistent with character displacement. On Daphne Major fortis shows a certain distribution when alone, but on Santa Cruz (where it coexists with fuliginosa) the fortis beak size distribution shifts relative to the allopatric context. The shift toward different mean sizes and reduced overlap with fuliginosa suggests divergence in sympatry consistent with character displacement, supporting this option.
Option 5: The beak size of Geospiza fuliginosa differs in sympatry and allopatry in a way that is consistent with character displacement. This option cannot be evaluated as true from the current data because fuliginosa is shown only on Santa Cruz (in sympatry with fortis) and there is no allopatric population of fuliginosa presented for comparison. Therefore, asserting a displacement pattern for fuliginosa based on this dataset would be unfounded.

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