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| A Large Ground Finch or a large Medium Ground Finch? |
Sorry, that title was just to get the attention of the ornithologists. We didn’t rediscover anything on my latest adventure on the Galapagos, no ivory billed woodpecker, thylacine, or the mysterious Large Ground Finch which was collected by Darwin on the Galapagos but then apparently extirpated from where it may have been first collected: the strange and wonderful Galapagos Island of Floreana.
If you read my blogpost, you know that I took a class to the Galapagos last year to teach evolution. My colleague Dan Holstein from the LSU College of the Coast & Environment and I again teamed up to teach our LSU study abroad course. I also once again took my family, combining work and pleasure as much as I could and probably not doing either well.
We did many of the same field expeditions from last year and added some new places including Floreana, and I want to begin on the island first in this article even though that was the last island we visited this year. I described Floreana as “strange” in the first paragraph because it is - but not because of its marine iguanas (which are an odd reddish color instead of the lava rock black you see on the other islands) or because of the odd hybrid tortoises (they were extirpated from before Darwin’s time and reintroduced more recently). No, I call Floreana strange because of the earliest human settlers - who were Germans. Although Polynesians and surely other peoples (particularly “pirates”) discovered these islands, there appears to be few signs of these early visitors establishing any long-term settlements there – probably because of the paucity of freshwater. However, once the Spanish found the Galapagos Islands again in modern times and Ecuador incorporated them (strangely on Darwin’s birthday February 12, 1932, but by sheer coincidence three years before Darwin visited there, and well before he was famous -- part of the many incidental connections between the Galapagos and Darwin that make it seem like they were meant for each other). In the turn of the 20th century the islands of San Cristobal and Santa Cruz were quickly becoming populated, but not Floreana. An eccentric German couple looking for an uninhabited paradise found their perfect rustic-vegetarian retreat there. They were soon followed by another German couple who learned of the first couple’s exploits and wanted in. The two couples got along begrudgingly but were mainly distant with one another. The second family, the Wittmers, were pregnant and the first Floreana Galapagueño was born in an artificial cave carved out of lava stone. Pirates were frequent visitors here for many years and left behind large carved faces, artwork, and hiding spots in the soft lava rocks where they also hid their stolen loot and booty. Soon after the Wittmers, a woman who claimed to be a rich baroness, along with her two lovers, came to Floreana; she wanted to be empress of the island and claimed ownership over the lone freshwater supply. She also expressed a desire to open ‘Hotel Paradiso’ for tourists to visit the island. This did not sit well with the others, within a few years four of the people I just mentioned would be dead or go missing without a trace - including the Baroness. We stayed in Hotel Wittmer, run by the living descendants of the first family to ‘survive’ that early period on the islands.
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| The Baroness and friend. |
Now with that historical backdrop you should know that when Darwin collected finches and other animals on the Galapagos, he was pretty sloppy about labeling even what island the species was from; it wasn’t until he was back in England that ornithologist Jon Gould helped sort them out. Darwin didn’t even know the birds he collected were even finches: we now know them as “Darwin’s finches” (although they are in fact tanagers).
One of the new species Darwin discovered for Western Science was Geospiza magnirostris, the Large Ground Finch, a species that is presumed extirpated from the island. When we visited the Charles Darwin Research Station in Santa Cruz, the Principle Coordinator of the Research Collections, Miguel Pinto, showed us specimens of Large Ground Finches with enormous beaks, and also subfossils collected by David Steadman (Curator of Birds, University of Florida) that he dug up from a cave in Floreana; these bones were likely proof that the species existed after Darwin traveled there. There is some question whether the subfossils are the same species as the Large Ground Finch we know from other islands today – so some DNA testing of these is a cool future project for some intrepid graduate student. When our LSU study abroad class did our hike across Floreana we were with ornithologist Jaime Chavez, and when he and our local guide heard an odd bird call we all stopped in our tracks. Jaime recorded the call and played it back and a large finch flew overhead but we couldn’t tell which species. Among the finches we saw near us was a very large-sized Medium Ground Finch, Geospiza fortis, but it was not quite large enough to be a Large Ground Finch according to Jaime. Oh well. Because that individual didn’t make a call while it was near us, it wasn’t clear if it was the same bird we heard earlier. On that same hike we also entered the sea cave where David Steadman had found the bones we saw at the Darwin Research Station. The cave was larger than I expected, but because I love caves and always expect to be lost and stranded on a hike, I happened to have a powerful flashlight that was much better than all of us using our phone lights (which was apparently the norm among visitors to the cave). It was a delightful cave with a long pool of cool sea water that many of the students couldn’t help entering because our hike had been so very long and hot (we walked about 6 miles over lava rocks and up ridges). Along that walk we saw the ruins of the Baronesses’ home as well as the famous Post Office Bay. This beautiful overlook had clear aquamarine colored water and a “post office”, which was an old barrel full of postcards where we are meant to leave our mail (without postage) and take other postcards from past visitors to deliver (or at least post) once we get back home. We only saw one postcard from someone from Louisiana, but I took a card from someone in Ottawa where I lived during my sabbatical a few years ago.
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| Some of the carvings (left) and foot paths (top center) on Floreana, along with the "Post Office" (top right) and Post Office Bay (bottom right) |
Besides our many nature hikes and snorkels where students got experience doing everything from working directly with finches (via Jaime’s expertise and permits) to doing ecological surveys of the many beautiful marine fishes that we saw; they also got evolution and ecology lectures each night and had group projects and presentations. But fret not! - they were outside in nature most of the time we were learning. I’m thankful for the chance to teach LSU undergrads evolution in situ and on the islands made famous by Charles Darwin and on the islands that made him and his theories of evolution famous. It was a reciprocal deal after all. Although Floreana was new and special to me. I was equally glad to take my students and my family to what remains my favorite island, Isabella. Isabella is the youngest and largest of the Galapagos islands and it has large active volcanos (which we climbed – great way to learn about uniformitarianism and catastrophism) and swam with blacktip sharks and giant sea turtles among a plethora of colorful marine species.
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| Chaya and Anjali, and a blacktip. |
A bonus was that my shark obsessed daughter, Anjali, was in the water with us in Los Tuneles when a group of blacktips swimming a few feet from us intersected with a school of more than a dozen golden rays. It was magical and my heart swelled as a teacher, and a scientist - but mostly as a dad. When we were back on the boat from our swim we did see something the ornithologists reading this will be jealous of: No not a Large Ground Finch but a hoard (or a “waddle” as is the technical term I think) of 63 Galapagos Penguins. This number is apparently the largest congregation of Galapagos Penguins ever seen (as Jaime relayed to us) representing more than 1/3 of the breeding pairs know of this rare equatorial penguin species.
