Top 17 Quotes & Sayings by Peter R. Grant

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American scientist Peter R. Grant.

Last updated on April 19, 2025.

Peter Raymond Grant and Barbara Rosemary Grant are a British married couple who are evolutionary biologists at Princeton University. Each currently holds the position of emeritus professor. They are known for their work with Darwin's finches on Daphne Major, one of the Galápagos Islands. Since 1973, the Grants have spent six months of every year capturing, tagging, and taking blood samples from finches on the island. They have worked to show that natural selection can be seen within a single lifetime, or even within a couple of years. Charles Darwin originally thought that natural selection was a long, drawn out process but the Grants have shown that these changes in populations can happen very quickly.

American - Scientist

Source: Wikipedia

The theory of founder effects does not explain how novel features like plumage traits arise.

Peter R. Grant

Exchange of breeding individuals between two populations tends to homogenize their gene pools.

Peter R. Grant

Species can be recognized by their morphological characteristics and songs.

Peter R. Grant

We observe closely related species in sympatry and infer how they evolved from a common ancestor.

Peter R. Grant

The divergence of songs in the new population away from those in the progenitor population would only be prevented if these processes were balanced by repeated immigration and subsequent breeding: song flow.

Peter R. Grant

Closely related species of birds are also chromosomally similar.

Peter R. Grant

The independent role of morphology in mate choice is revealed by the rare instances where the usual association between song and morphology is disrupted.

Peter R. Grant

Thus the genetic basis to the origin of bird species is to be sought in the inheritance of adult traits that are subject to natural and sexual selection.

Peter R. Grant

Almost nothing is known from hybridization studies about the inheritance of courtship behavior of females, or of their responsiveness to particular male signals.

Peter R. Grant

Thus mating of females was strictly along the lines of paternal song.

Peter R. Grant

Evidence of epistasis from hybridization studies is more scarce.

Peter R. Grant

Plumage features constitute a major component of courtship signals.

Peter R. Grant

Males transmit signals in courtship through behavioral displays.

Peter R. Grant

Islands are known to differ in the food supply available to ground finches, mainly seeds.

Peter R. Grant

To summarize, the particular song a male sings, and the behavioral responses of females to song and morphological signals, are not genetically inherited in a fixed manner but are determined by learning early in life.

Peter R. Grant

Genes that underlie the capacity to receive, use and transmit information are the evolving properties.

Peter R. Grant