Refuting Creationism - How The Common Barn Swallow Shows Evolution In Progress

Hirundo rustica rustica (left) and Hirundo rustica tytleri (right) have different sexually selected traits. For example, one has a red chest and the other has a pale chest.

A pair of Hirundo rustica erythrogaster.

Credit: Matt Wilkins.

A front-row seat to evolution: What common barn swallows can teach us about how new species form | CU Boulder Today | University of Colorado Boulder

This paper in Science passed me by last December but it's too good to ignore because it is an example of something that creationists insist has never been seen because it doesn't happen - evolution in progress. And, to annoy creationists even more, it's an example of something Charles Darwin proposed as a mechanism for speciation - mate selection - as the isolating mechanism.

Barn swallows are one of the species that has formed a commensal relationship with humans that does not, like many other commensal species, involve it in consuming our crops either in the fields or in storage, from when we began building permanent or semi-permanent buildings. They are now dependent on our barns and out-houses as nesting places.

What can you tell me about the subspecies of barn swallow, Hirundo rustica, their commensal relationship with humans and their evolution into different subspecies? The barn swallow (Hirundo rustica) is a widely distributed passerine bird with several recognized subspecies that have evolved in different geographic regions. Their evolution and divergence into subspecies have been shaped by geographical isolation, ecological adaptation, and their long-standing commensal relationship with humans.

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Subspecies of the Barn Swallow (Hirundo rustica)
There are six generally recognized subspecies, each adapted to different regions:

1. H. r. rustica – Nominate subspecies
   • Breeds in Europe and Asia (west of the Urals) and winters in Africa and South Asia.
   • Characterized by a long, deeply forked tail and a reddish forehead and throat.
2. H. r. transitiva
   • Found in the Levant (Middle East, particularly Israel and Palestine).
   • Slightly darker underparts and a shorter tail compared to H. r. rustica.
3. H. r. savignii
   • Endemic to Egypt.
   • Has shorter tail streamers and a darker, more intense red coloration on the throat and forehead.
4. H. r. gutturalis
   • Breeds in East Asia (Japan, China, Korea, and parts of Russia) and winters in Southeast Asia.
   • Has a paler underbelly and slightly shorter tail than H. r. rustica.
5. H. r. tytleri
   • Breeds in central Asia (from the Altai Mountains to Mongolia and northeast China) and winters in South Asia.
   • Larger body size, darker plumage, and a more pronounced reddish throat.
6. H. r. erythrogaster
   • Found in North America, migrating to Central and South America in winter.
   • Has a deeper red or orange belly and a more robust body compared to Old World subspecies.

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Commensal Relationship with Humans
Barn swallows have one of the most well-documented commensal relationships with humans among birds. Unlike many species that avoid human settlements, barn swallows have thrived in human-altered environments, particularly in agricultural landscapes.

How They Benefit from Humans:

• Nesting Sites: They originally nested in caves and rocky outcrops but now prefer human-made structures such as barns, bridges, and eaves of houses. This shift has expanded their range and allowed for increased breeding success.
• Foraging Opportunities: Agricultural areas provide open fields where they can hunt flying insects more efficiently.
• Predator Protection: Nesting near human settlements reduces predation by natural enemies such as corvids and raptors.

Human Benefits:

• Pest Control: Barn swallows consume vast numbers of flying insects, including mosquitoes and agricultural pests, making them beneficial to farmers.
• Aesthetic and Cultural Value: Many cultures associate barn swallows with good luck and the arrival of spring.

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Evolution and Subspecies Divergence
The divergence of barn swallow subspecies is a classic example of allopatric speciation (geographical isolation) and ecological adaptation:

1. Glacial and Post-Glacial Expansion:
   • During the last Ice Age, populations were likely confined to refugia in warmer regions. As glaciers receded, they expanded into new territories, leading to genetic divergence.
2. Geographical Barriers:
   • Mountain ranges (e.g., the Himalayas), deserts, and oceans have limited gene flow between populations, leading to the formation of distinct subspecies.
3. Adaptation to Local Environments:
   • Differences in climate, insect availability, and nesting opportunities have influenced morphological and behavioral traits.
   • For example, H. r. erythrogaster in North America has evolved a more vibrant belly color, possibly due to sexual selection pressures differing from those in Europe.
4. Human Influence:
   • Their close association with human settlements has likely accelerated their spread and may have contributed to gene flow between some subspecies.

While the different subspecies show clear distinctions in plumage, size, and migratory behavior, they still interbreed where their ranges overlap, maintaining them as a single species rather than diverging into separate species.

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Conclusion
The barn swallow is a remarkable example of how a species can adapt to human presence and expand its range globally. Their subspecies have evolved due to historical climatic events, geographical isolation, and ecological pressures, yet they remain a single, highly mobile species with a complex migratory and commensal relationship with humans.

News of how they are in the process of speciating comes in the form of a paper in Science by a team led by Professor Rebecca Safran, the paper’s senior author and professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado Boulder, and an article in CU Boulder Today by Yvaine Ye:

A front-row seat to evolution: What common barn swallows can teach us about how new species form

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Beauty is in the eye of the beholder—even if that beholder is a barn swallow.

Depending on where the birds live, some of them may favor mates with a paler chest color while others find a redder chest more attractive. The difference in what these birds prefer when it comes to choosing a mate is helping scientists unlock one of biology’s greatest mysteries: How do new species originate?

In a new CU Boulder-led study, biologists used genetic sequencing from barn swallows around the globe to provide real-time evidence that sexual selection, in which organisms choose mates based on traits they find attractive, drives the emergence of new species.

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The study was published Dec 12 in the journal Science.

This is one of the very first papers to comprehensively show the role of mate selection decisions in the evolution of new species.

Professor Rebecca Safran, senior author
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Colorado University Boulder
Boulder, Colorado, USA.

The new findings shed light on how new species form, a fundamental but elusive process for all life on Earth.

Proving Darwin right

Charles Darwin proposed the theory of sexual selection in 1875. It suggests that organisms evolve showy traits, like extravagant plumage or eye-catching dance moves, to attract mates. When organisms of the same species develop preferences for different traits and no longer breed with each other, new species could emerge over time, a process known as speciation.

For the past 150 years, researchers of sexual selection have primarily studied organisms that already diverged into distinct species. For example, orchids, which now encompass more than 25,000 species, originated from a common ancestor. Their remarkable diversity often leads to the assumption that they evolved different looks to attract different pollinators, said Drew Schield, the paper’s first author and assistant professor at the University of Virginia.

It’s logical to think this way and it could totally be the case, but with speciation already having occurred, it’s impossible to know for certain.

Assistant Professor Drew Schield, first author
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA. Now at the Department of Biology
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA.

As a result, it has been difficult to find direct evidence that sexual selection drives the emergence of new species.

Barn swallows provide a unique opportunity to explore the speciation process as it unfolds.

These birds are one of the most common and widespread species on our planet. Currently, there are six subspecies of barn swallow each looking slightly different in some traits critical to the mate choice decisions depending on where they are.

For example, the East Asian group, Hirundo rustica gutturalis, has a pale chest and shorter tail streamers—the elongated outer tail feathers. Hirundo rustica tytleri, found in Siberia, has long tail streamers and red chest feathers. The subspecies in Europe and western Asia, Hirundo rustica rustica, has a pale chest and long tail streamers.

Reuniting after isolation

Evidence suggests that the bird’s ancestors left the Nile River valley in northern Africa about 11,000 years ago and spread out across the Northern Hemisphere. For thousands of years, different populations barely interacted and developed diverse traits, forming subspecies.

Some 800 to 2000 years ago, certain subspecies expanded their territories, and habitats began to overlap. In some parts of the world, subspecies now interact with each other, producing hybrid offspring.

Safran and her team set out to investigate whether sexual selection in these birds was driving the speciation process.

The team, including Elizabeth Scordato, associate professor at the California State Polytechnic University, sequenced the genomes of 336 barn swallows from around the globe, encompassing all subspecies and three hybrid zones, where subspecies interbreed, in Eurasia.

The researchers found a dozen regions in the barn swallow genome associated with the birds’ two sexually selected traits: Ventral coloration—the plumage color of their chest and belly— and tail streamer length.

When individuals reproduce, the genes from both parents reshuffle and combine to form the genes of their offspring. When two populations encounter one another, the flow of genetic material from one to another is a marker of how similar the populations are. If the rate of gene flow is low, it means the two populations are breeding with each other at a lower rate than they would if they are the same species.

The study found that in barn swallow hybrid zones much of their genes flows freely across groups. But the genetic regions coding for ventral coloration and tail streamer length hardly transfer to other populations.

A pair of Hirundo rustica rustica in Turkey.

Credit: Matt Wilkins.

It suggests that among the hybrid individuals with parents from different subspecies, a small number of lucky birds that inherit a favorable combination of tail streamer and ventral color genes are able to attract mates. Hybrids that receive less favorable combinations tend to be less successful in reproduction.

These genes are hitting a boundary due to divergent sexual selection, and they stop moving from one population to the other.

Assistant Professor Drew Schield.

The different preferences for tail feather length and chest color across subspecies make barn swallows more likely to mate within their own group, Schield added. If the trend continues, these groups could no longer interbreed or produce offspring, markers for the formation of separate species.

Next, the team plans to sample more birds and study whether being a hybrid affects reproductive success.

It’s very cool that we could capture a real-time evolutionary portrait of this common animal and understand how and why the populations are diverging. Our understanding of the process is fundamentally important for addressing a wide range of questions related to biodiversity, evolution and conservation.

Professor Rebecca Safran.

Structured Abstract

INTRODUCTION
Assessing how sexual traits and their genetic basis contribute barriers to gene flow in secondary contact due to effects on hybrid fitness remains critical to establishing a causal role of sexual selection in in speciation. Leveraging natural systems with intraspecific variation in sexual traits at early stages of the speciation process holds promise for identifying links between patterns of phenotypic and genomic variation and the evolution of reproductive isolation.

RATIONALE
Observational and experimental studies indicate that barn swallows (Hirundo rustica) are a robust empirical model of divergent sexual selection and that the presence of multiple hybrid zones between populations in Eurasia enables investigation of barriers to gene flow. We investigate genotypic and phenotypic variation in barn swallows to (i) map the genetic basis of plumage traits used in sexual signaling, (ii) test whether loci underlying sexual traits have experienced divergent sexual selection in allopatry and present barriers to gene flow in secondary contact, and (iii) test the prediction that sexual selection has maintained linkage disequilibrium (LD) between barrier loci in secondary contact as a result of their effects on hybrid fitness.

RESULTS
We sequenced the genomes of 336 barn swallows sampled across the breeding distribution of the species and quantified variation in ventral coloration and tail streamer length, two signal traits used in mate choice. Populations differ in these traits and hybrids between the subspecies rustica, tytleri, and gutturalis exhibit phenotypes that are intermediate between or similar to parental populations. The genetic architecture of ventral color is concentrated on chromosome 1A and the Z chromosome whereas phenotypic variation is largely explained by genotypic variation at 10 loci, including the melanogenesis genes KITLG, SLC45A2, and BNC2. Variation in tail streamer length is explained by loci on chromosome 2. Sexual trait loci—ventral color loci in particular—exhibit peaks of high differentiation between populations and signatures of divergent positive selection in allopatry. We further investigated whether loci under divergent sexual selection contribute barriers to gene flow in secondary contact using geographic and genomic cline analyses across hybrid zone transects, finding that sexual trait loci constitute barriers in the rustica-tytleri and rustica-gutturalis hybrid zones whereas gene flow is less constrained across the remainder of the genome. Clines for sexual trait loci in these hybrid zones also show a high degree of concordance, consistent with selection for specific combinations of alleles from parental populations in hybrids. Finally, we tested whether selection has generated ongoing coupling of barrier loci by investigating LD patterns in hybrid zones. These tests reveal elevated LD among sexual trait barrier loci in hybrids beyond what is expected under admixture alone, consistent with the genetic coupling of barriers being an emergent property of divergent sexual selection.

CONCLUSION
Our findings demonstrate an important role for sexual selection in speciation through the analysis of the genomic basis of sexual signal traits in barn swallows, evidence for divergent selection in geographic isolation, and evidence that loci underlying traits involved in prezygotic isolation represent barriers to gene flow. Our results further support the conclusion that the genetic coupling of sexual trait loci generated by selection promotes reproductive isolation upon secondary contact.

Sexual signal traits form barriers to gene flow upon secondary contact. Barn swallows breed across nearly the entire North Hemisphere and exhibit variation in sexual signal traits across populations. Hybrid zones between these populations enable the identification of the genetic basis of sexual traits and tests of the hypothesis that divergent sexual selection promotes reproductive isolation. Genetic loci underlying sexual traits show signatures of divergent selection between allopatric populations and are barriers to gene flow in secondary contact, whereas gene flow is less constrained across the rest of the genome.

Abstract
Despite the well-known effects of sexual selection on phenotypes, links between this evolutionary process and reproductive isolation, genomic divergence, and speciation have been difficult to establish. We unravel the genetic basis of sexually selected plumage traits to investigate their effects on reproductive isolation in barn swallows. The genetic architecture of sexual traits is characterized by 12 loci on two autosomes and the Z chromosome. Sexual trait loci exhibit signatures of divergent selection in geographic isolation and barriers to gene flow in secondary contact. Linkage disequilibrium between these genes has been maintained by selection in hybrid zones beyond what would be expected under admixture alone. Our findings reveal that selection on coupled sexual trait loci promotes reproductive isolation, providing key empirical evidence for the role of sexual selection in speciation.

Schield, Drew R.; Carter, Javan K.; Scordato, Elizabeth S. C.; Levin, Iris I.; Wilkins, Matthew R.; Mueller, Sarah A.; Gompert, Zachariah; Nosil, Patrik; Wolf, Jochen B. W.; Safran, Rebecca J. (2024)
Sexual selection promotes reproductive isolation in barn swallows
Science; 386(6727) eadj8766; DOI: 10.1126/science.adj8766

Copyright: © 2024 The authors.
Published by American Association for the Advancement of Science. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

So, there we are; as good an example as any creationist would wish to ignore, of observed evolution in progress as the barn swallow diversifies into species which then become species as barriers to geneflow evolve to ensure complete genetic isolation. And an example of how, as the process of speciation progresses, interbreeding is still possible when the process is sympatric, in other words, where the two gene pools are not physically isolated. This is pretty much how human speciation occurred both in Africa and in Eurasia when Homo erectus followed by H. sapiens migrated there.

Refuting Creationism - Beetles Were Feeding on Dinosaur Feathers - 100 million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Moult remains of feather-feeding beetle larvae intimately associated with downy feather portions from an unidentified theropod dinosaur in Early Cretaceous amber of Spain. Insets show the head with powerful mandibles of one of the larval moults (top) and the pigmentation pattern of feather second order branches (bottom), with the main stem of one feather at the right of the amber fragment. The length of the amber fragment is 6 millimetres across.

Image credit: CN IGME-CSIC.

Fossils reveal a 100-million-year-old relationship between feathered dinosaurs and feather-feeding beetles | University of Oxford

Isolated moult of the feather-feeding beetle larva found in the Spanish amber outcrop of Rábago/El Soplao, with detail of its powerful mandibles (right). Length of the moult is less than two millimetres.

Image credit: CN IGME-CSIC.

To normal people, the discovery of feather-eating beetles and feather fragments in 105-million-year-old amber, 30 million years before there were birds might be a clue that something had feathers before bird had them, suggesting that birds might have evolved from whatever that was.

Not so, creationists, however. Creationists conclude that any evidence that doesn't agree with them must be wrong because their evidence-free dogma is sacred and therefore uninfluenced by real-world evidence.

So, the following is just something else for creationists to ignore while they pretend to know better than the experts who have, unlike creationists, actually studied the subject.

It is news that a study, co-led between the Geological and Mining Institute of Spain of the Spanish National Research Council (CN IGME-CSIC) and Oxford University Museum of Natural History (OUMNH) has shown that beetles fed on the feathers of dinosaurs about 105 million years ago. This is based on an analysis of spectacular fossil amber fragments, from the locality of San Just in north-eastern Spain, revealed moults of tiny beetle larvae tightly surrounded by portions of downy feathers.

The feathers belonged to an unknown theropod dinosaur that lived around 105 million years ago, during the Early Cretaceous. This means that the feathers could not have come from a ‘modern bird’ species, since current evidence indicates that this group appeared about 30 million years later in the fossil record, during the Late Cretaceous.

Refuting Creationism - How Bird's and Bat's Wings Evolved

Wing of a blue roller, Albrecht Dürer, 1512

Wikipedia (Public Domain) Link

Unlike birds, the evolution of bats’ wings and legs is tightly coupled, which may have prevented them from filling as many ecological niches as birds.

Jason Koski/Cornell University

Bats’ and birds’ evolutionary paths are vastly different | Cornell Chronicle

Unlike an intelligent designer, the process of evolution can't go back to basic and start again. It is normally an additive process that has no control over what it has to work with and simply refines and improves on what is there. That's not to say new structures can't evolve but they do so by enlarging or remodelling something that was already there - the membrane of a bat's wing, for example is the webbing that exists in the tetrapod embryo between the fingers and toes, while the feathers of a bird's wing are highly modified scales. Both those structures evolved out of tissues that were already there. It would have been impossible for a bat to grow wing feathers instead of a membrane, for example, because the earliest mammals had lost their scales and evolved fur.

But of course, that would not have been a problem for an omnipotent intelligent designer who, having designed one wing would not need to set about designing another way to do the same thing.

So, constrained as evolution was by what it could use, it's not really surprising that birds and bats evolved on two different trajectories, with the only thing in common being flight (and of course the basic vertebrate skeletal body plan).

Refuting Creationism - How a Mass Extinction 66 Million Year Before Creation Week Triggered The Rappid Evolution Of Birds

The Broad-billed Tody, Todus subulatus, is a member of the bird group Coraciimorphae.

Image credit: Daniel Field,
University of Cambridge

The Northern Flicker, Colaptes auratus, is a member of the bird group Coraciimorphae. Berv and co-authors identify this group of birds and others as having close ties to the end-Cretaceous mass extinction that occurred in the wake of the Chicxulub asteroid impact approximately 66 million years ago.

Image credit: Daniel Field, University of Cambridge

Mass extinction 66 million years ago triggered rapid evolution of bird genomes | University of Michigan News

Another major milestone in the history of life on Earth happened, like almost everything else, in that long pre-Creation Week history that creationists need to ignore. It was the mass extinction about 66 million years ago that killed the non-avian dinosaurs and most megafauna, leaving vacant niches that could be exploited by the descendants of survivors. It's no surprise to anyone who understands how evolution works, that this led to a proliferation of new species as existing species diversified to fill those niches.

That much was known already from the fossil record, but now a University of Michigan study has found how this maps onto changes in the genome of the major bird families, as a kind of DNA fossil, just as the TOE predicts.

The major difference between the different taxons is how developed the chicks are on hatching and how dependent they are on their parents. In ducks, geese, the ratites and ground-nesting birds such as the plovers, chickens and turkeys, the chicks are mobile and able to feed themselves (precocial) almost as soon as they've hatched. At the other end of the scale, many passerines are helpless on hatching and are entirely dependent on their parents for food and shelter (altricial) for several weeks.

As the birds evolved and diversified, they tended to become smaller and also more altricial. This reduction in body size and increased altriciality are reflected in the genomes. It was these transitional changed that the researchers detected.

These major changes were occurring within 3-5 million years after the mass extinction.

Creationism in Crisis - A Tiny Bird Refutes Creationism - Again

Titipounamu, Acanthisitta chloris

Photo: Dr. Kristal Cain.

Titipounamu, Acanthisitta chloris

Photo: Dr. Kristal Cain.

Tiniest bird delivers evolution lesson - The University of Auckland

In case any creationists are still under the delusion that mainstream biologists are abandoning the scientific Theory of Evolution (TOE) in favour of their childish magical story involving a magic man made of nothing who magicked everything into existence out of nothing with some magic words, here is an example of how the TOE is used to understand and make sense of the observable facts.

It addresses the question of how the ability to learn and imitate sounds evolved in birds.

Basically, ornithologists had thought that birds could be divided into two groups - those which can learn sounds (parrots, songbirds, and hummingbirds) and those which can’t - and that this ability in the former group had evolved sometime after modern birds had diversified from their avian dinosaur ancestors, but the fact that a small New Zealand bird, the titipounamu or rifleman, Acanthisitta chloris, has the rudiments of this ability suggests it may have been present in the common ancestor of both groups.

In other words, the ability to learn and imitate sounds may be evidence of common descent.

Creationism in Crisis - How Homo Sapiens Helped Bonelli's Eagle Extend Its Range - 40,000 Years Before Creation Week

Bonelli's Eagle, Aquila fasciata

F. David Carmona

Bonelli's Eagle, Aquila fasciata

F. David Carmona

Early "Homo sapiens" facilitated the establishment of the Bonelli's eagle in the Mediterranean 50,000 years ago - Canal UGR

Not only is there no sign at all that the conversion of leading biologists to creationism's childish fairy tale in place of the scientific Theory of Evolution, that creationist cult leaders have been assuring their dupes is imminent - and has been for the last 50 years or so - it's as though they've never even heard of it. They still keep finding evidence of events that happened ten of thousand, even tens of millions of years before the Universe existed, according to the ludicrous creation myths they are supposedly about to adopt. And those events are frequently evidence of evolution or recent human history.

Imagine a serious, grown-up scientist who has been through university, with so much contrary information at his or her fingertips believing that account of magic creation 10,000 years ago written by ignorant Bronze Age pastoralists yet belonging to the creation cult requires fools to believe such an absurdity.

About 9 months ago while on holidat near Bezier, France, we were driving to Carcassonnes when, about a mile apart, we saw two majestic eagles that neither of us recognised. I now know they were Bonelli's eagles, and I probably have the activities of early Homo sapiens about 40,000 years ago to thank for them being there.

A study led by scientists from the University of Granada (UGR), Spain, shows how the activities of early Homo sapiens in the Iberian Peninsula, 40,000 years before creationists think their god created a universe consisting of a small, flat planet with a dome over it in the Middle East, may well have facilitated the expansion of the range of Bonelli's Eagle, Aquila fasciata, north of the Mediterranean Basin.

Creationism in Crisis - How Dinosaurs Evolved Feathers

Latest News and Views from University College Cork

Psittacorus (reconstruction)

Artwork by Walter Myers

This paper is enough to send a dedicated creationist disinformation specialist into intellectual summersaults. On the one hand, they hate the fact that dinosaurs lived so long ago and are evidence of life on earth tens and hundreds of millions of years ago, so they bend over backwards to prove they were around just a few thousand years ago, and then, horror of horrors, along come some clever scientists and show evidence that some dinosaurs even evolved into birds!

And now, courtesy of Palaeontologists at University College Cork (UCC) in Ireland , we have evidence of the transition from scales to feathers in pre-avian dinosaurs.


But it gets even worse! Creationists frauds have ben claiming for several years now that 'fossilised' soft dinosaur tissues prove they were just a few thousand years old because, despite the perfectly rational explanation of how 'soft' tissues can be preserved for many millions of years in the right circumstances, like the presence of iron, the evidence of this transition from scales to feathers would found in fossilised soft tissue!

So, a creationist disinformation specialist must now argue that fossilised dinosaur soft tissues don't exist, and when they do, they prove dinosaurs lived recently. One problem they face is that the fossilised skin isn't skin at all, or even the fibrous protein parts of skin; it has been entirely mineralised aa silicate, preserving only the morphology, including the surface patterning - which is where the evidence lies.

The University College Cork scientists have just published their findings, open access, in Nature Communications and in a UCC news release:

Creationism in Crisis - How An Extinct Duck Got To New Zealand In The Millions Of Years Before 'Creation Week'

Auckland Island Merganser, Mergus australis (1909)

F. W. Hutton, F.E.S. AND James Drummond, F.L.S., F.Z.S (source)
Via Wikimedia (Public Domain)

Auckland Island merganser specimen

Zymurgy via Wikimedia (CC0)

Ancient DNA from an extinct native duck reveals how far birds flew to make New Zealand home

Ducks, like almost all taxonomic categories, are a nightmare for creationists because they aren't mentioned in the Bible so it's not possible to put them into their primitive 'kind' classification, other than saying they are some 'kind' of bird, or maybe a 'duck kind'. The problem is there are so many different families of duck and several different species within each family. Some of them look very different to other ducks and have clearly evolved unique characteristics such as the long, serrated beak of the fish-eating mergansers, which places them in a different clade to the dabbling diving and torrent ducks.

By any definition then, evolving from a basic 'duck' into a merganser is the evolution of a new taxon, or 'macro-evolution' as creationists like to call it, while proclaiming it to be impossible because of some undefined magical process that intervenes to prevent it.

Which leaves creationists with nowhere to go but to claim mergansers were on the Ark, since they couldn't have evolved from a parent pair of 'ducks' at the abnormal warp-speed rate of evolution, that no-one noticed or thought to record, that creationists now claim must have happened in the few years since their favourite genocidal flood, that left no trace of itself.

But that's nothing compared to the genetic evidence that shows how, for example, the mergansers, evolved and spread geographically 18 million years before creationists believe there was a universe and again between 14 and 7 million years before creationists' god decided to create a small flat planet with a dome over it in the Middle East, 10,000 years ago, that creationists still believe accurately describes all that there is.

First, a little AI information about mergansers:

Tell me all about mergansers, their distribution and evolutionary origins, please. Mergansers are a group of ducks belonging to the genus Mergus, which is part of the family Anatidae. They are known for their distinctive serrated bills, which are well-adapted for catching fish, their primary diet. Here’s a detailed overview of mergansers, including their distribution, characteristics, and evolutionary background.

Characteristics Mergansers are medium to large-sized ducks with slender bodies and long, pointed bills. Their bills are equipped with saw-like edges that help them grasp slippery fish. There are several species within the Mergus genus, including:

1. Common Merganser (Mergus merganser): Also known as the goosander, this species has a widespread distribution across North America, Europe, and Asia.
2. Red-breasted Merganser (Mergus serrator): Found in North America, Europe, and Asia, this species prefers coastal and large inland waters.
3. Hooded Merganser (Lophodytes cucullatus): Native to North America, it is smaller than other mergansers and has a distinctive fan-shaped crest.
4. Brazilian Merganser (Mergus octosetaceus): One of the rarest mergansers, it is found in central Brazil and is critically endangered.
5. Scaly-sided Merganser (Mergus squamatus): This species inhabits parts of East Asia and is also considered endangered.

Distribution

Mergansers have a wide distribution, with different species occupying various regions around the globe:

• Common Merganser: Breeds in forested regions near lakes and rivers across northern North America, Europe, and Asia. In winter, they migrate to more temperate areas.
• Red-breasted Merganser: Found in boreal and temperate regions across the Northern Hemisphere. They often winter in coastal waters, estuaries, and large inland lakes.
• Hooded Merganser: Prefers forested wetlands, rivers, and ponds in North America. They are non-migratory in some parts of their range but move to ice-free waters in winter.
• Brazilian Merganser: Restricted to central Brazil, particularly in the Serra da Canastra region. Their habitat includes clear, fast-flowing rivers.
• Scaly-sided Merganser: Breeds in forested rivers of northeast China and the Russian Far East. They migrate to southern China, Korea, and Japan for winter.

Evolution

Mergansers belong to the Anatidae family, which includes ducks, geese, and swans. The evolution of mergansers is part of the broader adaptive radiation of the Anatidae, which diversified to exploit a variety of ecological niches. The serrated bills of mergansers are a specialized adaptation for piscivory (fish-eating), differentiating them from other ducks.

Evolutionary Background

1. Ancestral Origins: The Anatidae family likely originated in the late Cretaceous to early Paleogene periods. Early diversification allowed these birds to adapt to various ecological roles, including herbivory, omnivory, and piscivory.
2. Adaptive Radiation: The diversification of Mergus species is an example of adaptive radiation, where different species evolved to occupy different ecological niches, particularly in terms of habitat preference and diet specialization.
3. Morphological Adaptations: The distinctive serrated bills of mergansers are a key evolutionary trait that sets them apart from other ducks. This adaptation is crucial for their fish-based diet.

Conservation Status

Several species of mergansers are of conservation concern:

• Brazilian Merganser: Critically endangered, with an estimated population of fewer than 250 individuals in the wild. Habitat destruction and water pollution are major threats.
• Scaly-sided Merganser: Endangered, with threats including habitat loss due to logging and river damming, as well as pollution and human disturbance.

Conclusion

Mergansers are a fascinating group of ducks with specialized adaptations that enable them to thrive as piscivores in a variety of aquatic habitats. Their wide distribution and evolutionary history reflect the dynamic processes of diversification and adaptation in the Anatidae family. Conservation efforts are crucial for the survival of the endangered species within this group, highlighting the need for habitat protection and restoration.

The evidence of when the now extinct New Zealand merganser got to New Zealand and how it is related to other mergansers is the subject of an article in The Conversation by Nic Rawlence, Senior Lecturer in Ancient DNA, and Alexander Verry, Researcher, both of the University of Otago, New Zealand. Their article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency:

Published: May 19, 2024 8.57pm BST Updated: May 19, 2024 10.06pm BST

Ancient DNA from an extinct native duck reveals how far birds flew to make New Zealand home

Auckland Island merganser. Artistic reconstruction by J. G. Keulemans from Bullers Birds of New Zealand (1888)

Bullers Birds of New Zealand, Author provided

Nic Rawlence, University of Otago and Alexander Verry, University of Otago

Ask a bird lover if they have heard of the extinct giant moa or its ancient predator, Haast’s eagle, and the answer will likely be yes. The same can’t be said of New Zealand’s extinct, but equally unique, mergansers – a group of fish-eating ducks with a serrated bill.

The only southern hemisphere representatives of this group are the critically endangered Brazilian merganser and those from the New Zealand region, which are now extinct.

Unlike some of New Zealand’s other extinct birds, the biological heritage of our enigmatic mergansers is shrouded in mystery. But our new research on the extinct Auckland Island merganser is changing the way we think about the origins of New Zealand’s birds. Did the ancestors of the merganser come from South America or the northern hemisphere – and when did they arrive?

Mergansers are relatively common in the northern hemisphere but were limited to Brazil and the New Zealand region in the southern hemisphere.

Author provided

Lost to humans and pests

Mergansers were spread across the three main islands of New Zealand at the time of Polynesian arrival in the 13th century, as well as the Auckland Islands to the south and the Chatham Islands to the east.

Over-hunting, habitat destruction, and predation from the Pacific rat and Polynesian dog resulted in the extinction of mergansers on the New Zealand mainland and the Chatham Islands. By the time Europeans arrived in the 17th century, mergansers were restricted to an isolated population on the sub-Antarctic Auckland Islands.

European discovery of the Auckland Islands in 1806 led to a formal description of the Auckland Island merganser in 1841. However, European discovery brought new predators like pigs and cats.

Mergansers were also sought after as specimens for the museum trade. The last known Auckland Island merganser was shot and collected in 1902, a mere 61 years after its discovery.

Auckland Island Merganser, Mergus australis, collected June 1902, Auckland Islands, New Zealand.

Te Papa (OR.001357), CC BY

Only recently have merganser bones from the Chatham Islands been described as a distinct species. The distinction of the Chatham Island merganser hints at greater merganser diversity in the New Zealand region than previously thought. It is possible the merganser bones found on mainland New Zealand may be another species, but only ongoing research will be able to confirm this.

From the northern hemisphere to NZ

The extinction of mergansers from the New Zealand region has meant their evolutionary history has remained a mystery. Did their ancestors, and those of the Brazilian merganser, arrive via independent colonisation events from the northern hemisphere? Or was there a single push into the southern hemisphere, followed by subsequent divergence events?

To find out more, we sequenced ancient DNA from an Auckland Islands merganser and a Brazilian merganser. This allowed us to reconstruct the evolutionary history of the wider group.

We found mergansers originated in the northern hemisphere, diverging from their closest relatives some 18 million years ago, before rapidly evolving into several different species between 14 and seven million years ago.

The mergansers from the New Zealand region are most closely related to the northern hemisphere common merganser. Their ancestors arrived here at least seven million years ago in a separate colonisation event to the one that gave rise to the Brazilian merganser.

Further genetic research is currently underway. The goal is to reconstruct the evolutionary history of mergansers within the New Zealand region.

The global origins of New Zealand’s birds

Many New Zealanders believe the country’s native birds originate from Australia. Increasingly though, genetic and palaeontological research shows a number of our feathered friends hail from further afield.

Kiwi are most closely related to the extinct elephant birds of Madagascar, for example. And the extinct adzebill is related to flufftails, also from Madagascar. The extinct moa is most closely related to the tinamou from South America.

The long journey of blue-eyed shags started in South America, with the birds island hopping via Antarctica and the sub-Antarctic islands to New Zealand. Mergansers arriving from the northern hemisphere add another piece to the puzzle.

It is possible that fossils of extinct mergansers (and other birds with distant geographic origins) will be discovered as palaeontologists increasingly focus on previously neglected and newly discovered southern hemisphere fossil deposits.

Only then, combined with the power of ancient DNA, will we be able to fully understand how New Zealand’s dynamic geological, climatic and human history has influenced the colonisation and diversification of birds on this isolated South Pacific archipelago.

Nic Rawlence, Senior Lecturer in Ancient DNA, University of Otago and Alexander Verry, Researcher, Department of Zoology, University of Otago

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Published by The Conversation.
Open access. (CC BY 4.0)

Technical detail and more background is given in the researchers' open access paper in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society:

Abstract
Mergansers are riverine and coastal piscivorous ducks that are widespread throughout North America and Eurasia but uncommon in the Southern Hemisphere. One species occurs in South America and at least two extinct species are known from New Zealand. It has been proposed that these Southern Hemisphere merganser lineages were founded by at least two independent dispersal events from the Northern Hemisphere. However, some morphological and behavioural evidence suggests that Southern Hemisphere mergansers may form a monophyletic clade that descended from only a single dispersal event from the Northern Hemisphere. For example, Southern Hemisphere mergansers share several characteristics that differ from Northern Hemisphere mergansers (e.g. non-migratory vs. migratory, sexual monochromatism vs. sexual dichromatism, long vs. short pair bonds). We sequenced complete mitogenomes from the Brazilian merganser and an extinct merganser from New Zealand—the Auckland Island merganser. Our results show that the Brazilian and Auckland Island mergansers are not sister-taxa, and probably descend from two separate colonization events from the Northern Hemisphere at least 7 Mya. Nuclear (palaeo)genomic data may help to further resolve the relationship between living and extinct mergansers, including merganser fossils from New Zealand that have not been subjected to palaeogenetic analysis.

INTRODUCTION
Mergansers (Mergus spp.) are a group of riverine and seasonally coastal fish-eating ducks that have a widespread Northern Hemisphere distribution but are uncommon in the Southern Hemisphere (Kear 2005, Williams et al. 2012, 2014) (Fig. 1). They are characterized by a serrated bill, and include the endangered scaly-sided merganser (M. squamatus Gould 1864) from north-east Asia; the common merganser (M. merganser Linnaeus 1758), and the red-breasted merganser (M. serrator Linnaeus 1758), which have widespread Northern Hemisphere distributions; the critically endangered Brazilian merganser (M. octosetaceus Vieillot 1817); and two currently recognized extinct species from the New Zealand region—M. australis Hombron and Jacquinot 1841 and M. milleneri Williams and Tennyson 2014 from the Auckland and Chatham Islands, respectively. While the hooded merganser Lophodytes cucullatus (Linnaeus 1758), previously M. cucullatus, from North America has a serrated bill, it is not considered a ‘true’ merganser (e.g. Buckner et al. 2018, Lavretsky et al. 2021). The taxonomic relationship of the smew Mergellus albellus (Linnaeus 1758) from Eurasia is currently unresolved; it is sometimes suggested to be more closely related to Mergus and Lophodytes or to goldeneyes (Bucephala spp.) (Livezey 1995, Buckner et al. 2018, Lavretsky et al. 2021).

Figure 1.

Schematic of the breeding distributions of Mergus spp. The New Zealand (NZ) lineage encompasses the Auckland Island merganser (465 km south of NZ) and Chatham Island merganser (785 km east of NZ), as well as Mergus spp. from mainland NZ. Breeding distributions are based off the Cornell Lab of Ornithology Birds of the World website.

The now extinct Auckland Island merganser M. australis (or miuweka) (Fig. 2) was formally described in 1841, based on a specimen collected on the sub-Antarctic Auckland Islands, 465 km south of mainland New Zealand. Rare Late Holocene-aged merganser bones have been found in coastal sand dune deposits (including Māori middens) on New Zealand’s three main islands (Stewart, North, and South), and the Auckland and Chatham Islands (Tennyson and Martinson 2007, Williams et al. 2014, Tennyson 2020). Bones from the latter were recently described as a distinct species M. milleneri, which was smaller than the nominate M. australis, with a shorter skull, relatively shorter premaxilla, smaller sternum and keel, relatively shorter wing bones, and a narrower pelvis (Williams et al. 2014). The taxonomic status of merganser bones from mainland New Zealand is unresolved (i.e. cannot be assigned to either M. australis or M. milleneri), and are currently recognized as Mergus spp. (Birds New Zealand Checklist Committee 2022).

Figure 2.

In the Southern Hemisphere, mergansers are only known from the New Zealand region and South America, represented here by the Auckland Island merganser. A, artistic reconstruction by J.G. Keulemans from Buller (1888); B, historical museum skin (Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa OR.001357); C, the Brazilian merganser (photo by Savio Freire Bruno CC BY-SA 3.0).

Mergansers in the New Zealand region are mainly thought to have occupied a riverine and seasonally coastal habitat (e.g. sheltered bays during winter; Kear 2005, Williams et al. 2012, 2014). It is likely that they mainly nested in tree cavities, but also caves in some instances, as the remains of adults, chicks, and eggs have been found within a cave on the Chatham Islands (Williams et al. 2014). By the 17th century, mergansers had been extirpated from the Chatham Islands and mainland New Zealand, and survived only on the Auckland Islands. A combination of subsistence hunting, and predation from the Pacific rat (Rattus exulans) and Polynesian dog (Canis familiaris), probably led to the extinction of mergansers across most of their prehistoric range (Tennyson and Martinson 2007, Greig and Rawlence 2021.1). On the Auckland Islands, predation from introduced pigs (Sus scrofa) and cats (Felis catus), and collecting for the museum trade, resulted in their extinction—indeed the last known Auckland Island merganser specimen was shot and collected in January 1902 (Williams 2012.1).

The only extant merganser in the Southern Hemisphere—the critically endangered Brazilian merganser (Fig. 2)—is one of the rarest birds in the world, comprising only 250 wild individuals. It is split across three remnant populations in Brazil, but once had a more widespread historical distribution encompassing Argentina and Paraguay (Vilaca et al. 2012.2, Maia et al. 2020.1). The Brazilian merganser has undergone a significant population bottleneck, yet different remnant populations can still be genetically identified (Maia et al. 2020.1). Like mergansers from the New Zealand region, the Brazilian merganser occupies riverine habitats, and often nests in tree cavities or rock crevasses (Vilaca et al. 2012.2, Maia et al. 2020.1).

It has been proposed that the Southern Hemisphere mergansers were founded by independent dispersal events to the New Zealand region and South America from the Northern Hemisphere (e.g. Livezey 1995). Based on behavioural characteristics, Johnsgard (1961) tentatively assigned the Brazilian merganser as sister-species to a clade comprising the other Mergus species, with the Auckland Island merganser as the sister-species of the common merganser and scaly-sided merganser. In contrast, using morphological characters, Livezey (1989, 1995) assigned the Auckland Island merganser, then Brazilian merganser, as successive sister-species to all other Mergus species, though with weak to moderate bootstrap support. Using mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences, Buckner et al. (2018) suggested the Brazilian merganser was the sister-species to the scaly-sided merganser, albeit with weak support. However, some evidence suggests that Southern Hemisphere mergansers may be closely related to one another, potentially even sister-species, as they share several behavioural (e.g. non-migratory and long pair bonds) and morphological (e.g. sexually monochromatic) characteristics, in contrast to their Northern Hemisphere congeners (e.g. migratory, short pair bonds, and sexual dichromatism; Livezey 1995). In addition, recent genetic studies of other extinct Southern Hemisphere avian species have also revealed unexpected evolutionary connections between birds from New Zealand, South America, and Africa (e.g. Mitchell et al. 2014.1a, 2014.2b, Boast et al. 2019, Rawlence et al. 2022.1, Verry et al. 2022.2a). As such, the phylogenetic relationships of the Southern Hemisphere mergansers, when their ancestors arrived in the region, and from where, remain unresolved.

In this study, the first genetic study of a New Zealand Mergus species, we sequenced mitochondrial genomes (mitogenomes) from historical museum specimens from the Auckland Island merganser and Brazilian merganser, and analysed them within a phylogenetic framework of Mergini mitogenomes (Liu et al. 2012.3, Lavretsky et al. 2021). These data were used to determine the phylogenetic relationships and divergence dates within mergansers.

Nicolas J Rawlence, Alexander J F Verry, Theresa L Cole, Lara D Shepherd, Alan J D Tennyson, Murray Williams, Jamie R Wood, Kieren J Mitchell
Ancient mitogenomes reveal evidence for the Late Miocene dispersal of mergansers to the Southern Hemisphere Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2024;, zlae040, https://doi.org/10.1093/zoolinnean/zlae040

Copyright: © 2024 The authors.
Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Linnean Society of London. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

Creationists needn't be too embarrassed by these facts about the distribution and evolution of mergansers, after all, the simple Bronze Age Canaanites who made up the origin myths to fill the gaps in their knowledge and understanding, could have known nothing of them, since they are largely absent from the Middle East, nor of southern hemisphere land masses such as South America, Australia and New Zealand when they didn't even realise there is a southern hemisphere, or of the ducks and their families.

And, of course, they knew nothing about the history of Earth and the life on it, so how could they be expected to have known about the evolutionary history and geographic distribution of these ducks? With their long, serrated beaks and fish diet, they probably wouldn't have recognised mergansers as a type of duck even.

All they had to draw on was their limited knowledge of the small scrap of the globe they inhabited, which is why they got almost everything they described so hopelessly wrong. The lesson from Genesis is just how badly you do when you know little and depend on guesswork from the point of view of someone with the knowledge understanding of a pre-school toddler of today.

Creationism in Crisis - How Order Emerges From Chaos - Naturally

A 'murmuration' of starlings

Press Releases - SCHOOL OF SCIENCE THE UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO

It's a fundamental mantra of creationism that you'll see chanted over and over again as though it’s a proof that their god must exist, "You can't get order from chaos". It’s as fundamental, and as mindless, as the mantra, "You can't get life from non-life".

Both of them ignore the evidence and neither of them can be explained any more so than a parrot can explain its squawks.

And now a Tokyo University team has demonstrated that order can indeed emerge from chaos at different levels from the quantum to the macro level of flocks of birds, when there is a force acting between the particles to make it what they term an 'active matter'. They explain their findings in a highly technical, mathematical paper, the maths of which is quite incomprehensible to me, in the journal, Physical Review Research. The basic requirements for 'active matter' are that the particles (agents) are moving and that there is repulsion between them. In the case of a flock of birds, the repulsion is in the form of maintaining a distance between the individuals.

The researchers have explained their findings in a news release from Tokyo University:

How Science Works - Tracking How Great Tits In An Oxfordshire Wood Are Responding To Climate Change

Wytham Wood, Oxfordshire, UK

Early morning, Wytham Wood

The great tits in this Oxford wood are adapting their breeding times as climate changes – here’s how

This article caught my eye because it concerns the birds in a wood which is local to me - Wytham Wood, near Oxford, to which I have licensed access. This is reputedly the most intensively studied area of woodland in the world, belonging, as it does, to Oxford University.

Wytham Woods form an iconic location that has been the subject of continuous ecological research programmes, many dating back to the 1940s. The estate has been owned and maintained by the University of Oxford since 1942. The Woods are often quoted as being one of the most researched pieces of woodland in the world, and their 1000 acres are designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest.

The wooded parts of the Wytham Estate comprise ancient semi-natural woodland (dating to the last Ice Age), secondary woodland (dating to the seventeenth century), and modern plantations (1950s and 60s). The fourth key habitat is the limestone grassland found at the top of the hill. Other smaller habitats include a valley-side mire and a series of ponds.

The site is exceptionally rich in flora and fauna, with over 500 species of plants, a wealth of woodland habitats, and 800 species of butterflies and moths.

https://www.wythamwoods.ox.ac.uk/

Through intensive observation over successive years, researchers are able to measure changes in behaviour of species such as the Great Tit, Parus major with some of the best examples of observational biology in the form of research papers. For example, a few years ago a team of researchers showed that the British race of Great tits were diverging from their European relatives with changes in the beaks probably reflecting the fact that we in Britain provide feeding stations for birds to sustain them through the winter much more frequently than other Europeans, so the British Great tits are evolving so they can get the food in the bird feeders in British gardens.

In the following article, ecologist, David López Idiáquez, a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Behavioural and Evolutionary Ecology, University of Oxford, explains how their research is measuring how Great tits are responding to climate change. His article is reprinted here from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency, with photographs from Internet sources:

Creationism in Crisis - An Evolutionary 'Family Tree' For All Living Birds

Male wood duck, Aix sponsa

After 10 years of work, landmark study reveals new ‘tree of life’ for all birds living today

The results of a ten-year study, published today in Nature will come as a huge disappointment for any creationists who find the courage to read it (and who have the ability to understand what they're reading - which for creationists is probably asking too much.

Those still under the delusion that mainstream biologists are abandoning the TOE in favour of creationism with its magic and a suppositional supernatural entity, will be especially disappointed. Not only does it show birds have been around for very much longer than creationists believe the universe has been it also shows that the team of scientists are firmly committed to the Theory of Evolution as the only scientific explanation for biodiversity.

Two of the biologists who co-authored the paper along with a large international team of biologists, Jacqueline Nguyen, Scientific Officer in Ornithology, Australian Museum, and ARC DECRA Fellow, Flinders University and Simon Ho, Professor of Molecular Evolution, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney, have described their findings in an article in The Conversation. Their article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency:

Creationism in Crisis - Earliest Toothless Bird From 120 Million Years Ago

Illustration showing the fossil skeleton of Imparavis attenboroughi, alongside a reconstruction of the bird in life.

© Ville Sinkkonen.

Imparavis attenboroughi, a 'strange bird' named after Sir David Attenborough, British broadcaster and naturalist

Fossil named “Attenborough’s strange bird” was the first of its kind without teeth - Field Museum

It seems every week is a bad week for creationists, yet the wackadoodle cult staggers on, albeit with dwindling numbers, managing as always to ignore anything that shows their childish superstition to be wrong.

On top of the recently-reported predatory marine lizard, from 66 million years ago, we now have the earliest bird without the teeth of its enantiornithine ancestors. The enantiornithines were a diverse class of avian dinosaurs that went extinct 66 million years ago following the meteor impact that killed most of the dinosaurs. Only the ornithuromorphs survived, for reasons not completely understood, and they gave rise to all modern birds.

Creationism in Crisis - Biologist Watch Dawinian Evolution Happen - No Magic Was Involved

A Galápagos or Darwin's Finch

Image by Marc-Olivier Beausoleil.

How does one species become many? | Newsroom - McGill University

Classical (Darwinian) evolution theory explains diversification of one species into several by hypothesising that an advantageous trait in any given environment will convey a fitness advantage in that environment, so carriers of that trait will have more descendants than non-carriers. As the environment varies so the advantageous traits with vary.

Although the logic of that is indisputable, formal proof of it in terms of observing it leading to diversification is hard to come by for several reasons, not the least of which is that speciation can only really be identified retrospectively when a large enough population exists to be able to say this is a new species, and not just a variant. There was no way to predict that a given individual or small population would actually become a new species so no reason to watch what happened. I explained this some time ago in a blog post about monkey diversification, subsequently confirmed by observation.

So, to the consternation of creationists, an international group of biologists led by McGill University have set about providing the evidence to validate the hypothesis, and, to make matters worse for creationists, they did it using the Galápagos finch, also known as Darwin's finch, that gave Charles Darwin the idea of evolution by natural selection as the explanation for biodiversity. So, this work not only validates basic Darwinian theory but also validates Darwin's choice of an example of it.

The biologists’ findings, based on 17 years of observations, are published open access in Evolution and are explained in a McGill University press release:

Creationism in Crisis - Evolution of Rock Doves & Domestic Pigeons

Rock dove, Colmba livia neglecta (Iran)

Picture: Γεωργός via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Rock dove, Columba livia.
The wild ancestor of the domestic or town pigeon

Redefining the Evolutionary History of the Rock Dove, Columba livia, Using Whole Genome Sequences | Molecular Biology and Evolution | Oxford Academic

A great deal is understood about how the many different varieties of domestic pigeon were produced ever since Charles Darwin used them to illustrate the role of selection in evolution. In this case, selection is human selection rather than natural selection, although the difference is a matter of semantics if you regard human selective breeders as part of the domestic pigeon's environment.

Incidentally, creationists should note that Darwin never claimed evolution always resulted in new species. As he showed with his selective breeding examples, it produced new varieties too. Some of these have become so far removed from their wild ancestors that they rank as subspecies, like the domestic pigeon, Columba livia domestica

Although the radiation of domestic varieties is now well understood, the wild ancestors, the rock doves, have received far less attention until now. Now a paper by a team led by Germán Hernández-Alonso of the Center for Evolutionary Hologenomics, The Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark, redresses that discrepancy by analysing the entire genomes of 65 historical rock doves that represent all currently recognized subspecies and span the species’ original geographic distribution. 3 of these specimens were from Charles Darwin's collection.

This works shows that rock doves have diversified into a number of subspecies across their range, stemming from a subspecies now restricted to a small coastal strip of Northwest Africa, C. livia gymnocyclus. One of these subspecies received a substantial ingression of genes from a related species, C. rupestris after it split from the West African population but before it became domesticated. The result is that C. livia gymnocyclus should now probably rank as a species in its own right, C. gymnocyclus.

First a little about the evolution of domestic pigeons: