Vegetarian Finch

About the Vegetarian Finch

The vegetarian finch (Platyspiza crassirostris) is a species of bird in the Darwin's finch group of the tanager family Thraupidae endemic to the Galápagos Islands. It is the only member of the genus Platyspiza. The vegetarian finch is one of Darwin's finches, a group of closely related birds that evolved on the Galápagos Islands. The group is related to the yellow-faced grassquit (Tiaris olivaceus) which is found in South and Central America and the Caribbean. An ancestral relative of the grassquit arrived on the Galápagos Islands some 2–3 million years ago, and the vegetarian finch is an early evolutionary radiation from that ancestor.

When Darwin first collected the species in 1835, he assumed it was a finch. John Gould, who formally described the vegetarian finch in 1837, placed it in a new genus Camarhynchus and coined the binomial name Camarhynchus crassirostris. The vegetarian finch is now placed in the genus Platyspiza that was introduced by Robert Ridgway in 1897. Molecular phylogenetic studies have shown that Darwin's "finches" are actually members of the subfamily Coerebinae within the large tanager family Thraupidae.

The vegetarian finch is the sole member... Wikipedia →