A beak size locus in Darwin’s finches facilitated character displacement during a drought

Ecological character displacement is a process of morphological divergence that reducescompetition for limited resources. We used genomic analysis to investigate the geneticbasis of a documented character displacement event in Darwin’s finches on Daphne Majorin the Galápagos Islands: The medium ground finch diverged from its competitor, the largeground finch, during a severe drought. We discovered a genomic region containing theHMGA2gene that varies systematically among Darwin’s finch species with different beaksizes. Two haplotypes that diverged early in the radiation were involved in the characterdisplacement event: Genotypes associated with large beak size were at a strong selectivedisadvantage in medium ground finches (selection coefficients= 0.59). Thus, a majorlocus has apparently facilitated a rapid ecological diversification in the adaptive radiationof Darwin’s finches.