Daphne Island

Daphne Island

Daphne Major is a volcanic island just north of Santa Cruz Island and just west of the Baltra Airport in the Archipelago of Colón, commonly known as the Galápagos Islands. It consists of a tuff crater, devoid of trees, whose rim rises 120 m (394 ft) above the sea.

Though easily accessible to most visitors to the Galápagos, the national park service has highly restricted visits to this island, and it is primarily used for scientific research. An intensive study of Darwin's finches was conducted here by biologists Peter and Rosemary Grant over a period of 20 years. They examined the behaviour and life cycles of finches, with the results strongly supporting Darwin's theory of evolution. Their efforts were documented in the Pulitzer Prize–winning book The Beak of the Finch.

Daphne is home to a variety of other birds including Galápagos martins, blue-footed booby, Nazca booby, short-eared owls, red-billed tropicbirds and magnificent frigatebirds.

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Coordinates: 0°25′21″S 90°22′19″W / 0.422508°S 90.372012°W / -0.422508; -90.372012

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Sunday, February 22, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.