Darwin’s sparrows’: measuring evolution in the schoolyard

During his stay in Cape Verde, Darwin was amazed by the natural curiosity and genuine interest of children. We built on these children features to promote a long lasting understanding of evolution in Cape Verdean students by focusing on Passer iagoensis, an endemic sparrow from this archipelago and one of the first species collected by Darwin. We organised 3 workshops for biology teachers in Santiago and São Vicente. During these workshops evolutionary processes and educational activities based on Cape Verdean examples were explored. We also introduced teachers to a research project that aims to study the evolution of Passer iagoensis and to its research team.
In a second phase, two high school classes engaged with the project researchers putting forward hypotheses to explain preliminary results and planning experiments to test these. During this process, students explored the role and expected consequences of evolutionary processes such as drift, natural and sexual selection and noticed the scientific potential of their insular country for studies on evolutionary biology.