The Genovesa ground finch (''Geospiza acutirostris'') is a small

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class (biology), class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the Oviparity, laying of Eggshell, hard-shelled eggs, a high Metabolism, metabolic rate, a fou ...

native to the

Galápagos Islands The Galápagos Islands () are an archipelago of volcanic islands in the Eastern Pacific, located around the equator, west of the mainland of South America. They form the Galápagos Province of the Republic of Ecuador, with a population of sli ...

. It was considered a

subspecies In Taxonomy (biology), biological classification, subspecies (: subspecies) is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics (Morphology (biology), morpholog ...

of the

sharp-beaked ground finch The sharp-beaked ground finch (''Geospiza difficilis'') is a species of bird in the Darwin's finch group of the tanager family Thraupidae. It is classified as a least-concern species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and it is ...

(''Geospiza difficilis'')

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found only in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also foun ...

Genovesa Island Genovesa Island (), also known as Tower Island, is a shield volcano in the Galápagos Islands in the eastern Pacific Ocean. The island occupies about , and its maximum elevation is . The horse-shoe shaped island has a volcanic caldera whose wa ...

.Grant, Peter R.; Grant, B. Rosemary & Petren, Kenneth (2000). The allopatric phase of speciation: the sharp-beaked ground finch (''Geospiza difficilis'') on the Galápagos islands. '' Biol. J. Linn. Soc.'' 69(3): 287–317. Rothschild, W. and E. Hartert. (1899). A Review of the Ornithology of the Galapagos Islands. With Notes on the Webster-Harris Expedition. ''Novitates Zoologicae'' Vol. VI, No. 2, pp. 85-205, 2 plates. The

International Ornithologists' Union The International Ornithologists' Union (IOU) is an international organization for the promotion of ornithology Ornithology, from Ancient Greek ὄρνις (''órnis''), meaning "bird", and -logy from λόγος (''lógos''), meaning "study", ...

has split the species. Other

taxonomic 280px, Generalized scheme of taxonomy Taxonomy is a practice and science concerned with classification or categorization. Typically, there are two parts to it: the development of an underlying scheme of classes (a taxonomy) and the allocation ...

authorities still consider it

conspecific Biological specificity is the tendency of a characteristic such as a behavior or a biochemical variation to occur in a particular species. Biochemist Linus Pauling stated that "Biological specificity is the set of characteristics of living organism ...

. In the whole-genome phylogeny of Lamichhaney et al. (2017), ''G. acutirostris'' is shown to be very far from ''G. difficilis''. In fact, ''G. difficilis'' does not fall in the same part of the tree as other ''Geospiza''.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q30686679

Genovesa ground finch The Genovesa ground finch (''Geospiza acutirostris'') is a small bird native to the Galápagos Islands. It was considered a subspecies of the sharp-beaked ground finch (''Geospiza difficilis'') endemic to Genovesa Island.Grant, Peter R.; Grant, ...

Endemic birds of the Galápagos Islands

Taxa named by Robert Ridgway