David Lack was a British ornithologist who traveled to the Galápagos in the 1930s to study Darwin’s finches. He eventually concluded that the many species of finch on the island were constantly specializing to get out of one another’s niches, reduce competition, and ensure their offspring’s survival. His 1947 monograph, Darwin’s Finches, proved that there was enough difference between the beaks of individual finches to confer competitive advantages that would power natural selection—and, eventually, evolution.
Get the entire The Beak of the Finch LitChart as a printable PDF.
David Lack Character Timeline in The Beak of the Finch
The timeline below shows where the character David Lack appears in The Beak of the Finch. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 4: Darwin’s Beaks
A British ornithologist named David Lack arrived in the Galápagos in the late 1930s to research Darwin’s finches—and at first, his...
(full context)
Chapter 10: The Ever-Turning Sword
...to measure competition amongst species that are no longer actively competing with each other. But David Lack , who published Darwin’s Finches in the middle of the 20th century, recognized that certain...
(full context)
