Geospiza fortis Genome sequencing and assembly

The medium ground finch (Geospiza fortis) is a seed-eating bird endemic to the Galapagos Islands of Ecuador. It inhabits subtropical or tropical dry forests and shrubland. The medium ground finch is one of "Darwin's finches"; a group of birds that evolved over a few million years from a single ancestral species into multiple species whose beak sizes and shapes are specialized for using different food resources. This species has been the subject of numerous evolutionary studies and is part of a project to sequence 10,000 vertebrate genomes (G10k).