The Birds of Northern Melanesia: Speciation, Dispersal, and Biogeography

Ernst Mayr is one of the principal architects of the ‘neo-Darwinian synthesis’, which has been the dominant perspective in 20th century evolutionary biology. Jared Diamond is one of the most wide-ranging minds in biology, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for “Guns, Germs, and Steel”. Mayr and Diamond decided in 1970 to collaborate on an authoritative monograph presenting their data and interpretations of the evolution of the birds of the Solomon and Bismark Islands. Mayr’s numerous expeditions to do fieldwork in this area, beginning in 1929 and continuing through 1976, form the core of his scientific work. Diamond has made four expeditions to the region since 1970 to fill in gaps in the data.