European Starlings’ Global Success Reveals Evolution Doesn’t Always Take Millions Of Years

Researchers report that the near-global success of invasive European starlings may be linked to rapid changes in gene expression patterns

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European starlings are not native to North America, as their common name suggests. They arrived in North America after a small group was imported in 1890 and again in 1891 by a wealthy and misguided New York drug manufacturer, Eugene Schieffelin, who released them into New York City’s Central Park. This simple, inexplicable act of environmental vandalism unleashed a tsunami of the glossy purple-black songbirds that swept across the continent. Along the way, their numbers increased from just 100 individuals to more than an estimated 200 million by 1970.