system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Why are the Galapagos Islands specifically so important to study?

I always see the Galapagos Islands as the big place that people are studying.  I realize there are major historical discoveries that have happened there, but aren't there likely to be many archipelagos that are near a mainland that display the same amounts of natural selection and adaptive radiation?  Are they just the "famous" archipelago?  Is there a really unique situation there?  Or are people building upon 100+ years of research in that specific place?
gpt
It's for a number of reasons. Largely because of the fact that the Galápagos is a volcanic landmass that was never connected to any continent. This means that all the species there had to migrate there, and there are no natural large predatory mammals, so they're able to survive there. Because of this, and because of how different the Galápagos landscape is compared to anywhere else, species were able to adapt in ways that we haven't seen before. There are many species there that can't be found anywhere else in the world. For instance, there's a native species of Iguana there that's adapted to aquatic life, which is something we've never seen from Iguanas.