The peppered moth: a black and white story after all
نویسندگان
چکیده
Perhaps the most famous example of natural selection is the story of industrial melanism in the peppered moth. Recently there has been a sudden outbreak of disbelief in this classic story, even though no new experiments or even reanalyses of earlier data have been performed. Here I argue that these recent critiques almost entirely lack substance – a careful examination of all the data shows that evidence for natural selection on the peppered moth could hardly be bettered.
منابع مشابه
Kettlewell's Missing Evidence, A Study in Black and White
Even non-biologists know the peppered moth, Biston betularia, and how it evolved in the polluted forests during Britain's industrial revolution. The images of the moths against different backgrounds—black against mottled white and mottled white against black (Figure 1)—are themselves a visual argument for natural selection (Tufte 1997, Robins 1992). (Any halfwitted predatory bird would notice t...
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