page_title: Peppered moth
section_title: Evolution
hierarchical_section_title: Peppered moth / Evolution
caption_attribution_description: English: Peppered Moth, Biston betularia f. carbonaria (Linnaeus, 1758) Deutsch: Birkenspanner, Biston betularia f. carbonaria (Linnaeus, 1758) English: Please report references to olei@despammed.com. Deutsch: Quellenangabe und Beleg an olei@despammed.com erbeten. Location: Dresden, Pohrsdorfer Weg (Saxony, Germany) Camera: Canon EOS 20D Lens: Canon EF 3.5/180L Focal Length: 180 mm Exposure: 1/250, f22 Film / Speed: ISO 100 Comment: Canon Flash 580EX
context_page_description: The peppered moth is a temperate species of night-flying moth. Peppered moth evolution is an example of population genetics and natural selection.
  The caterpillars of the peppered moth not only mimic the form but also the colour of a twig. Recent research indicates that the caterpillars can sense the twig's colour with their skin and match their body colour to the background to protect themselves from predators.
context_section_description: The evolution of the peppered moth over the last two hundred years has been studied in detail.
  At the start of this period, the vast majority of peppered moths had light coloured wing patterns which effectively camouflaged them against the light-coloured trees and lichens upon which they rested. However, due to widespread pollution during the Industrial Revolution in England, many of the lichens died out, and the trees which peppered moths rested on became blackened by soot, causing most of the light-coloured moths, or typica, to die off due to predation. At the same time, the dark-coloured, or melanic, moths, carbonaria, flourished because they could hide on the darkened trees.
  Since then, with improved environmental standards, light-coloured peppered moths have again become common, and the dramatic change in the peppered moth's population has remained a subject of much interest and study. This has led to the coining of the term "industrial melanism" to refer to the genetic darkening of species in response to pollutants. As a result of the relatively simple and easy-to-understand circumstances of the adaptation, the peppered moth has become a common example used in explaining or demonstrating natural selection to laypeople and classroom students through simulations.
  The first carbonaria morph was recorded by Edleston in Manchester in 1848, and over the subsequent years it increased in frequency. Predation experiments, particularly by Bernard Kettlewell, established that the agent of selection was birds who preyed on the carbonaria morph. Subsequent experiments and observations have supported the initial evolutionary explanation of the phenomenon.
caption: Biston betularia betularia morpha carbonaria, the black-bodied peppered moth.
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