Coal burned during the early decades of the industrial revolution produced soot that darkened the Birch trees (a favorite habitat of the moths) in industrial areas of England between London and Manchester. Several naturalists noted that the light form was more common in the countryside, while the dark moth prevailed in the sooty regions. The natural conclusion was that the darker moths had some sort of survival advantage in the newly-darkened landscape. Kettewell believed that the dark moths were better comouflaged against the darker background, making it harder for birds (the moth's primary predator) to see them. The lighter months, in contrast, were more difficult to see against the lighter-colored trees in the countryside.
Kettewell published his beliefs, along with striking photographs of each type of moth against the trunk of different trees. These photographs are often reproduced in biology textbooks.
Because of these flaws in Kettewell's work, it is now believed that he was rash to conclude that the observed variations were adaptations due to better avoidance of predation. When University of Chicago evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne[?] learned of this in 1998--more than a decade after it was announced in the scientific literature--he wrote that he was "embarrassed" to find that the peppered moth story he had been teaching his students for years was seriously flawed. He compared his reaction to "the dismay attending my discovery, at age 6, that it was my father and not Santa who brought the presents on Christmas Eve."
In recent years, though, more careful studies have been performed that vindicate the result, if not the man. The burning of cleaner fuels and the advent of Clean Air laws has eliminated much of the sootiness in industrial areas of England. The prevalence of the dark form of the moth has declined dramatically, and indeed some even fear its extinction.
In 1998, Michael E. N. Majerus[?] of the University of Cambridge Department of Genetics reexamined Kettewell's studies and the more recent ones, and reported: "Differential bird predation of the typica and carbonaria forms, in habitats affected by industrial pollution to different degrees, is the primary influence on the evolution of melanism in the peppered moth." (Melanism - Evolution in Action, M. E. N. Majerus, Oxford University Press, New York, 1998).
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