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Peppered Moth — printable fact sheet
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Peppered Moth
Biston betularia
Biston betularia is the most famous case study in evolution taught in schools, and it is also the most often falsely claimed to be a fraud. The facts: before industrialisation, nearly all British peppered moths were the speckled white typica form, cryptic on lichen-covered bark.…
Did you know?
- During the Industrial Revolution, the frequency of the dark-colored (melanic) form of the peppered moth dramatically increased in polluted areas due to better camouflage on soot-darkened trees.
- The carbonaria mutation is a single insertion of a transposon into an intron of the cortex gene, and the same gene controls wing pattern in Heliconius butterflies — a striking case of the same genetic lever being pulled in very distant lineages. Peppered moths rest by day mostly on the undersides of lateral branches, not on trunks, which is exactly why Majerus redesigned the experiment. American peppered moths underwent the same melanic rise and fall independently, driven by a different mutation.
What I learned
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