In the former study, Ilik Saccheri of the University of Liverpool, U.K., and colleagues crossed light- and dark-color moths and mapped their genetic differences. From a genetic sequence of 400,000 ...

Although the peppered moth has been the poster child of Darwinian evolution since the late 19 th century, over the past decade there’s been a public debate questioning the validity of this textbook ...

How might changes in the colour of tree bark in a whole forest affect a population of peppered moths? 1. Cut out similar sized triangles (moths) from newspaper and darker paper. These will be ...

In the peppered moth population of Great Britain there is variation in the colour of the moth’s bodies. Some moths have a light body; some have a dark, or melanic body. Body colour is an ...

And because they cannot digest a lot of the plant matter, they defecate more than 100 times per day. Peppered moths can be white with black speckles, primarily black, or intermediate between the two.

Meanwhile, traits not conducive to survival gradually fall away. The original peppered moth (above) and the dark peppered moth (below). Credit: Gail Hampshire/Wikimedia Commons A famous example of ...