Peppered Moth Research Paper

The Peppered Moth
Before the Industrial Revolution in England in the 1800s, the population of the Peppered Moth (Biston betularia ), was mostly a light color with dark spots which helped them blend in with England’s trees. The trees had dark trunks with light white colored lichen. Only a small percentage of dark colored moths existed in this population. The few dark colored moths were effortlessly picked out by birds and other visual predators because they were easily seen against the light background of the trees. When the Industrial Revolution started, the smoke from England’s coal plants darkened the trees by covering them with layers of soot, and killing off the lichen, and then exposing the dark trunks. Now the light colored moths stood out and were easily identified by predators. Over time, the dark colored moths which became best suited for the environment, kept reproducing until the new majority of the Peppered Moth population was almost all dark in color. The difference between Peppered Moths and other species that have undergone natural selection is that in the late 1900s, Britain and other countries started to clean up the air to reduce the amount of pollution, causing the light colored lichen on the trees to grow again and the
Both the Pocket Mouse and the Peppered Moth’s environment changed in color from light to dark from a major environmental impact, causing both species to adapt. The best fit organism for the environment at the time continued to reproduce until their color changed over time, and adapted to become better camouflaged from predators. The Peppered Moth and the Pocket Mouse both carry the genetic mutations of a dark color allele in the gene pool as opposed to only a light colored allele, which is the reason natural selection was able to occur and this adaptation affected the population in that specific