Peppered Moth

A moth (Biston betularia) native to England and most noted as the standard textbook example of NaturalSelection.

A more comprehensive than usual description of this moth's role in understanding NaturalSelection can be found at the following link.

  http://www.tulane.edu/~guill/demonstration_module.html

The standard textbook description is much simpler than this, and also quite dubious in terms of its scientific rigour -- a fact which only trickled through to the general public in the late 1990's.

  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=003218426844304&rtmo=qXuMsKs9&atmo=rv3rl0qs&pg=/et/99/3/14/nmoth14.html

The following link is to a creationist organisation. It covers much the same information as the Telegraph article above, but has better references.

  http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/4105.asp

It will probably be many years before the somewhat flawed standard textbook story is actually expunged from the textbooks, let alone the public consciousness. The value of the peppered moth as an example of NaturalSelection is no longer as clear as it once was. It may still be a valid example, but its status as the showpiece of NaturalSelection is due to wane.

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Agreed, it is somewhat flawed. So has all of science been until newer facts were added to the mix. Altered to be more correct, perhaps. Expunged, no. Do I smell a Monkey Trial?

It's value as a showpiece is that it is one of the few examples that has been observed within human history from start to ?start?. Just because the original theorists did not have the means to investigate alleles is no discredit to them. My guess is that Einstein's theories were short of quantum mechanics because of a lack of data for him. Must we then flush relativity? No. We understand it as (in Newtonian physics before) to be a thumbnail of the entirety.