Why Light Moths Turned Black During the Industrial Revolution
The University of Liverpool
BBC reports that University of Liverpool researchers from the Institute of Integrative Biology, say that a rapid evolutionary change was responsible “for the genetic change that caused this adaptation,” and it occurred in 1819.
A specific genome in the light-colored moths turned them black, as camouflage, amidst the Industrial Revolution’s billowing soot, to protect them from predators. Watch the BBC Peppered moth video
The journal Nature published the report, The industrial melanism mutation in Britishpeppered moths is a transposable element.
