Before the Industrial Revolution, the white colored moths, also known as typica, were the main form found in Manchester, England. The light colored moths were hard to see against the white colored trees that were in England. However, as the Industrial Revolution progressed more and more pollution was being circulated in the air. The pollution caused the color of the trees to change darker.
Therefore the white moths were easy targets that could be seen easily. Predator birds started to eat them. Also this was when another form of moth was found. These moths were darker and known as melanic moths.
Soon about 98% of the moths in England were dark-colored. This was during the beginning of the 19 th century, more specifically in 1848. Some scientists believed that the moths got to be darker through several mutations. It was thought that the darker moths survived because they were camouflaged against the trees, which were now darker because they were covered with soot. This was an advantage to the darker colored moths because they were better able to survive.
This was seen as “survival of the fittest” and also was part of the process known as natural selection. They were more adapted to their environment; therefore they were better able to keep alive. The typica moth was more common among countryside areas and the melanic moth was found in more sooty regions. The darker moths had a survival advantage in the darker landscape. However once the air became cleaner and the amount of pollution decreased after the Revolution, the amount of darker moths also decreased.
The Essay on The Color White
Historically, the color white has been used as a motif of both life and death. For instance, white is the traditional color of wedding dresses in both western and Japanese cultures. White is used to symbolize purity in western culture weddings. On the other hand, white is used to signify the death of the old family and introduce the new family. In the novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, one of the ...
The conclusion had been reached that in areas where pollution had darkened the landscape, the darker moths were better camouflaged, and less likely to be eaten by birds. Likewise, in areas with less pollution, the light colored moths were in higher population for the same reasons. In each environment the moths that were better camouflaged had the higher survival rate. It was also a conclusion that when soot darkened the tree trunks in an area, natural selection caused the dark colored moths to become more common.
The rise and fall of the dark-colored moths was known as “industrial melanism. It was a great example of natural selection in action. It was just one theory among many, but remains one of the more obvious and believable. The question about the existence of the different colored peppered moths still exists today.
