Question
Question: Appearance of dark colored peppered moths among the sunshine colored ones as a results of increased ...
Appearance of dark colored peppered moths among the sunshine colored ones as a results of increased industrial pollution is an example of:
A. Disruptive selection
B. Stabilizing selection
C. Directional selection
D. None of the above
Solution
Hint:- Directional selection is a survival that favors the establishment of 1 particular advantageous mutation/variation within a population, leading to a change in phenotype there in direction. Appearance of dark-colored peppered moths among the light-colored ones is an example of directional selection.
Complete step-by-step solution:- The evolution of the peppered moth is an evolutionary instance of directional color change within the moth population as a consequence of pollution during the economic Revolution. The frequency of dark-colored moths increased at that point an example of commercial melanism. Later, when pollution was reduced, the light-colored form again predominated. Industrial melanism within the peppered moth was an early test of Charles Darwin's survival in action, and remains as a classic example within the teaching of evolution. In 1978 Sewall Wright described it as "the clearest case during which a conspicuous evolutionary process has actually been observed.
So the correct answer is option C.
Additional information: The dark-colored or melanic sort of the peppered moth was not familiarly known before 1811. After field collection in 1848 from Manchester, an industrial city in England, the frequency of the variability was found to possess increased drastically. By the top of the 19th century it almost completely outnumbered the first light-colored type with a record of 98% in 1895. The evolutionary importance of the moth was only speculated upon during Darwin's lifetime. It had been 14 years after Darwin's death, in 1896, that J.W. Tutt presented it as a case of survival.
Note:-
Bernard Kettlewell was the primary to research the evolutionary mechanism behind peppered moth adaptation, between 1953 and 1956. He found that a light-colored body was an efficient camouflage during a clean environment, like in Dorset, while the dark color was beneficial during a polluted environment like in Birmingham. This selective survival was thanks to birds which easily caught dark moths on clean trees, and white moths on trees darkened with soot. The story, supported by Kettlewell's experiment, became the canonical example of Darwinian evolution and evidence for survival utilized in standard textbooks.