In Great Britain

Great Britain

Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...

 during the late 1840s through the 1850s, it was noticed that there was a reduced number of light colored European peppered moth

Peppered moth

The peppered moth is a temperate species of night-flying moth. Peppered moth evolution is often used by educators as an example of natural selection.- Distribution :...

s (Biston betularia) (light color was most common) and an increased number of the darker colored moths in the industrial

Industry

Industry refers to the production of an economic good or service within an economy.-Industrial sectors:There are four key industrial economic sectors: the primary sector, largely raw material extraction industries such as mining and farming; the secondary sector, involving refining, construction,...

 areas. This led British ecologist Bernard Kettlewell

Bernard Kettlewell

Henry Bernard Davis Kettlewell was a British geneticist, lepidopterist and medical doctor, who carried out research into the influence of industrial melanism on natural selection in moths, showing why moths are darker in polluted areas.-Early life:Kettlewell was born in Howden, Yorkshire, and...

 to search for an explanation.

The experiment

During the late 1950s, Kettlewell began raising populations of light and dark peppered moths in his laboratory so he could perform his experiment. He marked all the moths with a drop of paint on the wings, so they could be recognized later. Next he released the light and dark moths in two separate wooded areas of England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. One of the wooded areas was Birmingham

Birmingham

Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...

 wood near the city of Birmingham, which was very polluted

Pollution

Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into a natural environment that causes instability, disorder, harm or discomfort to the ecosystem i.e. physical systems or living organisms. Pollution can take the form of chemical substances or energy, such as noise, heat or light...

. The other wooded area was Dorset

Dorset

Dorset , is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town is Dorchester which is situated in the south. The Hampshire towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch joined the county with the reorganisation of local government in 1974...

 wood, which was in a farm area that was not polluted. At the end of this, Kettlewell set traps around the woods to catch the moths and see which populations survived in the two different areas. Peppered moths with the color of the trunks survived; in the polluted areas where the trees were black the black moths thrived, and in the woods where the trees were light the light moths thrived.

Conclusion

Kettlewell concluded that the pollution from the factories in Birmingham created industrial melanism, which darkened the color of the woods. This in turn caused the moths with the recessive traits to have a better chance of survival because of the camouflage. So Kettlewell concluded that natural selection

Natural selection

Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....

from industrial melanism caused the moths to adapt to their changing environment.