... natural selection in action is that of the English peppered moth, the Biston Betularia. There are two variations of this moth, the light coloured variation known as typica and the dark variation known as carbonaria. In his publication, the Elephant Book, British ecologist H.B.D. Kettlewell states that prior to 1848, dark moths constituted less than 2% of the population. By 1898 however, the number of the dark variation of the moth increased to 95% in Manchester and other highly industrialized areas. The frequency of dark moths in rural area was much. The moth population had changed from being mostly light coloured moths to mostly dark coloured moths. This demonstrated natural selection as the moths colour was primarily determined by a single gene, so the change in frequency of dark colour moths represented a change in the gene pool. In the late eighteen hundreds, England experienced the industrial revolution; the soot ...

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