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What did the peppered moths signify in evolution

What did the peppered moths signify in evolution

Final answer:The peppered moths' story demonstrates evolution through natural selection. Light-colored moths were prevalent until the Industrial Revolution led to soot-covered trees, giving dark-colored moths a survival advantage and leading to a shift in the moth population's color. This example illustrates the principle of directional selection and demonstrates adaptive evolution.Explanation:The peppered moths are a famous example of evolution in action, often associated with Darwin's theory of natural selection. Initially, the majority of these moths in England were light-colored, providing camouflage against the light-colored trees and lichens. With the onset of the Industrial Revolution, pollution caused the trees to become darkened by soot, making the once-rare dark-colored moths less visible to predators and giving them a survival advantage. As a result, the population of dark-colored moths increased while the light-colored moths became rare.Natural selection favored the dark-colored moths in the sooty environment, causing a shift in the population's allele frequencies, which is a clear demonstration of directional selection- where a single phenotype is favored, causing the allele frequency to shift in one direction. The peppered moth story illustrates the concept of adaptive evolution - the process by which a trait that confers a reproductive advantage in a particular environment becomes more common in a population over time.Implications in Evolutionary BiologyThis case study serves as a classic teaching example to explain the mechanism of natural selection and how environmental changes can lead to evolutionary changes in a population....

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