Animal Mutation: How Did Moths Survive In 1800s Industrial Britain?

Adaptive evolution as taught in elementary and high school science is apparent on the black peppered moth. The species, which changed colors from a type of Oreo milkshake to a dark chocolate during the British Industrial Revolution proves the ability of animals to adapt to their environment.

In a study published by Nature, researchers pointed out the precise genetic mutation that led to a darker color in the winged insects. Incidentally, the same gene, called cortex, was found to be the same one that controlled color patterns another types of species - the wings of tropical butterflies.

The New York Times noted that evolutionary ecologist Ilik Saccheri and his colleagues at the University of Liverpool found that the single mutation of the cortex gene was responsible for the wings' color. The mutation is on a transposable element or "jumping gene" which can hop between different locations of the genome, which was a surprise, according to Saccheri, because the cortex usually controls cell division in many organisms, not traits like wing colors.

The ability of the moths to adapt is considered early discovery - according to BBC News, the black moths that were strikingly different from its peppered cousins were first spotted in 1848, before the concept of natural selection was introduced by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace.

Saccheri also noted that despite people not recording the rise in frequency of the black moths in the 1800s, when they were finally recorded in the 1900s in Manchester, notes indicated that they almost completely replaced the light-colored versions. Their new coloring, in short, gave them a better chance of hiding from the hungry birds during the smoke-stained era of Industrial England.

Despite scientists figuring out the gene that caused the mutation, one question still remains a mystery: how could the cortex gene have caused the black coloring, when it was not a gene that affects color and pigmentation in the first place?