Note that this change was not due to pollution making the moths darker. The dark variety had always existed in small numbers, but only had a selective advantage when the selection pressure changed.

This is because natural selection acts to increase the prevalence of highly advantageous alleles, over time generating common resistance alleles of especially strong effect. For example ...

For example, the cactus finch has a long beak ... The Grants had documented natural selection in action. While beak size is clearly related to feeding strategies, it is also related to reproduction.

In natural selection, genetic mutations that are beneficial to an individual’s survival are passed on through reproduction. This results in a new generation of organisms that are more likely to ...

Many people are. In fact, the ability to digest lactose may be an example of adaptive evolution in the human lineage. Although the study of natural selection in humans is still in an early stage ...

unpredictable fray of natural selection. With two partners combining varied genes, a species has more flexibility to adapt to changing environments. There are, however, rare examples of asexual ...

So this animal is a beautiful example, probably one of the best in the world, of how the sieve of natural selection produces animals that are perfectly adapted to live in their environment.