Ooh. Aah. Out-of-context quote-mining as an excuse not to have to actually deal with the rest of the material. How typically creationist.
Son, just how stupid do you think the lurkers are? Do you really think they won't notice how dishonest you're being by failing to address the rest of that discussion?, or that they won't notice how you're utterly unable or unwilling to address the fact that the material as a whole shows that your earlier accusation was entirely off base and groundless? Here it is *again* -- maybe you'll get a clue *this* time:
Now, if you'll bother to try to wrap your head around more than one sentence at a time, do you have any actual gripe with the ENTIRE POINT and not just one fragment of it yanked out of context? Yes or no.
Peppered moth photographs, staged and otherwise. Wells raises a fantastic stink about the fact that the photographs of peppered moths in textbooks, showing light-colored typicals next to dark-colored melanics on differing backgrounds, are staged. But the point of such photos is not to prove the truth of the 'classic' story, it is to illustrate the relative crypsis of moth morphs on different backgrounds. Those who feel that their innocent faith in insect photography has been betrayed should consider the fact that most photos of insects in textbooks are probably staged; insects are, after all, small and difficult to photograph. The facts that peppered moths are sparsely distributed and, well, camouflaged also make them difficult to photograph.
But as it turns out, the differences between staged and unstaged photos are minimal. Readers who wish to see unstaged photos of peppered moths are advised to look up Majerus' Melanism: Evolution in Action. Majerus says that all of the peppered moth photos taken by him in the book are unstaged. Readers should consult the figures which are listed below. It may be possible to get permission to include the photos, but until then descriptions shall have to suffice.
(For those with foggy memories of their texbooks, English peppered moths come in three general phenotypic categories: typica, the pale, original 'peppered' form of the moth; carbonaria, the almost black melanic form; and insularia, which includes a range of intermediate-colored moths.)
Figure 6.1 (a), p. 118. Black-and-white photo, edges blurred. A rather dark (almost black) insularia moth, resting apparently on a tree trunk (bark fills the background). The moth is slightly darker than the background.
Figure 6.1 (b), p. 118. Black-and-white photo, middle of moth slightly blurred. A light form of insularia (still more heavily peppered than a typica), resting on a thick tree branch (branch width is about 3/4 that of the moth).
Figure 6.3, p. 122. Black-and-white photo, middle of moth slightly blurred. A typica hanging underneath a hazel twig.
Plate 3, between pp. 146-147, has colored photos. Six photos are shown (the first five are Majerus'), and the captions are quoted, with my comments in brackets.
(a) "Typica and carbonaria forms of the peppered moth on an [sic] horizontal birch branch." [This situation, with two moths close enough together to photograph at once, is very rare, basically only occurring if two moths are meeting to mate.]
(b) "A pair of peppered moths on a twig at dawn. The carbonaria male is much less conspicuous than the typica female." [The carbonaria moth is quite blurry.]
(c) "A carbonaria peppered moth in shadow under a horizontal branch, showing how this positioning may reduce the likelihood of detection." [The moth is being viewed head-on and is indeed difficult to see.]
(d) "Typical form of the peppered moth at rest during the day in hazel foliage." [Head-on view, the moth is hanging underneath a thick twig.]
(e) "An intermediate, insularia form, of the peppered moth." [A 'classic' view, the moth is well-matched to its background, which is apparently tree bark.]
(f) "The non-melanic form of the peppered moth from North America, Biston betularia cognataria (courtesy of Professor Bruce Grant)." [A 'classic' view, the moth is well-matched to its background, which is a lichen-covered surface.]
It should be noted that Majerus is concerned to show his readers aspects of the peppered moth story that they do not get in textbooks; thus the focus on insularia forms and on moths in branches (Majerus is a proponent of the view that peppered moths most commonly -- but not entirely or even almost entirely -- rest on the underside of branches and thick twigs in the forest canopy). Even so, there are several photos that show peppered moths, on tree trunks, on more-or-less matching backgrounds. And guess what? These photos look no different than 'staged' photos of moths on tree-trunks. The most 'staged' aspect about a 'staged' photo is that two differing moth forms are shown side-by-side, but Majerus' first two photos from Plate 3 indicate that even this is not impossible. So the entire photo issue is a mountain made of a molehill.
It should also be noted that several (four) of these unstaged photos have some (minor but noticeable) degree of blurring (e.g., part of the moth will be out of focus). Insects in the wild do annoying things like move and fly away, and are often encountered in poor-light conditions, resulting in less-than-perfect photos. As scientific documentation of observations this is unimportant, but flawed photographs are exactly the kind of thing that are avoided in textbooks, and this is precisely why staging insect photos is a common practice for textbooks (as well as things like nature shows).
They glued the moths to the trees. That's pretty funny.
Second Thoughts about Peppered MothsCan you understand why people like me are leary of dogmatic evolutionists?When biologists looked beyond Birmingham and Dorset, where Kettlewell had conducted his experiments, they found discrepancies between Kettlewell's theory and the actual geographical distribution of melanic moths. For example, if melanic moths in polluted woodlands enjoyed as much of a selective advantage as Kettlewell's experiments seemed to indicate, then they should have completely replaced typicals in heavily polluted areas such as Manchester (Bishop and Cook 1980, Mani 1990). This never happened, however, indicating that factors other than selective predation must be affecting melanic frequencies...
After the passage of anti-pollution legislation, the proportion of melanics decreased north of London (as expected), but inexplicably increased to the south (Bishop and Cook 1980; Jones 1982). In The Netherlands, the decline of melanism took another twist. As air pollution declined, not only did the frequency of typicals increase, but also the frequency of an intermediate form which was almost as dark as melanics, suggesting a more complex change than was seen in Britain (Brakefield 1990).