Melanic morph frequency in the peppered moth in the Manchester area

Cook, L. M.; Dennis, Roger L. H.; Mani, G.S.

doi:10.1098/rspb.1999.0636

Cited by 31 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 38 publications

(69 reference statements)

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“…Similar calculations have been carried out (Table 3) for data from Manchester (data of Cook et al, 1999), Caldy, west of Liverpool (Clarke et al, 1985(Clarke et al, , 1990(Clarke et al, , 1994Grant et al, 1996), York (TJ Crawford in Cook et al, 2005, supplemented from Table 1), Cambridge (Lees and Creed, 1975;Majerus, 1998), north-west Kent (BK West, in Cook and Grant, 2000) and Nottingham (K Cooper in Cook and Grant, 2000). The estimates provide no significant evidence of change in selection over the period nor any consistent pattern of acceleration or deceleration, but most of the data sets are probably insufficiently complete to detect it.…”

Section: Decline In Industrial Melanismmentioning

confidence: 48%

Decline of melanism in two British moths: spatial, temporal and inter-specific variation

Cook

Turner

2008

Heredity

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The decline in industrial melanism over the last quarter century constitutes an exceptional case of an evolutionary change, varying in both time and space, and between species. In Biston betularia and Odontoptera bidentata, the change in melanic frequency is closely replicated at two sites 0.5 km apart. Between seven sites 50-100 km apart, there is heterogeneity in both the speed and timing of change. At sites that were heavily industrialized, the change is faster, from an initially higher frequency, and starts later than at sites which are more rural.We propose a method for estimating systematic change during sigmoid declines in melanic frequencies. This fails to show any significant change over time in selective coefficients. It is concluded that the overall pattern of change has been driven largely by events in the most polluted and industrialized parts of the country. Although migration may contribute to the estimated selective values, natural selection is the only credible explanation for the overall decline.

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Section: Decline In Industrial Melanismmentioning

confidence: 48%

Decline of melanism in two British moths: spatial, temporal and inter-specific variation

Cook

Turner

2008

Heredity

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“…The ''early'' cline is derived from 150 sites sampled from 1959 to 1976, which provided records for 288 site/years [supporting information (SI) Table S1]. These data, together with the long-term continuous record at Caldy, 15 km from central Liverpool, and less complete ones from Manchester (19) and Leeds (20), suggest that change began to occur during the latter part of the 1960s, but the overall picture is one of stability throughout this early period, which we refer to as 1972 (SI Text). Table S2).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Selection and gene flow on a diminishing cline of melanic peppered moths

Saccheri

Rousset

Watts

et al. 2008

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Historical datasets documenting changes to gene frequency clines are extremely rare but provide a powerful means of assessing the strength and relative roles of natural selection and gene flow. In 19th century Britain, blackening of the environment by the coalfired manufacturing industry gave rise to a steep cline in the frequency of the black (carbonaria) morph of the peppered moth (Biston betularia) across northwest England and north Wales. The carbonaria morph has declined across the region following 1960s legislation to improve air quality, but the cline had not been comprehensively described since the early 1970s. We have quantified changes to the cline as of 2002, equivalent to an interval of 30 generations, and find that a cline still exists but that it is much shallower and shifted eastward. Joint estimation of the dominant fitness cost of carbonaria and dispersal parameters consistent with the observed cline change indicate that selection against carbonaria is very strong across the landscape (s Ϸ 0.2), and that dispersal is much greater than previously assumed. The high dispersal estimate is further supported by the weak pattern of genetic isolation by distance at microsatellite loci, and it implies that in addition to adult dispersal, wind-dispersed first instar larvae also contribute to lifetime dispersal. The historical perspective afforded by this study of cline reversal provides new insight into the factors contributing to gene frequency change in this species, and it serves to illustrate that, even under conditions of high dispersal and strong reverse selection acting against it, complete erosion of an established cline requires many generations.Biston betularia ͉ industrial melanism ͉ cline change S ystematic changes in phenotype or genotype along an environmental gradient, or clines, are among the most visible signals of ongoing or recent selection in nature. If, through a change in environmental conditions, the selection producing the cline ceases to operate, gene flow, brought about by dispersal, will homogenize the differences, eventually eliminating the cline. The time required for this process can be predicted (1), but to do so it is necessary to evaluate the interacting effects of selection, gene flow, effective population size, and mutation. Industrial melanism in the peppered moth, Biston betularia, represents a textbook example of a pulse of gene frequency change that gave rise to a cline, followed by reduction in frequency after the selection reversed in direction. The purpose of this study is to quantify changes to the cline in northwest England and Wales during the latter phase spanning 30 years, and to evaluate the roles of selection and gene flow in producing this change.The cline of melanic B. betularia arose in the second half of the 19th century, following the appearance of a completely black morph (known as carbonaria) first recorded from Manchester, in northwest England, in 1848, although a museum specimen of unknown provenance dates from before 1811 (2). A large body of evid...

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“…We searched the literature for observations of the frequency of the carbonaria morph across England since 1958 (we were able to extract data from 8 of these 12 references: Kettlewell 1958; Lees and Creed 1975; Bishop et al 1978; Mani and Majerus 1993; West 1993; Clarke et al 1994; Grant et al 1996, 1998; Cook et al 1999, 2002, 2005; Cook and Turner 2008; supporting information, File S1). Many data points had been reported more than once, and we attempted to remove duplicate observations.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Estimating Selection Coefficients in Spatially Structured Populations from Time Series Data of Allele Frequencies

2013

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Inferring the nature and magnitude of selection is an important problem in many biological contexts. Typically when estimating a selection coefficient for an allele, it is assumed that samples are drawn from a panmictic population and that selection acts uniformly across the population. However, these assumptions are rarely satisfied. Natural populations are almost always structured, and selective pressures are likely to act differentially. Inference about selection ought therefore to take account of structure. We do this by considering evolution in a simple lattice model of spatial population structure. We develop a hidden Markov model based maximum-likelihood approach for estimating the selection coefficient in a single population from time series data of allele frequencies. We then develop an approximate extension of this to the structured case to provide a joint estimate of migration rate and spatially varying selection coefficients. We illustrate our method using classical data sets of moth pigmentation morph frequencies, but it has wide applications in settings ranging from ecology to human evolution.

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Melanic morph frequency in the peppered moth in the Manchester area

Cited by 31 publications

References 38 publications

Decline of melanism in two British moths: spatial, temporal and inter-specific variation

Decline of melanism in two British moths: spatial, temporal and inter-specific variation

Selection and gene flow on a diminishing cline of melanic peppered moths

Estimating Selection Coefficients in Spatially Structured Populations from Time Series Data of Allele Frequencies

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