Why is the peppered moth given as an example of natural selection or evolution?

Question

All I see that happened was the white moths got eaten by the birds and the black moths reproduced. That's not evolution OR natural selection, but, the "survival of the luckiest".

It's like if humans had an enemy predator and all the humans lived next to a brown or black mountain. The predator can see the white people, but can't see the black people. Then the black people stay alive and reproduce.

When I went to the Wikipedia article on this subject

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth_evolution), they said this was an example of evolution or natural selection. But how can that be? There were no changes in the DNA or in the moth. No new information came into existence, only a survival

of genes and species that already exist.

Below is a creaionist article debunking the peppered moth evolution myth. Can someone give me a serious answer? Thanks.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v3/n2/much-ado-about-moths

Answer 1

Sadly your understanding of evolution and probability theory is so poor that you may never be able to grasp the basic principles behind evolution, so this answer is mainly for those with brains enough to understand.

It's not luck if it happens repeatedly.

If dimophism occurs within a species (eg the same species appears in two different forms, such as black and white forms of peppered moth, or humans with different eye colours) then the DNA of the two forms MUST be different because those characteristics are dictated by information encoded in the DNA.

The black form of the peppered moth was more suited to survival in the soot-stained environment of post-Industrial Revolution England because its colouring made it less visible to predators.  Therefore, on average, more white moths were eaten than black moths.  This meant than more black moths survived long enough to reproduce and pass their genes for black colouring to future generations.

No new species was formed but the AVERAGE genetic make-up of the species was shifted towards the black form as that form became increasingly dominant.  This is adaptation through natural selection, one of the key features of Evolution.

Another key feature of Evolution is speciation - the formation of two daughter species from one original species.  THis has been demonstrated in numerous species incliding Cichlid fish, North American Narrowmouth Frogs, European Grasshoppers, Californian Salamanders and Black-Back and Herring Gull ring species.

In the case of the Peppered Moth, the change was adaptive and occurred across the whole species but it can be used as an example of how two new species would form.  If the Peppered Moth also inhabited an area (say an island) where there was no pollution then the white form would predominate in that area.  In time the black form and the white form would each evolve and adapt further to cope with their (now different) environments.  There would come a time when the two dimorphic forms would no longer recognise each other as belonging to the same species and would not interbreed, even if they were physically and biologically capable of doing so.  This is speciation - a species being simply defined as a group of living things which only interbreed amongst themselves even if the offspring of out-group breeding would be both viable and fertile.

Answer 2

You're right; it isn't evolution (macroevolution).  No one type of animal changed into another.

It's odd how a process (macroevolution) that has never been observed in real life is classified under the topic of science, which deals with the observable.

Answer 3

it's shown from a geographical stand point. the black moths blended in with the trees as they changed color and the white moths could not provide camouflage for themselves... meaning through natural selection the moths were slowly turned into the dominate black species.