In a discussion where environmental change leading to allele shift in peppered moths was mentioned, Servant2thecause attempted to refute the changing allele frequencies by noting:
If you are referring to the same peppered moth color-change from white to black as mentioned in most textbooks, that was a hoax
and going on to quote Wells, from
Icons of Evolution:
quote:
Manually positioned moths have also been used to make television nature documentaries. University of Massachusetts biologist Theodore Sargent told a Washington Times reported in 1999 that he once glued some dead specimens on a tree trunk for a TV documentary about peppered moths Staged photos may have been reasonable when biologists thought they were simulating the normal resting-places of peppered moths. By the late 1980’s, however, the practice should have stopped. Yet according to Sargent, a lot of faked photographs have been made since then Defenders of the classical story typically argue that, despite being staged, the photographs illustrate the true cause of melanism. The problem is that it is precisely the cause of melanisim that is in dispute.
Before the 1980’s most investigators shared Kettlewell’s assumption, and many of them found it convenient to conduct predation experiments using dead specimens glued or pinned to tree trunks. Kettlewell himself considered this a bad idea, and even some biologists who used dead moths suspected that the technique was unsatisfactory Since 1980, however, evidence has accumulating showing that peppered moths do not normally rest on tree trunks. Fnnish zoologist Kauri Mikkola reported an experiment in 1984 in which he used caged moths to assess normal resting places. Mikkola observed that ‘the normal resting place of the Peppered Moth is beneath small, more or less horizontal branches probably high up in the canopies’
--Dr. Well, Jonathon. Icons of Evolution. 2000. Page 149-151.
Since this happened in a Great Debate topic, I've chosen to move the discussion here.
The quote S2C gave doesn't seem to refer to changing allele frequencies of the moths as a hoax, but rather, some detail of their positioning on trees that I'm not too clear on. It's been my understanding that regardless of where they sit on the tree, peppered moth melanin levels changed in the population because of the darkening of their environment by pollutants. That inference, as far as I'm aware, has never been contradicted by evidence.
I've never read the book in question. Is there context that S2C forgot that would imply that allele frequencies don't change in peppered moths? Or did S2C simply not understand the point under scrutiny or the quote in question? What part of the moth story is the hoax?