Kettlewell, H.B.D.

Kettlewell, H.B.D.

British biologist who in the mid-1950s carried out a series of elegant field and laboratory experiments using light-coloured and melanic forms of the peppered moth Biston betularia. He was able to show that the selective forces operating against the moths were due to visual predation by birds, which attacked preferentially those forms resting on a noncryptic background. See also INDUSTRIAL MELANISM.

Collins Dictionary of Biology, 3rd ed. © W. G. Hale, V. A. Saunders, J. P. Margham 2005