Peppered moth article among most read, cited

The paper Selective bird predation on the peppered moth: the last experiment of Michael Majerus is one of the most downloaded and cited articles in Biology Letters in 2012. As Bruce Grant, one of the coauthors, said to me privately, “It is encouraging that the Biston evidence, presented by those of us who actually know it, is being widely read.” Biston is the genus of the peppered moth, B. betularia.

PT has covered a controversy concerning the peppered moth here. Michael Majerus, a lepidopterist and expert on melanism and the peppered moth, died suddenly and unexpectedly in 2009. Nick Matzke covered Majerus’s last experiment here.