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MELANISM: EVOLUTION in ACTION, by Michael E.N. Majerus. 1998

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MELANISM: EVOLUTION in ACTION, by Michael E.N. Majerus. 1998 38 JOURNAL OF THE LEPIDOPTERISTS' SOCIETY Journal of the Lepidopterists' Society melanic Oak Eggars (Lasiocampa quercus). There weren't any. The 54(1),2000,38 second half I spenl in Kettlewell's lab at Parks Road, except for time censusing the famous Cothill population of the Scarlet Tiger MELANISM: EVOLUTION IN ACTION, by Michael E.N. Majerus. 1998. (Panaxia dominula-part of the 1969 data on p. 87 of Majems' book Published by Oxford University Press, Oxford, U.K. xiii + 388 are mine). So I got to know him, his methods and operation well. I pp. Available from the publisher. Hardcover, ISBN: 0-19- have plenty of Kettlewell stories, some E.B. Ford stories, and a fond 854983-0. $105.00; Paper, ISBN: 0-19-854982-2. $45.00. remembrance of Bernard Kettlewell as a friend, a mentor, and a fine specimen of an English type rapidly approaching extinction. He was I once served briefly as Book Review Editor of Evolution. That an enthusiast, but not a fraud. His experimental deSigns were journal publishes more frequently than Journal of the Lepidopterists' flawed-to the extent they were largely due to, or at least vetted by Society (JLS), but also faces a much broader range of potential re­ Ford, he must share any blame, but he was not a bungler. He did viewables-from textbooks and semi-popular works to systematic about as well as anyone could be expected to do in those days, and monographs covering all the kingdoms. I found the job uncomfort­ the important thing is that he did it. Nobody else did. And to our able. Most of the "major" works of interest to most readers of Evolu­ shame, no one did anything at all similar in America, despite ample tion had long since been reviewed in the weekly journals Science and opportunities. Nature, and were old news. Even the Quarterly Review of Biology If there is to be breast-beating, it should be by those of our pro­ often "beat" us, and Trends in Evolution and Ecology routinely did. fession who were content to coast on his work. The story was so We had to ourselves the specialty monographs that eleven of our pretty that there was little temptation to dig deeper. It could be un­ readers would care about. What was the point of reviewing at all? derstood eaSily by the layman, by school kids-what more was there J raise the issue because Melanism: Evolution in Action has been to do or say? Creationists are sometimes outright intellectually dis­ out for two years, and it seems rather late to review it. But if ever a honest, but perhaps their belief that natural selection rises or falls on late review was justified, this is the one. Aside from the fact that the the tale of the peppered moth is at least a little justified by how book may still be news to many readers of JLS, a late review cannot proud most of us were of that tale. help but profit from the excesses of some of the early reviewers and That said, I will not review the flaws in Kettlewell's work here; the controversy they engendered. This is a book best viewed with read the book. (By and large, I agree with Grant's review.) Most of 20-20 hindSight. the reviews have talked about the peppered moth and little or noth­ One of the first reviews appeared in Nature. It was by the bril­ ing else. But there is more to this book. It was expliCitly intended as liant population geneticist Jerry Coyne (1998, Not black and white, an update of Kettlewell's 1973 book The Evolution of Melanism: A Nature 396: 35-36), who concluded that the classic tale of industrial Recurring Necessity (Clarendon Press, Oxford). This book, HBDK's melanism in the peppered moth, Biston betularia, was so tainted magnum opus, is described on Majerus' book jacket as a "classic," that it should be expunged from th e textbooks. This review inspired but it wasn't. It was not a success because it ranged far beyond a long, densely-argued counter-review by Bruce Grant (1999, Fine­ HBDK's compete nl~e: "melanism" covered altogetller too many very tuning the peppered moth paradigm, Evolution 53: 980-984). different phenomena-it was , if you will , a polyphyletic concept. Meanwhile, both tile book and its notices had been picked up by Majems tries to cover this very broad field (both taxonomically and creationists, who predictably used them as proof of the bankmptcy phenomenologically) and is at least marginally better at it. The effect of neo-Darwinism. What Coyne treated as sloppiness on the part of of both books is to impress the reader tllat there is no overarching H. B. D. Kettlewell, they denounced as fraud. Clearly, a close read­ single explanation Jar "melanism," and that the industrial case, de­ ing of the peppered moth part of this book is in order. [Plenty of spite all its ambiguities, is probably the best-defined one. Perhaps people knew about problems with the Kettlewell story well before that, after all, is the intended message. Understand that we know the book appeared. In the United States, Ted Sargent has been a much more about industrial melanism than we know about the func­ consistent critic (see Sargent et al. 1998, The 'classical' explanation tion of "melanism" in our OWll species, where it is charged with his­ of industrial melanism, Evolutionary Biology 30: 299-322). In Eu­ torical baggage ancl racial myiliology and is so much more impor­ rope, Kauri Mikkola had sounded the alarm in print as early as 1984; tant. The human case is the one conspicuous case that Majerus he and I had a conversation about this at the "Biology of Butterflies" expliCitly declines to analyze in any depth. meeting at the The Natural History Museum (London) in Septem­ Specialists will find minor errors in the book (e.g., the reference ber 1981. For the creationists, the continued appearance of the story to "Pieris pmtodice ssp. occidentalis" on p. 161, when Kingsolver in texts after questions had been raised constitutes fraud.] and Wiernasz, who are referenced, gave the name correctly as P. oc­ I should be "up front" with my own involvement in all this, since cidentalis-it's generally Pontia now). These tllings are no big deal. I work on butterflies and my bona fides to review the book are not The quality of the photographs is variable, and both the decision to obvious. In my salad days I collected moths too, and in 1964 pub­ have color plates at all and the selection of photographs to use in lished a paper on industrial melanism in eastern Pennsylvania (I. them are debatable-without tbem, the book might have been ap­ Res. Lepid. 3 (1): 19-24). In 35-year retrospect this is a piece of rank preciably cheaper. Nonetheless, tile book is absolutely required read­ juvenilia, but, as it happened, so astonishingly little OIl the phenom­ ing for evolutionary biologists, laypeople interested in evolution, enon had been published in the United States that it was actually melanism, or moths (and, in the tradition of E. B. Ford's books, Ma­ important. History moves in strange ways. There was to be a meet­ jerus gives a basic course in transmission genetics early on) and, in­ ing on "Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpreta­ terestingly, historians. philosophers ancl sorio)ogists of science who tion of Evolution" at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia in April study how science is actually done. Its bibliography alone is worth the 1966. Kettlewell was coming and wanted to know about the local price (at least of the paperback), even if it does omit my 1964 juve­ melanics. Charles Remington steered him to me. One of my profes­ nilia. And Majems does not libel Kettlewell, and I thank him for that. sors got me a false credential to get me into the symposium-my first, and in many ways a turning point in my academic career. Ket­ ARTHUR M. SHAPIRO, Center for Population Biology, University tlewell and I hit it off, and he invited me to come work for/with him of California, Davis, CA 95616 USA. at Oxford, which I did in the summer of 1969. The first half of the visit I was posted to the Orkney Islands to trap non-industrial .
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