Melanism: Evolution in Action (ISBN 0-19-854982-2) is a book by Dr Mike Majerus, published in 1998. It is an update of Bernard Kettlewell's book The Evolution of Melanism.
The book contains a very useful summary of Majerus' work on melanism in ladybirds and a review of the peppered moth story, including observations on moth behavior which sparked controversy. It has been criticised for being unevenly edited so as not to suit any one audience in its entirety. For example, it explains the basic principles of evolution such as the Hardy-Weinberg law in earlier sections, and in later sections includes graduate level concepts.
Jerry Coyne reviewed the book for Nature, calling attention to the importance of the new moth behavior observations, and how they shook Bernard Kettlewell's original hypothesis.
This review has been criticised by Majerus and others of not being representative of the work. Other reviews such as by Laurence Cook fail to see the controversy coming.
Famous quotes containing the words evolution and/or action:
“By contrast with history, evolution is an unconscious process. Another, and perhaps a better way of putting it would be to say that evolution is a natural process, history a human one.... Insofar as we treat man as a part of nature—for instance in a biological survey of evolution—we are precisely not treating him as a historical being. As a historically developing being, he is set over against nature, both as a knower and as a doer.”
—Owen Barfield (b. 1898)
“When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin (b. 1929)