Bernard Kettlewell

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Henry Bernard Davis Kettlewell (born February 24, 1907 in Howden , Yorkshire , England , † May 11, 1979 ) was a British geneticist and entomologist who was particularly concerned with topics such as industrial melanism and ecological genetics and was above all a well-known lepidopterist .

Life

Studies and professional activities

After attending the Charterhouse School and a school in Paris , Kettlewell studied medicine at Gonville and Caius College at the University of Cambridge and completed his medical internship at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London after 1929 . After working as a country doctor in Cranleigh and as an anesthetist at St Luke's Hospital in Guildford , which he began in 1935 , he was employed in the ambulance service of the hospital in Woking during the Second World War from 1939 to 1945 .

After a stay abroad for research in South Africa from 1949 to 1952, he became an employee of the Zoological Faculty of the University of Oxford in 1952 and there in particular in the department of genetics .

Research in the field of industrial melanism and criticism of the research work

His best-known research work included research into the industrial melanism of the black moth ( Biston betularia ) in the early 1950s. This species from the order of butterflies develops a dark color in areas where industry and high population density cause air pollution with carbon . In his research he demonstrated the value of this dark color for the survival of this species in industrial regions as opposed to the original light color in rural areas, from which the effectiveness of natural selection due to an evolutionary process was shown.

Especially after his death, the criticism of this research grew. In 1998, Michael Majerus , a geneticist at Cambridge University, pointed out that these experiments were not convincing evidence of the natural processes that had led to a shift in the ratio of light to dark individuals: the ecological relationships (the moths' overnight accommodation) not paid enough attention to and the prey behavior of the birds was inappropriately promoted by an oversupply of butterflies.

Majerus' criticism of Kettlewell's approach was sharpened by a journalist in a popular science book in 2002 : She accused Kettlewell of scientific fraud . The evolution researcher Jerry Coyne ( University of Chicago ) immediately rejected this allegation in the journal Nature , but Majerus' professional criticism and the popular science book were used by creationists as evidence of a great evolutionary fraud.

Publications

  • Your book of butterflies and moths , 1963
  • The evolution of melanism , 1973

Bibliography

  • Una McGovern (Ed.): Chambers Biographical Dictionary . Chambers, Edinburgh 2002, ISBN 0-550-10051-2 , p. 848

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael EN Majerus: Melanism: Evolution in action. Oxford University Press, 1998, ISBN 0-19-854983-0 , book text
  2. ^ Judith Hooper: Of Moths and Men: An Evolutionary Tale: The Untold Story of Science and the Peppered Moth. London: Fourth Estate, 2002, reprinted by WW Norton & Company, 2003, ISBN 0-393-32525-3
  3. ↑ Jerry A. Coyne: Evolution under pressure. Nature 418, 2002, pp. 19-20, doi : 10.1038 / 418019a - Coyne et al. a. noted that industrial melanism is still a great example of the process of evolution ("a splendid example of evolution in action")
personal data
SURNAME Kettlewell, Bernard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kettlewell, Henry Bernard David (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British geneticist and entomologist
DATE OF BIRTH February 24, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Howden , Yorkshire , England
DATE OF DEATH May 11, 1979