author
Sir Edward Bagnall Poulton
1856–1943
A leading British evolutionary biologist, he spent decades defending natural selection and studying how color and pattern help animals survive. His writing helped shape early thinking about camouflage, warning coloration, and mimicry.
1 Audiobook
Charles Darwin and the Theory of Natural Selection
by Sir Edward Bagnall Poulton
About the author
Born in Reading in 1856, Sir Edward Bagnall Poulton became one of Britain’s most influential zoologists and a lifelong champion of Darwinian evolution. He studied at Jesus College, Oxford, and later served as Hope Professor of Zoology at Oxford, building a reputation as an energetic teacher, researcher, and public defender of natural selection.
Poulton is especially remembered for his work on insect life and animal coloration. In The Colours of Animals (1890), he explored how markings and colors could protect animals through camouflage, warning signals, and mimicry, helping popularize ideas that became central to evolutionary biology. He also coined the term sympatric for species arising in the same geographic area.
Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1889 and knighted later in life, Poulton remained active in scientific debate well into the twentieth century. He died in Oxford in 1943, leaving behind a body of work that linked close observation of the natural world with the big questions of evolution.