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Batesian mimicry is a form of mimicry where a harmless species has evolved to imitate the warning signals of a harmful species directed at a predator of them both. It is named after the English naturalist Henry Walter Bates , who worked on butterflies in the rainforests of Brazil.
Müllerian mimicry was first identified in tropical butterflies that shared colourful wing patterns, but it is found in many groups of insects such as bumblebees, and other animals such as poison frogs and coral snakes. The mimicry need not be visual; for example, many snakes share auditory warning signals. Similarly, the defences involved are ...
Mimicry is not limited to animals; in Pouyannian mimicry, an orchid flower is the mimic, resembling a female bee, its model; the dupe is the male bee of the same species, which tries to copulate with the flower, enabling it to transfer pollen, so the mimicry is again bipolar.
Aggressive mimicry stands in semantic contrast with defensive mimicry, where it is the prey that acts as a mimic, with predators being duped. Defensive mimicry includes the well-known Batesian and Müllerian forms of mimicry, where the mimic shares outward characteristics with an aposematic or harmful model. In Batesian mimicry, the mimic is ...
Most of these octopuses use Batesian mimicry, selecting an organism repulsive to predators as a model. [33] [34] In Müllerian mimicry, two or more aposematic forms share the same warning signals, [27] [35] as in viceroy and monarch butterflies. Birds avoid eating both species because their wing patterns honestly signal their unpleasant taste. [28]
There are few well-studied examples of mimicry in vertebrates. [1] Still, many of the basic types of mimicry apply to vertebrates, especially among snakes. Batesian mimicry is rare among vertebrates but found in some reptiles (particularly snakes) and amphibians. [2] [3] Müllerian mimicry is found in some snakes, birds, amphibians, and fish.
Both Batesian mimicry and Müllerian mimicry are treated as adaptive resemblance, much like camouflage, while a chapter is devoted to the mimicry and behaviour of the cuckoo. The concluding chapter admits that the book's force is cumulative, consisting of many small steps of reasoning, and being a wartime book, compares animal to military ...
Batesian mimicry, named for the 19th century naturalist Henry Walter Bates who first noted the effect in 1861, "provides numerous excellent examples of natural selection" [16] at work. The evolutionary entomologist James Mallet noted that mimicry was "arguably the oldest Darwinian theory not attributable to Darwin."