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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.
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[2] [7] The term "Batesian mimicry" has since been used in his honour, its usage becoming restricted to the situation in which a harmless mimic gains protection from its predators by resembling a distasteful model. [2] Among the observations in Bates's 1862 paper is the statement:
This is known as Batesian mimicry, after Henry Walter Bates, a British naturalist who studied Amazonian butterflies in the second half of the 19th century. [79] Batesian mimicry is frequency dependent: it is most effective when the ratio of mimic to model is low; otherwise, predators will encounter the mimic too often. [80] [81]
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 ...
Two chapters cover warning colours, including both Batesian mimicry, where the mimic is edible, and Müllerian mimicry, where distasteful species mimic each other. A chapter then looks at how animals combine multiple methods of defence, for instance in the puss moth. Two chapters examine coloration related to sexual selection.
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."
Research has argued that the viceroy may be unpalatable to avian predators. If that is the case, then the viceroy butterfly displays Müllerian mimicry, and both viceroy and monarch are co-mimics of each other. [17] Some literature suggests that the queen-viceroy may not be a good model-mimic pair for Batesian mimicry.