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Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution / How did mimicry evolve?
« on: 31/12/2008 13:11:30 »
In my undergraduate days, I learned about this business of mimicry: and even then I was gobsmacked. There were so many amazing examples! One day, I saw on the drive, what looked like a heap of bougainvillea petals. (now I know they aren't really petals, so don't start yelling about that. This is for the non-technical persons reading this subject).
It wasn't a heap of petals, it was a group of insects looking so much like petals it was imposssible to tell them apart.
Then I found out about the stick insects which look so much like twigs, its untrue:

All that was bad enough, but then I started seeing the butterflies, and the two kinds of mimicry that exist: Batesian mimicry, and Mullerian mimicry.
Batesian mimicry describes the situation where an edible, tasty specimen, mimics a model which is unpleasant.
This one is unpalatable.

This one is.
Now I asked myself, how did that happen? The resemblance is so close, it's obvious that the similarity is designed. But these are unrelated species! So how did that happen?
Then there's Mullerian mimicry where the mimic is unpalatable, and so is the model.
Unpalatable:

Mimic, also unpalatable:

These are distinct, unrelated, recognisably different species.
So how come they look so much like one another, with the purpose of fending off predators?
Did they think: hey look, that one tastes bad, let's copy it?
Or what?
http://www.biodiversityexplorer.org/beetles/beetle_larvae_mimic.htm
It wasn't a heap of petals, it was a group of insects looking so much like petals it was imposssible to tell them apart.
Then I found out about the stick insects which look so much like twigs, its untrue:

All that was bad enough, but then I started seeing the butterflies, and the two kinds of mimicry that exist: Batesian mimicry, and Mullerian mimicry.
Batesian mimicry describes the situation where an edible, tasty specimen, mimics a model which is unpleasant.


This one is.
Now I asked myself, how did that happen? The resemblance is so close, it's obvious that the similarity is designed. But these are unrelated species! So how did that happen?
Then there's Mullerian mimicry where the mimic is unpalatable, and so is the model.
Unpalatable:

Mimic, also unpalatable:

These are distinct, unrelated, recognisably different species.
So how come they look so much like one another, with the purpose of fending off predators?
Did they think: hey look, that one tastes bad, let's copy it?
Or what?
http://www.biodiversityexplorer.org/beetles/beetle_larvae_mimic.htm