Coral snakes predict the evolution of mimicry across New World snakes

Coral snakes predict the evolution of mimicry across New World snakes

Batesian mimicry, in which harmless species (mimics) deter predators by deceitfully imitating the warning signals of noxious species (models), generates striking cases of phenotypic convergence that are classic examples of evolution by natural selection. However, mimicry of venomous coral snakes has remained controversial because of unresolved conflict between the predictions of mimicry theory ...

Experimental studies of coral snake mimicry: do snakes mimic millipedes?

The prevalence of similarly ringed colour patterns in Neotropical snake species has stimulated heated controversy over the cause of this apparent convergence since it was first noted by Cope (1860) and Wallace (1870) in the last century. These ringed and banded species include venomous (neurotoxic) elapid coral snakes (Micrurus) and a number of mildly or non-venomous colubrid and anniliid snake...

Benefits of female mimicry in snakes.

Molecular systematics of New World lampropeltinine snakes (Colubridae): implications for biogeography and evolution of food habits

We used mitochondrial gene sequences to infer phylogenetic relationships among North American snakes of the colubrid tribe Lampropeltini (Arizona, Bogertophis, Cemophora, New World Elaphe, Lampropeltis, Pituophis, Rhinocheilus, Senticolis, Stilosoma), and assessed the implications of our findings for the biogeography and evolution of food habits among these serpents. The maximum likelihood phyl...

T-snakes: Topology adaptive snakes

We present a new class of deformable contours (snakes) and apply them to the segmentation of medical images. Our snakes are defined in terms of an affine cell image decomposition (ACID). The 'snakes in ACID' framework significantly extends conventional snakes, enabling topological flexibility among other features. The resulting topology adaptive snakes, or 'T-snakes', can be used to segment som...