Striking Examples of Insect Mimicry

Behavior in Insect Mimicry

Arthropods use insect mimicry to gain predatory advantages over other insects in the form of increased resource availability and protection from predators. They do this through several different mechanisms, 4 of which are described in the paper; Batesian, Peckhamian, Wasmannian, and Tephritid mimicry. ‘Mimicry’ includes resemblances in both appearance and behavior. Without mimicry in both appea...

Nabokov, Teleology, and Insect Mimicry

Insect mimicry of plants dates back to the Permian

In response to predation pressure, some insects have developed spectacular plant mimicry strategies (homomorphy), involving important changes in their morphology. The fossil record of plant mimicry provides clues to the importance of predation pressure in the deep past. Surprisingly, to date, the oldest confirmed records of insect leaf mimicry are Mesozoic. Here we document a crucial step in th...

Striking imagery

The images above were featured in the recent Biomedical Image Awards of the Wellcome Centre Medical Photographic Library in London, UK. They are part of a growing collection, now numbering over 150 000 images. In the photograph at top left, spinal nerves can be seen growing into the wing bud of a four-day chick embryo. Amid the long striations of the sea squirt heart at bottom left, the gap jun...

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 ...