The mocker swallowtail, Papilio dardanus, has a female-limited polymorphic mimicry. This polymorphism is controlled by allelic variation at a single locus with at least 11 alleles. Many of the alternative morphs are accurate mimics of different species of distasteful butterflies. Geneticists have long been interested in the mechanism by which a single gene can have such diverse and profound eff...

The evolution of many forms of mimicry are well understood, but the evolution of mimicry in the absence of aposematic models or third party participants remains poorly understood. This paper presents a model of the evolution of interspecific social dominance mimicry (ISDM), that does not rely on third-party observers, in the context of the Hairy-Downy game. Members of a socially dominant specie...

BACKGROUND In aggressive mimicry, a predator or parasite imitates a signal of another species in order to exploit the recipient of the signal. Some of the most remarkable examples of aggressive mimicry involve exploitation of a complex signal-response system by an unrelated predator species. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS We have found that predatory Chlorobalius leucoviridis katydids (Orthop...

Müllerian mimicry describes the close resemblance between aposematic prey species; it is thought to be beneficial because sharing a warning signal decreases the mortality caused by sampling by inexperienced predators learning to avoid the signal. It has been hypothesized that selection for mimicry is strongest in multi-species prey communities where predators are more prone to misidentify the p...

GM(1)- and GD(1a)-like ganglioside mimicry in Campylobacter jejuni lipooligosaccharide (LOS) is considered to be involved in the pathogenesis of Campylobacter-induced Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS). Compared with gastroenteritis-related isolates, GBS-related C. jejuni isolates were strongly associated with the expression of GD(1a)-like mimicry. The presence of a few genes involved in LOS ganglio...

In web authentication, the many password alternatives proposed over the years, despite having different designs and objectives, all predominantly rely on an element of secrecy. This motivates us, herein, to provide the first detailed exploration of the integration of a fundamentally different element of defense into the design of web authentication schemes: a mimicry resistance dimension. We an...

The theory of warning signals dates back to Wallace but is still confusing, controversial and complex. Because predator avoidance of warningly coloured prey (aposematism) is based upon learning and reinforcement, it is difficult to understand how initially rare conspicuous forms subsequently become common. Here, we discuss several possible resolutions to this apparent paradox. Many of these ide...