DEPARTMENT OF ZOOLOGY

Assignment No. 1
Mimicry and its types

Submitted by: Eiman Fatimah

Roll no. 19011514-086
BS-VI
Sec B
Content:

Sr no. Headings Page No.

1 What is mimicry? 3
2 Batesian mimicry 4

3 Müllerian mimicry 4

4 Aggressive mimicry 5

5 Automimicry 5
6 References 7
What is mimicry?
There are three kinds of mimicry used by predator and prey and those are, Batesian mimicry, Mullerian
mimicry, and self-mimicry. There’s another kind of mimicry as well called aggressive mimicry.
Mimicry tells us about the similarities between animal species; camouflage refers to an animal species
similar to an inert object.

Definition:
 Definition:
‘Mimicry means the unconditional resemblance between two organisms that are completely
different from each other and have no link in their taxonomies’.
This resemblance confers a benefit—such as fortification from predation—upon one or both
organisms by which the organisms mislead the breathing agent of natural selection. The agent of
selection (which may be, as an example, a predator or a symbiotic, or the host of a parasite,
depending on the type of mimicry encountered) interacts unswervingly with the similar
organisms and is deceived by their resemblance. This type of natural selection differentiates
mimicry from other types of convergent resemblance that result from the action of other forces
of natural selection (e.g., temperature, food habits) on unconnected organisms.
In the most-studied mimetic associations, the gain is one-sided, one species (the mimic) ahead
benefit from a similarity to the other (the model). Since the unearthing of mimicry
in butterflies in the mid-19th century, a great many plants and animals are mimetic. In many
cases, the organisms implicated belong to the same class, order, or even family, but frequent
instances are known of plants mimicking animals and vice versa. Although the best-known
examples of mimicry occupy similarity of appearance, investigations have disclosed enthralling
cases in which the resemblance involves sound, smell, behaviour, and even biochemistry.
The main element in practically every mimetic situation is deception by the mimic, perpetrated
upon a third party, which faults the mimic for the model. This third party may be
the collective impending predators upon the mimic, potential prey of a predacious mimic, or
even one sex of the mimic’s species. In some cases, like host mimicry by parasites, the organism
deceived is the model.
Because of the diversity of situations in which mimicry takes place, an official definition must
rest upon the outcome of certain key forthcoming signals upon the suitable beneficiary and the
ensuing revolutionary effect upon the emitters of the signals. Mimicry may be told as a situation
in which virtually identical signals, emitted by two different organisms, have in common at least
one receiver that reacts in the same way to both signals because it is beneficial to react in that
manner to one of them (that of the model), although it may be damaging to react thus to the
counterfeit signal.
The dissimilarity between camouflage and mimicry is not always obvious when only the model
and the mimic are at hand. When the beneficiary is known and its reactions understood, however,
the difference is quite lucid: in mimicry, the signals have a special implication for the receiver
and for the sender, which has evolved the signals to be perceived by the receiver; in camouflage,
the sender seeks to avoid detection by the receiver through imitation of what is the neutral
background to the receiver. For information on camouflage, see also coloration: Camouflage.
Types of mimicry
Batesian mimicry
In 1862 the English naturalist Henry W. Bates published a clarification for unanticipated
similarities in manifestation between certain Brazilian forest butterflies of two discrete families.
Members of one family, the Heliconiidae, are disgusting to birds and are coloured; members of
the other family, the Pieridae, are edible to predators. Bates fulfilled that
the conspicuous coloration of the uneatable species must serve as a caution for predators that had
learned of their inedibility through experience. The deceptively similar colour patterns of the
edible species would provide fortification from the same predators. This form of mimicry, in
which an unprotected organism bears a close resemblance to a lethal and conspicuous one, is
called Batesian, in honor of its explorer.
                    

Müllerian mimicry
Bates observed but was unable to explain, a similarity among several unrelated butterflies,
including danaids (see milkweed butterfly), all of which were known to be inedible. There
seemed to be no reason for these species, each of which had an abundant defense with which to
back up the warning coloration, to be similar. In 1878 Fritz Müller who was a German zoologist
gave the idea that an explanation for this so-called Bates’s paradox might lie in the benefit to one
inedible species in having a predator learn from another. Once the predator has learned to avoid
the particular color pattern with which it had its initial contact, it would then avoid all other
similarly patterned species, edible and inedible. The initial learning experience of the predator
often results in death or damage to the inedible individual that provided the lesson; there is thus
some price to the species that teaches the predator that it is inedible. Proofs indicate that there is
little or no inherited recognition by certain predators; each individual learns of lethal or inedible
species by sampling them. Other inedible species similar to the first, however, do not have to
forfeit individuals to teach this same predator, and the number of individuals sacrificed in
educating the entire predator population is spread over all of the species sharing the same
warning pattern. The affinity of inedible or noxious species to resemble each other is
called Müllerian mimicry.

Types of mimicry
Batesian mimicry
In 1862 the English naturalist Henry W. Bates published a clarification for unanticipated
similarities in manifestation between certain Brazilian forest butterflies of two discrete families.
Members of one family, the Heliconiidae, are disgusting to birds and are colored; members of
the other family, the Pieridae, are edible to predators. Bates fulfilled that
the conspicuous coloration of the uneatable species must serve as a caution for predators that had
learned of their inedibility through experience. The deceptively similar color patterns of the
edible species would provide fortification from the same predators. This form of mimicry, in
which an unprotected organism bears a close resemblance to a lethal and conspicuous one, is
called Batesian, in honor of its explorer.
                    

  
Aggressive mimicry
In some cases, it is of benefit to a predator to look a lot like its prey, or a parasite its host.
Aggressive mimicry, for which the phrase “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” is a pertinent
description, does not engage warning mechanisms. The mimic adopts certain of the
acknowledgment marks of its model to secure an advantage over the model itself or over a third
species that interact with the model. The model may be mimicked during only a single step of
the life cycle, as in the case of parasitic cuckoos, the eggs of which remind you of those of their
hosts (see below The occurrence of mimicry among plants and animals), or the model may be a
prey of the mimic’s victim, as in the case of anglerfishes, which acquire rodlike spines tipped
with a fleshy “bait” to bait other fishes within reach.
Auto mimicry
The phenomenon of auto mimicry involves the plus points gained by some members of a species
from its likeness to others of the same species. Males of many bees and wasps, although
powerless, are protected from predators by their resemblance to females that are operational with
stingers. Some butterflies can achieve protection against predators through the facility to absorb,
tolerate, and retain in the immature (larval) stage, poisons from the plants on which they feed.
Individuals or even subpopulations of such butterflies may fail to attain such protection, as a
result of feeding on plants that are not poisonous, but they are avoided by predators that have
sampled protected individuals of the same species. 
Mimicry within species
The three vital participants in mimicry that are, model, mimic, and receiver need not always be
members of different species. In mimicry of the host by a parasite, for instance, the host species
provides both model and receiver. In another kind of mimicry, the mimic and receiver are
members of the same species. An example of this type of mimicry is found in the small South
American characid fish Corynopoma riisei, in which the gill cover of the male is lengthened into
a thin, whitish stalk that terminates in a small, blackish plate. During courtship, the male raises
the stalk and moves it jerkily because of the female, who mistakes the tip of the stalk for an
edible object, such as a tiny crustacean. As the female comes near the male to grab this supposed
prey, mating occurs.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
References:
https://www.britannica.com/science/mimicry