Introduction: What is Mimicry?

Animal world and plant world have a lot of peculiarities that makes the study of these creatures very interesting and intriguing. You can see many different ecological systems evolved slowly.
 

One of the most effective systems used by most animals is attack and defense. Predators and victims use various devices to achieve their target that is to survive at any cost. We can name a few tools used by animals: some have poison; others use fancy colors called aposematic coloration; and also mimicry. Plants use some of these tools also, mainly regarding to reproduction.
 

Surely, mimicry is the most fascinating method among others. According to the scientific researcher Neil Campbell et al. (2012), mimicry can be defined as "imposters animal that looks like poisonous species but are actually harmless." From today, we are going to see some information and examples of animals and plants that use this process in their lives.
 

Now that we know what means this method, we can ask: what’s the value of this to the animals?
In his book entitled Biology, the researcher Campbell et al. (2012) helps us to answer this question. He says that "reasonable hypothesis is that the "deception” is an evolutionary adaptation that reduces the harmless animal´s risk of being eaten because predators mistake it for the poisonous species".
 

This famous hypothesis cited by Campbell was presented to the world by the British naturalist Henry Walter Bates, who with a group of researchers undertook an expedition through the Amazon forest in Brazil in 1848. On this trip he noticed that a group of butterflies had similar characteristics but they were not of the same type. The butterflies belonged to two groups: those who were eaten by others animals, Heliconiidae; and those that the animals did not eat Dismorphiinae. Bates realized that the butterfly that looked like a bad-tasting butterfly had an advantage over those who did not had.
 

Thus, we can conclude that according to hypothesis of Bates, organisms have evolved and acquired characteristics similar to other animals to favor their survival.
 

Mimicry is a method used by animals and plants. A lot of scientists argue how this process may have originated or evolved as efficiently.  There are many hypothesis about it . In the coming weeks we'll know a bit more about this fantastic method of defense and also attack.

Did you know mimicry in animals or plants?

What do you think about this hypothesis?

Share your ideas with us.

                                                               Ana Claudia de Melo Goncalves 

Reference:

Campbell, NA, Reece, JB, Meyers, N, Urry, LA, Cain, ML, Wasserman, SA, Minorsky, PV, Jackson, RB, Cooke, BN 2012, Biology,  9^th edn, Pearson Education: Australia