Study
Avoiding Attack: The Evolutionary Ecology of Crypsis, Aposematism, and Mimicry
Ruxton, Graeme D.; Allen, William L.; Sherratt, Thomas N.; Speed, Michael P.
Oxford University Press, 2018
A monograph distinguishing the ways organisms avoid attack — concealment, warning signals and resemblance to other organisms — and assessing the experimental and comparative evidence for each, including where the categories overlap or fail.
- Studied in
- Animalia, Angiospermae
- Sample size
- monographic synthesis of anti-predator adaptation
Mimicry requires a model, a mimic and a receiver whose behaviour is changed by the resemblance. Batesian mimics are harmless and resemble defended models; Müllerian co-mimics are all defended and share a signal; aggressive mimics resemble something harmless in order to approach prey. Resemblance without a deceived receiver is convergence or coincidence, not mimicry.
What it means
The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.
How the authors put it
The categories are useful but porous, and assigning a case to one requires evidence about the receiver rather than about the resemblance alone.
How NatureHQ reads it
The definitional discipline is the valuable part. A great deal of popular natural history calls any resemblance mimicry, which empties the word. NatureHQ requires the third party: if nothing is being fooled, and the resemblance is not doing work through a receiver’s behaviour, it is something else.
- Experimental evidence is concentrated in a few well-studied systems, especially butterflies.
- Receiver psychology is inferred from behavioural experiments with predators that may not be the historical selective agents.
- Plant mimicry is much less studied than animal mimicry.
What this study is used for on NatureHQ
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Published by: Academic book publishersPublished as an academic monograph.
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