Mimicry

In 1862, H.W. Bates presented an hypothesis explaining the similar color patterns in several species sets of tropical butterflies in different families. His hypothesis was one of the early applications of Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection. Bates reasoned that an edible butterfly species that was susceptible to predation would evolve, due to selection by a bird predator, to look like an unpalatable, or distasteful model species. If the mimic was rarer than the model, then birds would encounter the distasteful model more frequently, and would learn to avoid all butterflies that looked like the distasteful ones. In fact, the relative rarity of the model was to Bates a prerequisite for such a phenomenon to evolve. As mimicry theory has progressed, mathematical models show that relative abundances of models and mimics, as well as relative palatability of the two species, will determine the outcome.