The evolution of mimicry

The effectiveness of warning systems

There is considerable experimental evidence to illustrate how effectively predators learn to avoid certain adverse stimuli. Chickens conditioned by electric shock to avoid drinking dark green water drank progressively more from paler solutions in proportion to the intensity of the colour. This experiment suggests that even an incomplete warning system provides a modicum of protection. The degree of protection provided is also affected by the strength of the punishment: after strong shocks, the chickens drank only from very light coloured solutions. In the presence of severe punishment, an improved warning system had little additional effect once a threshold level was reached.

In other experiments, starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) were fed normal mealworms, two segments of which had been painted orange. To provide aposematic “models,” the experimenter made other mealworms distasteful and painted the same segments green (see also aposematic mechanism). “Mimics” were marked with green but not rendered unpalatable. There is no known instance in nature in which animals employ green for warning; there was therefore no possibility that the birds had already learned to avoid the experimental colour pattern. Before long the green-marked worms were completely avoided, regardless of palatability, even when the ratio of edible to distasteful was 60:40. This indicates that the number of mimics can exceed that of the model, when the resemblance is close, without loss of protection. When the ratio was increased to 90:10, 17 percent of the mimics were avoided, probably sufficient for a selective advantage in nature. Although a test bird would occasionally peck at a model, then reject it, the same action was sometimes shown to a mimic that it had picked up, suggesting that a premature response had been subsequently corrected.

The reconstruction of evolutionary pathways

Analysis and understanding of a given mimicry system require a rather comprehensive knowledge of morphology, behaviour, ecology, and mutual relationships of animals usually in different classes—for example, wasps (Hymenoptera), flies (Diptera), insect-eating amphibians, reptiles, birds, and small mammals. Tracing the evolution of such a complicated system requires a detailed acquaintance with a large group of forms related to each of the animals involved. Such data, in fact, are seldom available.

Reconstructing the evolution of a case of mimicry within the same species, however, is relatively simple, requiring detailed knowledge of but one rather narrow taxonomic unit. Such a reconstruction is valuable, because mimicry is an indispensable tool in the study of the evolution of animal communication, and usually starts from conspicuously elaborated signals, which postulate a signal receiver interested in them. The receiver practically always has undergone a special molding toward optimal receiving of the signal. The mutual adaptations of the sender and the receiver must be examined separately.

This examination is easily made, so far as the evolution of a reaction or of a receiving mechanism is concerned, in all predators trying to find their prey and in all prey animals attempting to escape an approaching predator. The suppression of signals may be studied in predators trying to sneak up on a prey unnoticed. The elaboration of a signal, which must, of course, be important to the receiver, can only be studied after consideration of compensatory adaptations in the receiver and in situations where the sender has a one-sided interest in the signal. The deceiving signal can be derived only from one of two types: a signal developed by the receiver and another signal sender in their common interest or a signal emitted by another signal sender and made use of by the receiver only in its own interest. Both cases, by the definition given above, are called mimicry. An additional advantage is that the model is known to be the final stage toward which the mimic will evolve (so far as the signal characters are concerned), thus indicating a trend in evolution that is still operating and that probably over time will further elaborate the mimetic signals.

If the female Haplochromis fish were to discriminate between real eggs and the egg dummies of the male and were to stop reacting toward the latter, her eggs would remain unfertilized. In such cases of deceptive signals developed within the same species, natural selection operates against better signal discrimination on the part of the signal receiver.

The importance of the signal receiver

Fundamental characteristics of mimicry are determined mainly by behavioral properties of the signal receiver. A precise knowledge of the identity of the receiver and a thorough study of its behaviour are therefore indispensable for the understanding of mimicry. Moreover, mimicry gradually merges into other sender–receiver systems. Palatability is a matter of degree; whole ranges of distastefulness therefore exist, even in the mimics, model and mimic in the case of Müllerian mimicry being equally unpalatable and sharing the same warning coloration. Müllerian mimicry could be considered not to be true mimicry, after all, because no one is deceived, and it is impossible to designate one as model and the other as mimic.

Although all individuals of a given wasp species look alike and are all equally protected, this phenomenon is not usually called Müllerian mimicry, simply because the signals were not independently evolved, a property known as convergence. Because, however, the male wasps have no protective properties but retain their group-specific warning coloration, this is Batesian mimicry, although model and mimic are of the same species and their signals homologous (evolved from the same source). Convergence (or independent evolution) of the signal characters, therefore, is essential only for the so-called Müllerian mimicry, and thus Müllerian mimicry is distinguished from other cases of signal standardization. The typical (Batesian) mimicry merges into Müllerian mimicry if the difference between the consequences for the receiver of reacting similarly to model and mimic diminishes; and by homology of the signal characters it further merges into general signal standardization.

An insect may be protectively coloured to resemble, for example, a wasp or a twig. In the first case the coloration is called mimicry, in the second, mimesis, or protective coloration. The difference lies within the signal receiver. If the mimetic signal does not release any reaction in the receiver, the mimic is said to exhibit mimesis. This distinction is illustrated by the experiments of the Dutch biologist L. de Ruiter with stick caterpillars, which, by virtue of their close resemblance to twigs, are protected against insect-eating birds. As soon as the number of “twigs” becomes too large, however, the bird develops an interest in them, attacks some real twigs, and also finds some caterpillars. If one positive experience with the caterpillar has the same weight as a negative one with the twig (the signal remaining unchanged), the relative abundance of caterpillars and twigs determines whether all twigs are mistakenly exterminated or whether the feeding reaction toward twiglike objects disappears, thus protecting the caterpillars.

This study again illustrates the importance of the bird’s ability to decide correctly which is the model, and it further shows how easily an object (the twig) may quite involuntarily become a “mimic.” Another example illustrating the importance of a correct model is found in the common farming relationship between ants and aphids. The protuberances, called the siphones and cauda, on the abdomens of aphids resemble respectively the bases of the antennae and labium of the ant’s head. The aphid’s abdomen is thus mistaken by the ant for the head of a fellow ant, thereby eliciting the food-begging response, which is identical with milking. Saturated ants in turn even try to feed the abdomens of the aphids. Aphid species with reduced abdominal siphones use their hind legs as antennae dummies, the movements elicited being originally defensive movements. This situation is exactly the way in which mimicry arises. Mimetic characters need not have evolved under the selection pressure of mimicking; in fact, their earliest evolutionary stages could not even have been brought about in this way. All cases studied thus far can be traced back to an incipient stage of deceptive resemblance, initiated as a preadaptive, nondirected by-product of preexisting species-specific features, thus providing a point of attack for new selective pressure (see also natural selection and evolution).