ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2007
The key mimetic features of hoverflies through avian eyes.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2007. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed.
- Birds select for higher mimetic accuracy, but imperfect mimics benefit from chromatic resemblance to their models.Current zoology · 2026Article
- Evolutionary arms race in ant-ant mimicry: Camponotus lateralis lags behind in mimicking color patterns and sizes of regional Crematogaster models.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Small Brains: Body Shape Constrains Tissue Allocation to the Central Nervous System in Ant-Mimicking Spiders.The Journal of comparative neurology · 2024Article
- Article
- Climate-induced phenological shifts in a Batesian mimicry complex.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2019Article
- Article
- Visual approach computation in feeding hoverflies.The Journal of experimental biology · 2018Article
- Walking like an ant: a quantitative and experimental approach to understanding locomotor mimicry in the jumping spiderProceedings. Biological sciences · 2017Article
- The perfection of mimicry: an information approach.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2017Review
- Mitochondrial genomes of the hoverflies Episyrphus balteatus and Eupeodes corollae (Diptera: Syrphidae), with a phylogenetic analysis of Muscomorpha.Scientific reports · 2017Article
- Multi-trait mimicry and the relative salience of individual traits.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2015Article
- Article
- Ecological and evolutionary processes drive the origin and maintenance of imperfect mimicry.PloS one · 2013Article
- Article
- Motion dazzle and camouflage as distinct anti-predator defenses.BMC biology · 2011Article
- The evolution of imperfect floral mimicry.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2008Article
- Cognitive dimensions of predator responses to imperfect mimicry.PLoS biology · 2007Article
- Predator selection on multicomponent warning signals in an aposematic moth.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Batesian mimicry occurs when a palatable species (the mimic) gains protection from predators by resembling an unpalatable or otherwise protected species (the model). While some mimetic species resemble their models closely, other species ('imperfect mimics') are thought to bear only a crude likeness. In an earlier study, pigeons (Columba livia) were trained to recognize wasp images in one experiment and non-mimetic (NM) fly images in another by rewarding the pigeons for pecking on the respective image types. These pigeons were subsequently presented with different images, including seemingly wasp-like hoverfly species, and the recorded peck rates on these images were used as a measure of the pigeons' perception of the hoverflies' mimetic similarity. To identify a candidate set of morphological features that the pigeons used when assessing this mimetic similarity, we first extracted a range of biometrical measurements from images originally presented to the pigeons. We then repeatedly optimized an empirical model in an attempt to match the recorded pigeon peck rates while using as few biometrical features as input as possible. Our models were able to fit the pigeon peck rates with considerable accuracy even while excluding many input features. Antennal length, a feature commonly used to discriminate between flies and wasps, was regularly retained as an input variable, but overall a different set of biometrical features was important for predicting the peck rates of pigeons rewarded for identifying wasps compared to those rewarded for identifying NM flies. In highlighting the importance of specific biometrical features in promoting mimicry and the irrelevance of others, our optimized models provide an explanation as to why certain species that appear to be poor mimics to humans are judged to be good mimics by birds.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.