ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2019
Unsupervised machine learning reveals mimicry complexes in bumblebees occur along a perceptual continuum.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed.
- A Cis-Regulatory Duplication in a Hox Hotspot Implicated in Mimetic Convergence in the Bumble Bee Bombus flavifrons.Molecular ecology · 2026Article
- Reference genome assemblies for the North American bumble bees Bombus flavifrons and Bombus fervidus, two phenotypically polymorphic species from distinct phylogenetic lineages.G3 (Bethesda, Md.) · 2026Article
- Similar Genetic Routes Are Independently Targeted for Mimetic Color Convergence in Bumble Bees.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Diel activity correlates with colour pattern morphology of heterobranch sea slugs.The Journal of animal ecology · 2025Article
- Dorsoventral comparison of intraspecific variation in the butterfly wing pattern using a convolutional neural network.Biology letters · 2025Article
- Convergence in sympatric swallowtail butterflies reveals ecological interactions as a key driver of worldwide trait diversification.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Assessing Müllerian mimicry in North American bumble bees using human perception.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Artificial intelligence versus natural selection: Using computer vision techniques to classify bees and bee mimics.iScience · 2022Article
- Mito-nuclear discordance at a mimicry color transition zone in bumble beeEcology and evolution · 2021Article
- Genetic Barriers to Historical Gene Flow between Cryptic Species of Alpine Bumblebees Revealed by Comparative Population Genomics.Molecular biology and evolution · 2021Article
- Developmental Transcriptomics Reveals a Gene Network Driving Mimetic Color Variation in a Bumble Bee.Genome biology and evolution · 2021Article
- Decontextualized learning for interpretable hierarchical representations of visual patterns.Patterns (New York, N.Y.) · 2021Article
- Unsupervised machine learning reveals mimicry complexes in bumblebees occur along a perceptual continuum.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2019Article
- A homeotic shift late in development drives mimetic color variation in a bumble bee.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2019Article
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4 authors.
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Abstract
Müllerian mimicry theory states that frequency-dependent selection should favour geographical convergence of harmful species onto a shared colour pattern. As such, mimetic patterns are commonly circumscribed into discrete mimicry complexes, each containing a predominant phenotype. Outside a few examples in butterflies, the location of transition zones between mimicry complexes and the factors driving mimicry zones has rarely been examined. To infer the patterns and processes of Müllerian mimicry, we integrate large-scale data on the geographical distribution of colour patterns of social bumblebees across the contiguous United States and use these to quantify colour pattern mimicry using an innovative, unsupervised machine-learning approach based on computer vision. Our data suggest that bumblebees exhibit geographically clustered, but sometimes imperfect colour patterns, and that mimicry patterns gradually transition spatially rather than exhibit discrete boundaries. Additionally, examination of colour pattern transition zones of three comimicking, polymorphic species, where active selection is driving phenotype frequencies, revealed that their transition zones differ in location within a broad region of poor mimicry. Potential factors influencing mimicry transition zone dynamics are discussed.
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