The Discoverers of Mimicry

The Discoverers of Mimicry
The two main types of mimicry, Batesian and Müllerian, are named after the scientists who first suggested them: henry Bates and Fritz Müller.

Henry Bates was an english naturalist who lived from 1825 to 1892. in 1848, he traveled to south America to study insects. Bates spent 11 years in the Amazon rainforest. he collected thousands of insects, about half of which had never been seen by scientists before.

During his stay, Bates noticed that some species of nonpoisonous butterflies looked very much like the brightly colored, poisonous butterflies in the same area. he realized that the edible butterflies were mimicking the poisonous ones. Bates wrote about his discoveries in 1862.

His work inspired other researchers. one of them was Fritz Müller, a german scientist. müller followed up on a puzzle that Bates had noticed in Brazil. Bates had seen poisonous butterflies that belonged to different species, but resembled one another. Müller published a paper in 18 8 explaining that by looking alike, both species shared the burden of teaching predators to leave them alone. the evolution of similar appearances benefits both species because each one loses fewer individuals than it would if it had to deal with predators on its own. that evolution would happen because butterflies with lookalike colors and patterns would have a better chance of survival and would produce more young than butterflies that didn’t.