There are many insects which resemble other species. This can occur for several reasons, the most obvious being that the different species are closely related. There are 8 species of social wasp in Britain, for example, which need close inspection to differentiate between them. One of these species, the cuckoo wasp, takes advantage of this similarity and lays its eggs in the nests of other wasps, for them to bring up the young. This behaviour is not true mimicry, however, as the species involved are closely related.
Different species can also look similar due to convergent evolution.
Completely unrelated species develop the same structure and form, since it is the ideal type for the particular niche that the species fills. Both types were named after the naturalists who first described them. A description of each will now follow, with selected examples used to illustrate this startling behaviour. He arranged the butterflies by colour and pattern of the wings. When he examined them closely, he found that many butterflies which had similar colour and pattern of the wings were in fact not closely related but members of different families.