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. Bates reasoned that there must be some evolutionary advantage for two unrelated species to look alike. The species which looked alike but were not closely related were often brightly coloured, leading Bates to make another suggestion. He reasoned that because one of the species was distasteful, and used its bright colouring to signal this distastefulness to predators, a species which was similarly coloured would also be avoided by predators and could therefore increase its chances of survival without needing to be distasteful. This has since been proved to be the case- the unpalatable species is called the model and the similar, but not distasteful, species is called the mimic.
Many insects are bee and wasp mimics.
The mimics' gallery shows some of examples of the numerous wasp and bee mimics which exist. Wasps and bees are good examples of models, being brightly coloured, often with stripes on the abdomen. A picture of one such moth can be found in the mimics' gallery. Another example of Batesian mimicry can be found in the tephritid fly, Paroxyna plantaginis , which mimics a jumping spider. Jumping spiders defend their territories with leg-waving displays.