page_title: Ant mimicry
section_title: Flies
hierarchical_section_title: Ant mimicry / Batesian mimicry / Flies
caption_attribution_description: Sepsidae, mimicking an ant, in Cologne, Germany; sitting on Alliaria petiolata
context_page_description: Ant mimicry or myrmecomorphy is mimicry of ants by other organisms. Ants are abundant all over the world, and potential predators that rely on vision to identify their prey, such as birds and wasps, normally avoid them, because they are either unpalatable or aggressive. Spiders are the most common ant mimics. Additionally, some arthropods mimic ants to escape predation, while others mimic ants anatomically and behaviourally to hunt ants in aggressive mimicry. Ant mimicry has existed almost as long as ants themselves, the earliest ant mimics in the fossil record appear in the mid Cretaceous alongside the earliest ants. Indeed one of the earliest, Burmomyra was initially classified as an ant.
  In Wasmannian mimicry, mimic and model live commensally together; in the case of ants, the model is an inquiline in the ants' nest. Wasmannian mimics may also be Batesian or aggressive mimics. To overcome ants' powerful defences, mimics may imitate ants chemically with ant-like pheromones, visually, or by imitating an ant's surface microstructure for tactile mimicry.
context_section_description: Flies that resemble ants include species in the Richardiidae genus Sepsisoma, which mimic the formicine ant Camponotus crassus.
  Several species of Micropezidae (stilt-legged flies) resemble ants (especially the wingless, haltere-less Badisis ambulans), as do species in the genus Syringogaster, which "strikingly" resemble Pseudomyrmex and are hard even for experts to distinguish "until they take flight".
caption: An ant-mimicking sepsid fly
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