page_title: Müllerian mimicry
section_title: Mimicry complexes
hierarchical_section_title: Müllerian mimicry / Evolution / Mimicry complexes
caption_attribution_description: Lower Sabie Camp, Kruger NP, SOUTH AFRICA
context_page_description: Müllerian mimicry is a natural phenomenon in which two or more well-defended species, often foul-tasting and that share common predators, have come to mimic each other's honest warning signals, to their mutual benefit. This works because predators can learn to avoid all of them with fewer experiences with members of any one of the relevant species. It is named after the German naturalist Fritz Müller, who first proposed the concept in 1878, supporting his theory with the first mathematical model of frequency-dependent selection, one of the first such models anywhere in biology.
  Müllerian mimicry was first identified in tropical butterflies that shared colourful wing patterns, but it is found in many groups of insects such as bumblebees, and other animals including poison frogs and coral snakes. The mimicry need not be visual; for example, many snakes share auditory warning signals. Similarly, the defences involved are not limited to toxicity; anything that tends to deter predators, such as foul taste, sharp spines, or defensive behaviour can make a species unprofitable enough to predators to allow Müllerian mimicry to develop.
context_section_description: Müllerian mimicry often occurs in clusters of multiple species called rings. Müllerian mimicry is not limited to butterflies, where rings are common; mimicry rings occur among Hymenoptera, such as bumblebees, and other insects, and among vertebrates including fish and coral snakes. Bumblebees Bombus are all aposematically coloured in combinations, often stripes, of black, white, yellow, and red; and all their females have stings, so they are certainly unprofitable to predators. There is evidence that several species of bumblebees in each of several areas of the world, namely the American West and East coasts, Western Europe, and Kashmir, have converged or adverged on mutually mimetic coloration patterns. Each of these areas has one to four mimicry rings, with patterns different from those in other areas.
  The relationships among mimics can become complex. For example, the poison fangblenny Meiacanthus spp. have hollow canines and poison glands, and are avoided by predatory fish. The blenny Plagiotremus townsendi resembles Meiacanthus and is eaten by a variety of predators, so it is a Batesian mimic in their case: but it is avoided by the lionfish, Pterois volitans, making it also a Müllerian mimic.
  Sets of associated rings are called complexes. Large complexes are known among the North American velvet ants in the genus Dasymutilla. Out of 351 species examined in one study, 336 had morphological similarities, apparently forming 8 distinct mimetic rings; 65 species in another study appeared to form six rings separable by both morphology and geography.
caption: Many species of North American velvet ants in the genus Dasymutilla are involved in mimicry complexes.
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