Aggressive Mimicry - Comparison With Other Forms of Mimicry

Comparison With Other Forms of Mimicry

Mimicry that is aggressive stands in semantic contrast with defensive mimicry, forms of mimicry where it is the prey that acts as a mimic, with predators being duped. Defensive mimicry includes the well-known Batesian and Müllerian forms of mimicry, where the mimic shares outward characteristics with an aposematic or harmful model. In Batesian mimicry, the mimic is modeled on a dangerous (usually unpalatable) species, while in Müllerian mimicry both species are harmful, and act as comimics, converging on a common set of signals and sharing the burden of 'educating' their predators. Also included in defensive mimicry is the lesser known Mertensian mimicry, where the mimic is more harmful than the model, and Vavilovian mimicry, where weeds come to mimic crops through unintentional artificial selection. In defensive mimicry, the mimic benefits by avoiding a harmful interaction with another organism that would be more likely to take place without the deceptive signals employed. Harmful interactions might involve being eaten, or pulled out of the ground as a weed. In contrast, the aggressive mimic benefits from an interaction that would be less likely to take place without the deception, at the expense of its target. However, it is important to note that there are other forms of mimicry that are described by the previous sentence, which are not aggressive mimicry—flowers exploiting a pollinator with deceptive signals, for example. There is no analogous word that encompasses all such cases of mimicry, however (see Pasteur, 1982 for a review of classification).