Abstract
IN his original explanation of the cause of mimicry, Mr. Bates referred to the occurrence of many cases in which species of different genera of Heliconidae resemble each other quite as closely as the mimicking Leptalides and Papilios resemble species of Ithomia and other Heliconoid butterflies. In these cases both the imitating and the imitated species are protected by distastefulness, and it was not therefore clear how the one could derive any benefit by resembling the other. Accordingly, Mr. Bates did not consider these to be true cases of mimicry, but to be due, either to identical parallel variations of externally similar form, or “to the similar adaptation of all to the same local, probably inorganic, conditions.”
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WALLACE, A. Dr. Fritz Müller on Some Difficult Cases of Mimicry 1 . Nature 26, 86–87 (1882). https://doi.org/10.1038/026086a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/026086a0
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