Talk:Batesian mimicry

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To-do list for Batesian mimicry:

Here are some tasks you can do:
  • Expand:
    • Occurrence - many examples needed
      • Polymorphism in Papilio dardanus.
      • Tree shrews
      • Acoustic mimicry in bat prey and burrowing owls (expand)
    • Comparisons
      • Other forms of mimicry Pasteur (1982) named after Bates
      • Compare with Mertensian mimicry (very similar)
    • Cases where the model is not a 'sister' prey organism of a common predator, but the predator's predator (quite a different situation, though commonly called Batesian mimicry as well).
    • Evolution
      • Palatable models: DO Gibson (1974) Batesian mimicry without distastefulness Nature and GD Ruxton, M Speed, TN Sherratt 2004 Evasive mimicry: when (if ever) could mimicry based on difficulty of capture evolve? Proceedings: Biological Sciences
      • Other:
    • Improve section in mimicry
A fact from Batesian mimicry appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on November 5, 2007.
Wikipedia


[edit] Possible Error?

"Experiments have shown that squirrels that are sympatric (live together) with such owls are more cautious than other populations.[8]"

Does not make sense. Why would the squirrels become more cautious in an environment that contains a batesian mimic of its predator? They would become less cautious since chances are the hissing sound is not from a snake.—Preceding unsigned comment added by User:128.189.229.166 (talk • contribs) on 01:08, 21 April 2008

You're almost certainly right here, thanks for pointing this out. The only other possibility is that the mimicry evolved because they are so cautious. I still haven't got round to reading the whole paper (and thus the slow progress of this article of late), but I'll have to check up on this. Richard001 (talk) 01:41, 21 April 2008 (UTC)