Many animals display bright colors to warn predators that eating them might not be such a good idea. For example, venomous animals are often brightly colored. But producing venom costs resources, and if animals can get away with faking things, it would be selected for. Mimicking a venomous brightly colored animal can reap all the benefits without the costs. If you can imagine it, nature has already done it.
In fact, mimicry is widespread in nature, but it has not been studied in depth in several insects, including ants. A new study in the journal eLife looks at mimicry among 140 brightly colored Australian insects that use gold and black colors to warn predators. It turns out some of these insects were not even ants, they were wasps a
nd spiders. But how many of these are really venomous vs. how many are fakers?
To answer this, the authors looked at the guts of 12 predators to see if the fakers are found at a higher rate than the real ones. The team “found that very few of them ate the mimics. When mimics were offered to three different predators, most avoided the mimics regardless of whether they were palatable or unpalatable. Instead, the predators preferred to eat a spider that was not a member of the group of mimics because it lacked the gold colouration.” – the eLife digest writes.
You can imagine that there is probably a fine balance between reals vs fakers. If there are two many fakers, then the predators will learn soon that the bright colors are scams, and the balance will be tipped. It’s all game theory!
Article by: Alireza Edraki
18 February 2017
Alireza Edraki 