COLOR AXD PATTERN IX ANIMALS 421 



more. Nevertheless we are not sure that many, or even any 



/ / * 



of them, actually serve the purpose of recognition among the 

 animals themselves, however convenient they may be to us 

 who study them. However plausible the theory of recognition 

 marks may seem, it is still not proved to have any objective 

 basis. 



Of all the theories accounting for the utility of color and 

 pattern, that of mimicry demands at first thought the largest 

 degree of credulity. As a matter of fact, however, the observa- 

 tion and evidence on which it rests are as convincing as are those 

 for almost any of the other forms of protective color pattern. 

 Although the word "mimicry' could often have been used 

 aptly in the account of special protective resemblance, it has 

 been reserved for use in connection with a specific kind of 

 imitation; namely, the imitation by an otherwise defenseless 

 insect, one without poison, beak, or sting, and without acrid 

 and distasteful body fluids, of some other specially defended or 

 inedible kind, so that the mimicker is mistaken for the mimicked 

 form and, like this defended or distasteful form, relieved from 

 attack. Many cases of this mimicry may be noted by any 

 field student of entomology. 



Buzzing about flowers are to be found various kinds of bees, 

 and also various other kinds of insects thoroughly beelike in 

 appearance, but in reality not bees nor, like them, defended 

 by sting. These bee mimickers are mostly flies of various 



/ / 



families (Syrphidce, Asilida', Bombyliidce), and their resem- 

 blance to bees is sufficient to and does constantly deceive 

 collectors. We presume, then, that it equally deceives birds 

 and other insect enemies. Wasps, too, are mimicked by other 

 insects; the wasplike flies, Conopidce, and some of the clear- 

 winged moths, Sesiidce are extremely wasplike in general 

 seeming. 



The distasteful monarch butterfly, Anosia plexippus, wide- 

 spread and abundant a successful butterfly, whose success 

 undoubtedly largely depends on its inedibility in both larval and 

 imaginal stages is mimicked with extraordinary fidelity of detail 

 by the viceroy, Basilarchia archippus (Fig. 263). The Basil- 

 archias, constituting a genus of numerous species, are with but 

 two or three exceptions not at all of the color or pattern of 

 Anosia, but in the case of the particular species archippus, 

 not only the red-brown ground color, but the fine pattern 

 28 



