92 
The Queensland ISaturaihst. 
VoL. I. 
NOTES ON INSECT PROTECTIVE COLOURING AND 
MIMICRY. WITH SOME AUSTRALIAN 
EXAMPLES. 
By Edmund Jarvis. 
Most of us have recognised in the curious colour 
resemblances between various animals and their surround- 
ings, the signs of a care exercised by Nature to secure the 
permanence of a species. 
Although some may discredit the theory of Protective 
Colouration, there can be little doubt that insects are 
perfectly aware of the advantages it affords, and are 
capable of making good use of them. It is not so generally 
known, however, that the bright and often attractive colours 
of many of those species that have the power of stinging, 
secreting acrid juices, or ejecting corrosive or volatile 
fluids, serve as a protection by rendering them more notice- 
able. A good example of this class is seen in the common 
green and brilliantly metallic apterous female of Diamma 
bicolor, one of the MufMlidae, whose conspicuous colouration 
and obtrusive habits seem to suggest that its powerful 
sting is as much feared by birds and predaceous insects as 
by the residents of those districts where it occurs. 
Several Diptera belonging to the families Asilidae, 
Mydaidae, and Conopidae mimic the shape and colours 
of such hymenopterous insects as possess special means 
of defence, or are nauseous in taste. Some of our Queens- 
land “Robber flies” (Asilidae) afford exceptionally fine 
examples of this kind of mimicry, and might easily be 
mistaken for Sphegidae (Sand- wasps). 
On one occasion, Avhilst collecting ichneumonidae 
in the Dandenong Ranges of Victoria. I remember cap- 
turing a tipulide that had mimicked an ichneumon. 
The case was interesting, and in addition to the usual 
mimicry of bright colours and banded legs, it seemed to 
have adopted the habits and mode of flight characteristic 
of these parasites, and was caught in the sunshine while 
flying from leaf to leaf of a gum-tree-sucker in a manner 
very suggestive of the movements of an ichneumon 
when searching among the foliage for a larva. 
One of the best examples of mimicry among our 
lepidopterous insects is probably that of Hypolimnas 
mysippus, the male of which mimics Danaus chrysippus. 
Wallace tells us that in a large number of species of this 
genus “ there is the most wonderful mimicry of other 
groups, so that the species have been mistaken for Danaidae 
and Acraeidae, and that there is perhaps nothing more 
