. Animal coloration; an account of the principal facts and theories relating to the colours and markings of animals. Animals. PllOTECTIVE MIMICRY. 203 two of these species cannot fail to impress the reader with their bee-like form. These resemblances, undoabtedly striking though they are, must be discounted by the fact that the whole family of Glear- wings have a general resemblance to Hymenoptei'a.* Dr. Seitz has published from a diary kept in Brazil a number of interesting cases of mimicry among Lepidoptera. A species of Trichiura closely resembles an ichneumon fly ; the ichneumon in questio
. Animal coloration; an account of the principal facts and theories relating to the colours and markings of animals. Animals. PllOTECTIVE MIMICRY. 203 two of these species cannot fail to impress the reader with their bee-like form. These resemblances, undoabtedly striking though they are, must be discounted by the fact that the whole family of Glear- wings have a general resemblance to Hymenoptei'a.* Dr. Seitz has published from a diary kept in Brazil a number of interesting cases of mimicry among Lepidoptera. A species of Trichiura closely resembles an ichneumon fly ; the ichneumon in question has brownish wings, with a yellow spot on each ; the wings are kept folded against the body when the insect is settling upon a leaf ; the Lepidopteron gets the same appearance by an altogether different method, which. Fig. 25.—Hornet Clearwiug. is most remarkable, and exceedingly suggestive of purely adaptive mimicry. The wings are nearly transparent, but while they are kept closely pressed against the body they appear brownish (the colour of the body), and a yellow spot upon the abdomen is seen through the transparent wings, and thus pro- duces a precisely similar effect to a spot upon the wing, which occurs in the mimicked ichneumon. The ichneumon has, of coiu'se, its long ovipositor with two sheaths, or rather the two halves of the sheath ; these are imitated by three j)rocesses in * Mimicry has even been the cause of mistakes in entomology, the mimicking species having been occasionally confounded with the Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble the original Beddard, Frank E. (Frank Evers), 1858-1925. London, S. Sonnenschein; New York, Macmillan
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectanimals, bookyear1892
