Background: Animals and plants can benefit by resembling other species. For example, some plants have spots that look like ants to deter herbivores, cuckoos look like hawks to frighten smaller birds from their nests, and harmless snakes have striped bodies that resemble highly venomous species. However, there are other modes of resemblance: animals and plants can smell, sound or act like another species in addition to (or instead of) having visual resemblance. However, we don’t know much about how different types of mimicry interact in the wild.
What we did: Heather Penney, a MSc student at Carleton University, collected individuals from 57 species of hoverfly. Hoverflies are famous for having some examples of very close visual mimicry of stinging wasps and bees, but in some species this mimicry is “imperfect”. It is also known that hoverflies can exhibit behaviours that are characteristic of wasps and bees, and so Heather tried to elicit these responses from each of the species that she caught. She found that only 6 out of 57 species exhibited behavioural mimicry, and that these species belonged to only two genera (i.e. they were all closely related). Furthermore, there was some evidence that only animals that looked a lot like wasps also had behavioural mimicry.
Importance: While behavioural mimicry has been described a number of times in the wild, it is rarely surveyed using such a comprehensive approach – Heather tested every species in a community so that we know that there are a range of species that do not exhibit these behaviours. Also, we show that the behaviours are constrained to relatively few high quality visual mimics which suggests that behavioural mimicry acts to enhance morphological mimicry where that morphological mimicry already exists.
This is part of a series of short lay summaries that describe the technical publications I have authored. This paper, entitled “The relationship between morphological and behavioral mimicry in hover flies (Diptera: Syrphidae)”, was published in the journal American Naturalist in 2014. You can find this paper on the publisher’s website or for free at Figshare.
Image credit: Photos by Brent Lamborn, used with permission.
Background: Urban ecosystems are becoming increasingly important as areas for biodiversity conservation, as we begin to recognise the importance of preserving natural habitat within heavily modified environments for both wildlife and human well being. Urban ponds are a key part of this network of habitats within cities, and are commonly found in parks, gardens and industrial estates. In fact, there are an estimated 2.5-3.5 million garden ponds in the UK alone, which could have an area the size of Lake Windermere!
Background: Animals and plants have a wide range of colours, and these different colours play different roles in different species. Some species might be signalling to potential predators that they are toxic (like a wasp’s stripes), others might be trying to hide (like a moth’s speckled grey wings), and others might be trying to signal to the opposite sex that they are high quality mates (like a peacock’s train). However, while there are clear functions in principle, the relative importance of different signals might vary depending on the context within which the animal or plant finds itself. For example, male ebony jewelwing damselflies (Calopteryx maculata) have very dark wings and this is thought to allow females of the same species to choose appropriate mates (i.e. to avoid mating with the wrong species). However, the dark pigment can also play a role in temperature regulation. Damselflies cannot generate their own heat and so rely on absorbing heat from the sun, which is helped by the dark pigment. I was interested in how the darkness of the wings varied between locations which experience different temperatures.
I’m really excited about this project. 
I’ve just had a 
Katatrepsis 