Mimetes

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A representative or imitation species that closely resembles another organism in appearance or behavior for survival or advantage
2. An organism that mimics the characteristics of another to enhance its chances of survival by evading predators or attracting mates
3. A species whose physical traits or behaviors are designed to imitate another species, often for protection or evolutionary benefit

Etymology: "Mimetes" is a Greek word, from "mimētēs," meaning "imitator" or "mimic," formed from "mimeisthai," to imitate, and ultimately from "mimos," a mime or actor. Ancient Greek used it for a person who copies another, such as an actor or performer. It was not a biological term in antiquity. The modern sense belongs to nineteenth-century natural history, when naturalists needed words for animals and plants that imitate other species. Henry Walter Bates, the English naturalist who studied butterflies in the Amazon in the 1850s, described harmless species that copied the warning colours of toxic ones, and the pattern of such resemblance later took his name as Batesian mimicry. The Greek root supplied the vocabulary for these new ideas. The word is therefore a learned coinage built from classical material rather than a term with a continuous history of use. Its meaning in English is specialized, confined largely to biology and ecology.