What is there to mimic?

Have you ever tried to mimic something? All I can think of is going hunting. When you go hunting you dress in clothes that have patterns of leaves that are brown and green. You mimic the coloration of the forest around you to blend in. You don’t want to be seen by your prey, so you camouflage yourself. Lots of organisms use camouflage as well. They use it to hide from predators. For example, insects can camouflage themselves as plant material. The leafhopper below is mimicking a thorn on a bush. If something was walking by, it might not even notice the insect that is there. Not only do insects mimic plants but they also mimic each other. They do this by matching the color patterns of another.

http://www.painetworks.com/previews/fr/fr2269.html

Most insects that aren’t palatable show warning coloration. When one of these insects is eaten, it allows the predator to learn that this certain coloration isn’t too yummy to munch on. Other insects that are tasty mimic the same warning coloration. This is called Batesian mimicry. There is another type of mimicry called Mullerian.  Mullerian mimicry is when two or more unpalatable insects have the same coloration. They are mimicking each other. By doing this it allows for the protection of both individuals.

 A study at Cat Tien National Park in Vietnam showed a species of cockroach that was identified mimicking a beetle. This was the first roach to have been thought of as showing this type of behavior. The undescribed roach from the family Blattinae mimics the coloration of a carabid beetle. The species of beetle is Craspedophorus sublaevis. The roach not only has two yellow spots like the C. sublaevis, but it also has two little orange spots at the front of the pronotum. These two orange spots are thought to mimic the ectoparasitic Laboulbeniales. This ectoparasitic is often found on the elytra of C. sublaevis and other carabids. The mimicry shown between the beetle and roach is thought to be Batesian because the roach doesn’t seem to show that it is unpalatable.

http://derstandard.at/1339639101960/Mimikry-Neue-Schabenart-taeuscht-mit-Kaeferkostuem-ihre-Feinde

It is hard to say if their conclusion is right or wrong. To really see if Batesian mimicry is occurring a bioassay of some kind would have to be created to test the hypothesis. One would have to see if a predator finds that the roach is tasty and the beetle is not. It makes sense why the researches support Batesian. This is because Carabids have pygial glands that secrete chemical compounds that aren’t attractive to predators. So many insects mimic their coloration. But because it is not known if the roach also is unpalatable you can’t rule out Mullerian mimicry yet.

After reading this article and looking up the different types of mimicry I thought, which would be best? Would it be better to just camouflage a piece of foliage or mimic another individual? Personally I would go for camouflaging a piece of foliage. I would rather be walked passed and not seen, than out in the open pretending to be another individual. What would you chose?  

Article Link : http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1479-8298.2012.00529.x/full

Heres another interesting article on mimicry: http://www.hindawi.com/journals/psyche/2012/168549/