From here on out I'll be highlighting what I find to be interesting cases of mimicry/deception employed by animals. This week we shall look at the mourning cuttlefish (Sepia plangon). The males of this species use visual deception against there rivals in order to gain an advantage during the mating season. The male will display his courtship patterns to a receptive female on one half of his  body whilst displaying female patterns on the other half in response to the presence of a rival in order to prevent disruption to his courtship, however if two females are present this deception is not used. Research by Brown, Garwood & Williams (2012, p.730) found that this tactic was employed 39% of the time that a rival male was present during courtship.


Figure 1. form Brown, Garwood & Williams (2012, p.731) shows Female (F) Male (M) and direction of rival male (A).

References:
Brown, C. Garwood, M. Williams, J 2012 "It pays to cheat: deception in a cephalopod social signalling system", Biology Letters, vol. 8, no. 5, pp. 729-732.

This week we shall continue the theme of aggressive mimicry and look at a rather interesting case. Whilst most animals employ aggressive mimicry by mimicking another animal the orchid mantis does so by mimicking the orchid flower. This is reported to be the only such case recorded so far. Found in Malaysia the Orchid Mantis uses flowers as a base from which to ambush mainly hymenopteran prey. Research into the orchid mantis (O'Hanlon, Holwell, Herberstein 2014) has shown that pollinators actually visit flowers where a mantis is positioned 30% more than flowers without mantis. The reason for this is still unknown. The researchers also discovered that mantis' sitting away form the flowers are able to attract pollinators at higher rates than the flowers themselves.


© Thomas Marent

References:
O'Hanlan, J C, Holwell, G I, Herberstein M E 2014, 'Pollinator Deception in the Orchid Mantis', The American Naturalist, vol. 183, no. 1, pp. 126-132.

Marent T "n.d", 'Mantis on Flower', Photograph, National Geographic, viewed 6 April 2014, <http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/files/2013/08/orchid-mantis.png>.