Table 1.
Velvet ant species used in the analysis and the size (mm) of each specimen. Species are grouped by mimicry ring.
Figure 1.
Relationships between body size and mimetic fidelity in hoverflies.
Triangles represent reanalyzed mimics from Penney et al. [5] and circles indicate mimics compared to potential models from Nevada. The dashed line shows the linear regression of the reanalyzed data and the solid line shows the linear regression of the data with the Nevada dataset. Also shown are the mimetic fidelity scores between a mimetic fly and a similar sized model (Eumenidae) and a larger sized model (Vespidae). Insects are depicted approximately to scale.
Figure 2.
Relationship between body size and mimetic fidelity in velvet ants.
Line illustrates the relationship between mimetic fidelity and body size, which is significant when accounting for mimicry ring. Although an effect of mimicry ring on mimetic fidelity was detected (see main text), a single regression line across all rings is shown for ease of visualization. Also shown are five individuals from two mimicry rings showing the morphological variation within each ring. Individuals are not depicted to scale.
Figure 3.
Mimetic fidelity found in each velvet ant mimicry ring.
Boxplots of mimetic fidelity are shown for each mimicry ring with outliers shown as open circles. Mimicry rings are ordered by increasing community diversity scores along the x-axis (i.e. highest diversity in the Madrean ring). Best-fit line is shown; for ease of visualization the line is based on ranked diversity indices (full analyses are based on raw diversity values, see Methods). Also shown are examples of morphological diversity in each mimicry ring.