Introduction to Signs and Communication in Mimicry

Abstract

Why dedicate a special issue of Biosemiotics to mimicry? Is there anything new one could say about mimicry that was not said elsewhere? Given the size of mimicry studies, one could argue that almost everything worth saying has been already said. But in some cases, it was a long time ago, in other cases, it was overshadowed by the mainstream opinions of the day, and yet other insights just slipped through the cracks because their authors were outsiders to the world of 'big science.' Biosemiotics, a discipline that studies sign systems and meaning production in the living world, approaches the phenomenon of mimicry in part by analysing iconic signs (where a sign refers to its object because of mutual resemblance) and by emphasising the intentionality of semiosis and interspecies semiotic relations. Biosemiotics thus provides a fresh approach to the study and analysis of mimicry by highlighting the communicative and meaning-laden aspects of such deceptive similarities. The goal of this special issue is thus to advance a semiotic and communicative approach to the interpretation of mimicry, an approach which we believe has relevance to both a biological theory of mimicry and to general biosemiotic theory. The study of biological mimicry has a long and distinguished history in biology, starting with its use as an argument in support of Darwinian theory of evolution. Alfred Russel Wallace and Henry Walter Bates realised that some butterfly coloration might be adaptive because of its resemblance to other lepidopteran species. Bates suggested that this resemblance can best be explained by natural selection (Bates 1862: 512). Mimicry thus came to be viewed in modern times as a convincing instantiation of the creative powers of natural selection. Such mimicry has traditionally been viewed as a system of three parts, where the mimic or imitator organism takes on appearance of the model organism, which is usually protective, and the mimic's taxonomic identity is therefore misinterpreted by

Imitation as Mechanism for Mimicry

“…Mimicry has a long history in the context of Darwinian theory as the archetypal example of natural selection. As Kleisner & Maran (2019) note, "Mimicry thus came to be viewed in modern times as a convincing instantiation of the creative powers of natural selection. "…”

“…Contrasting with their introduction of mimicry as an example of Darwinian natural selection, Kleisner & Maran (2019) then draw our attention to the multi-faceted manifestations of mimicry in nature. They provide examples of the diversity of mimicry, like "molecular mimicry, where a virus imitates the proteins of a host organism, vocal mimicry of birds, and sexual mimicry used for intraspecies communication" to ask what they all share in common.…”

“…And, it is at this point that Kleisner & Maran's rationale intersects with my own term, assimitation, which I define in Jarosek (2020). We thus bring to bear on the broader implications of mimicry (assimitation), "not only within its biological, behavioural, and informational connotations, but also in its anecdotal, social, historical, cultural, and artistic contexts" (Kleisner, Maran, 2019).…”

“…Emphasis here is on the broader definition of assimitation that subsumes mimicry within its scope. We are also taking our cue from Kleisner & Maran (2019), who want to identify what all the different forms of mimicry have in common-that is, "not only within its biological, behavioural, and informational connotations, but also in its anecdotal, social, historical, cultural, and artistic contexts." Thus the king of Uganda wanting to be a lion is a suitable metaphor for the butterfly wanting to be a leaf, and provides a relevant expression for an agent's primal motivation to identify with elements of the environment;…”