Sexual mimicry
Examples of intraspecific sexual mimicry in animals include the spotted hyena, certain types of fish, passerine birds and some species of insect.
In plants employing sexual mimicry, flowers mimic mating signals of their pollinator insects.
However, this behaviour continues to be engaged in by adult, parous females which no longer convincingly resemble males, visually or olifactorily.
The umbilical cord often breaks before the cub emerges, leading to death by anoxia for many young.
The tissue of the clitoris will sometimes rip open when giving birth for the first time which can be fatal to the mother.
Mate-guarding is seen in Cotesia rubecula, a parasitic wasp from the family Braconidae whose mating system is polygynous.
Post-copulatory female mimicry by the male offers an advantage by acting as a mate-guarding mechanism.
[5][6] In the fish family Blenniidae, the female Salaria pavo will show a specific colour pattern and movement when they want to approach a male and copulate with him.
Sneaker males approach the nests with the same colour patterns and movements that the females hold.
During this process, the female displays a body pattern of black splotches on a white background.
[6] A similar phenomenon to the sneaker fish males is observed in the dark-edged splitfin, Girardinichthys multiradiatus.
[9][10][11] Female mimicry in birds was first found in European pied flycatcher, Ficedula hypoleuca.
[10] There is a big cost to not looking like a male when it comes to defending a territory or attracting a mate.
Another benefit is that DPM provides SY birds with a longer lifespan; because they do not have to compete with other males, their mortality rate is lower.
[11] Another example of sexual mimicry occurs in Broadley's Flat Lizard, Platysaurus broadleyi, where some males mimic females.
Therefore, the most successful she-males are those who avoid close contact with other males, thereby reducing the chances of detection through chemical signals.
Testosterone, in this case, expresses sex-limited characteristics by acting on the single autosomal gene.
Selection on these alleles acts according to the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium and mating success is equivalent among all three morphs.
[18] Another order of organisms whose sexual mimicry is influenced by their DNA is the Odonata, carnivorous insects known as dragonflies and damselflies.
This theory is the most likely explanation for the maintenance of polymorphism, since studies have shown that there is an advantage for androchromes in high male-density populations.
[22] The false gravid spot is caused by structural variation which up-regulates expression of the nearby gene kit-ligand.
The giant cuttlefish, Sepia apama, mentioned above in the section “sneaky copulations”, is born with the capacity to choose whether to change its morphology to look like a female or a mature male.
[6] Another example of an organism that has the capability to remain small and look like a female, or become a morphologically mature male, is the dark-edged splitfin, Girardinichthys multiradiatus.
[23] The orchid mimics its pollinator's females, usually hymenopterans such as wasps and bees, attracting the males to the flower.
Orchid flowers mimic the sex pheromones and to some degree the visual appearance of the female insect of its pollinator species.
In few other cases, such as the South African daisy Gorteria diffusa, visual signals seem to be of primary importance.
