Blog Post 7 - Aggressive Mimicry in Myrmarachne In my last post I introduced the concept of aggressive mimicry, possibly one of my favourite forms of mimicry I have explored so far. There are numerous, crazy examples of aggressive mimicry, but this week I will focus on ant mimicking spiders. There are hundreds of spider species that mimic ants but for this post I will be focusing on the Myrmarachne group . Ant mimicry is common amongst spiders, occurring in 13 taxonomically widespread families (Uma et al. 2013). Spiders' morphological and behavioural resemblance to ants can range from hardly expressive to astonishingly accurate. Mimetic features seen in spiders often include a constricted mid-body that resembles an ant's narrow ‘waist,’ darkly pigmented regions on the head that suggest compound eyes, and waving of front legs in an ‘antennal illusion’ (Uma et al. 2013). But, what makes the Myrmarachne group so interesting is they not only mimic looks, but they mimic th...