Bates, H(enry) W(alter) (1825-1892)

English naturalist and explorer. He spent 11 years collecting animals and plants in South America and identified 8,000 new species of insects. He made a special study of camouflage in animals, and his observation of insect imitation of species that are unpleasant to predators is known as ‘Batesian mimicry’.

Bates was born in Leicester and left school at 13, but studied natural history in his spare time. In 1844 he met English naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, and together they travelled to the Amazon region of South America in 1848 to study and collect its flora and fauna. Wallace returned to England in 1852 but Bates remained until 1859. He returned with a vast number of specimens, including more than 14,000 species of insects.

In 1861 Bates presented a paper entitled ‘Contributions to an insect fauna of the Amazon Valley’, in which he outlined his observations of mimicry. He had discovered that several different species of butterflies have almost identical patterns of colours on their wings, and that some are distasteful to bird predators whereas others are not. He suggested that the latter types, influenced by natural selection, mimic the distasteful species and thus increase their chances of survival.

In The Naturalist on the River Amazon 1863, Bates described both his explorations and his scientific findings.