Müllerian mimicry
![The Heliconius butterflies from the tropics of the Western Hemisphere are classic Müllerian mimics.[1]](/Images/godic/202501/28/Heliconius_mimicry5157.png")
![Fritz Müller](/Images/godic/202501/28/Fritz-muller-1821-18975157.jpg")
![The viceroy butterfly (top) appears very similar to the noxious-tasting monarch butterfly (bottom). Although it was for a long time purported to be an example of Batesian mimicry, the viceroy has recently been discovered to be actually just as unpalatable as the monarch, making this a case of Müllerian mimicry.[4]](/Images/godic/202501/28/BatesMimButter5157.JPG")
Müllerian mimicry is a natural phenomenon in which two or more distasteful species, that may or may not be closely related and share one or more common predators, have come to mimic each other's warning signals. It is named after the German naturalist Fritz Müller, who first proposed the concept in 1878.