Everything about Henry Walter Bates totally explained
Henry Walter Bates FRS,
FLS, FGS (
February 8,
1825 –
February 16,
1892) was an
English naturalist and
explorer who gave the first scientific account of
mimicry in animals. He was most famous for his expedition to the
Amazon with
Alfred Russel Wallace in 1848. Wallace returned in 1852, but lost his collection in a shipwreck. When Bates arrived home in 1859 after a full eleven years he'd sent back over 14,000 specimens (mostly
insects) of which 8,000 were new to science.
Life
Bates was born in
Leicester and, like Wallace,
T.H. Huxley and some other British scientists of the time, he'd no formal education in science, and left school at 12. He came from a literate middle-class family and taught himself mainly by reading (like Wallace, Huxley and
Herbert Spencer, he was an
auto-didact). At 13 he became apprenticed to a hosier. He joined the
Mechanics' Institute (which had a library), studied in his spare time, and collected insects in
Charnwood Forest. In 1843 he'd a short paper on beetles published in the
Zoologist.
Bates became friends with Wallace when the latter took a teaching post in the Leicester Collegiate School. Wallace was also a keen
entomologist, and he'd read the same kind of books as Bates had, and as Darwin, Huxley and no doubt many others had.
Malthus on population,
James Hutton and
Lyell on geology, Darwin's
Voyage of the Beagle, and above all, the anonymous
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, which put evolution into everyday discussion amongst literate folk. They also read
William H. Edwards on his Amazon expedition, and this started them thinking that a visit the region would be exciting, and might launch their careers.
The great adventure
In 1847 Wallace and Bates discussed the idea of an expedition to the Amazons, the plan being to defray expenses by sending specimens back to London where an agent would sell them for a commission, and for the travellors to "
gather facts towards solving the problem of the origin of species", as Wallace put it in a letter to Bates. The two friends, who were both by now experienced amateur entomologists, met in London to prepare themselves by viewing South American plants and animals at the main collections. Also they collected 'wants lists' of the desires of museums and collectors. Letters survive in the Kew library of letters from the pair asking what plants the Director (then
William Jackson Hooker) would like them to find. Never has the old adage of a prepared mind been more apposite.
Bates and Wallace sailed from
Liverpool in April 1848, arriving in Pará (now
Belém) at the end of May. For the first year they settled in a villa near the city, collecting birds and insects. After that they agreed to collect independently, Bates travelling to Cametá on the
Tocantins River. He then moved up the Amazon, to
Óbidos,
Manaus and finally
Tefé, which was his headquarters for four and a half years. His health eventually deteriorated and he returned to England, sending his collection by three different ships to avoid the same fate as Wallace. He spent the next three years writing his account of the trip,
The Naturalist on the River Amazons, widely regarded as one of the finest reports of natural history travels.
Home at last
In 1861 he married Sarah Ann Mason. From
1864 onwards, he worked as Assistant Secretary of the
Royal Geographical Society (effectively, he was the Secretary, since the senior post was occupied by a noble figurehead). He sold his personal
Lepidoptera collection to
Godman and
Salvin and began to work mostly on beetles (
cerambycids,
carabids, and
cicindelids). From 1868-9 and 1878 he was President of the Entomological Society of London. In 1871 he was elected a Fellow of the
Linnaean Society, and in 1881 he was elected a Fellow of the
Royal Society.
He died of
bronchitis in 1892. A large part of his collections are in the
Natural History Museum (see
The Field, London, February 20, 1892). Specimens he collected went to the Natural History Museum [thencalled the
BM(NH)] and to private collectors; yet Bates still retained a huge reference collection and was often consulted on difficult identifications. This, and the disposal of the collection after his death, are mentioned in
Edward Clodd's
Memories.
His work
Henry Bates was one of a group of outstanding naturalist-explorers who were supporters of the theory of
evolution by
natural selection (
Charles Darwin and
Alfred Russel Wallace 1858). Other members of this group included
J.D. Hooker,
Fritz Müller,
Richard Spruce and
Thomas Henry Huxley.
Bates' work on Amazonian
butterflies led him to develop the first scientific account of
mimicry, especially the kind of mimicry which bears his name:
Batesian mimicry. This is the mimicry by a palatable species of an unpalatable or noxious species. A common example seen in temperate gardens is the
hover-fly, many of which – though bearing no sting – mimic the warning colouration of
hymenoptera (
wasps and
bees). Such mimicry doesn't need to be perfect to improve the survival of the palatable species.
Bates noted of the Heliconids (long-wings) that they were forest-dwellers who:
» 1. were abundant 2. conspicuous and slow-flying. 3. gregarious 4. the adults frequented flowers. 5. the larvae fed together.
And yet, said Bates "I never saw the flocks of slow-flying Heliconidae in the woods persecuted by birds or dragonflies... nor when at rest did they appear to be molested by lizards, or predacious flies of the family
Asilidae [robber-flies] which were very often seen pouncing on butterflies of other families... In contrast, the
Pieridae (sulfur butterflies), to which
Leptalis belongs [nowcalled
Dismorphia] are much persecuted."
Bates observed that a large number of the Heliconid species are accompanied in the districts they inhabit by other species (Pierids), which counterfeit them, and often can't be distinguished from them in flight. They fly in the same parts of the forest as the model (Heliconid) and often in company with them. Local races of the model are accompanied by corresponding races or species of the mimic. So a scarce, edible species assumes the appearance of an abundant robust, noxious species. Predators learn to avoid the noxious species, and a degree of protection covers the edible species, no doubt proportional to its degree of likeness to the model. All aspects of this situation can be, and have been, the subject of research. Thus began a field of research which is still quite active today.
Bates, Wallace and Müller believed that Batesian and
Müllerian mimicry provided evidence for the action of
natural selection, a view which is now standard amongst biologists. Field and experimental work on these ideas continues to this day; the topic connects strongly to
speciation,
genetics and
development.
Note on taxonomy
Bate's original work was done on a group of conspicuous butterflies which he knew as the
Heliconidae. He divided this assemblage into two groups, the Danaoids, having affinities with the great family
Danaidae; and Acraeoids related to the
Acraeinae. The former are now known as
Danainae, the milkweed butterflies, main genus
Danaus. The latter are now known as
Heliconiinae, the long-wings, main genus
Heliconius. Both are subfamilies in the
Nymphalidae, and both groups tend to feed on poisonous plants. The milkweed plant supplies poisonous glycosides which render both caterpillar and imago Danaids noxious, and the Heliconid caterpillars feed on poisonous
Passiflora vines.
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