Henry Walter Bates
Henry Walter Bates | |
---|---|
Linnaean Society, and of the Royal Society | |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Mimicry, natural history, geography |
Institutions | Royal Geographical Society, London |
Henry Walter Bates
Life
Bates was born in
He became friends with Wallace when the latter took a teaching post in the Leicester Collegiate School. Wallace also became a keen
The great adventure
In 1847 Wallace and Bates discussed the idea of an expedition to the Amazon rainforest, the plan being to cover expenses by sending specimens back to London. There an agent would sell them for a commission. (The often repeated statement that the main purpose was for the travellers to "gather facts towards solving the problem of the origin of species", and that Wallace put this in a letter to Bates, is almost certainly a myth, originating in a convenient adjustment of history by Bates in The Naturalist on the River Amazons of 1863.[6]) The two friends, who were both by now experienced amateur entomologists, met in London to prepare themselves. They did this by viewing South American plants and animals in the main collections.[7] Also they collected "wants lists" of the desires of museums and collectors. All known letters exchanged between Wallace and Bates are available in Wallace Letters Online.
Bates and Wallace sailed from
Home at last
In 1863 he married Sarah Ann Mason.
He died of bronchitis in 1892 (in modern terms, that may mean emphysema). A large part of his collections are in the Natural History Museum (see The Field, London, 20 February 1892). Specimens he collected went to the Natural History Museum, at that time called the British Museum (Natural History), 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.[9]
Wallace wrote an obituary of Bates in
His work
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/95/Batesplate_ArM.jpg/250px-Batesplate_ArM.jpg)
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).[11] Other members of this group included Joseph Dalton Hooker, Fritz Müller, Richard Spruce and Thomas Henry Huxley.
Bates' work on Amazonian
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ef/Grave_of_Henry_Walter_Bates.jpg/220px-Grave_of_Henry_Walter_Bates.jpg)
Bates noted of the Heliconids (long-wings) that they were forest dwellers which were:
- 1. abundant 2. conspicuous and slow-flying. 3. gregarious; and also 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 [now called Dismorphia] are much persecuted."
Bates observed that many Heliconid species are accompanied by other species (Pierids), which mimic them, and often cannot 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 takes on the appearance of an abundant, noxious species. Predators, Bates supposed, 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. These testable hypotheses about warning signals and mimicry helped to create the field of evolutionary ecology.[14]
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.[15] Field and experimental work on these ideas continues to this day; the topic connects strongly to speciation, genetics and development.[16]
Ega
Bates spent the best part of a year at Ega (now
Taxonomy
Bates' original work was done on a group of conspicuous butterflies always spelled by Bates as Heliconidae. He divided this assemblage into two groups, the Danaoid Heliconids, having affinities with the tribe
Legacy
Henry Walter Bates is commemorated in the scientific name of a species of South American boa, Corallus batesii [20] and in the name of his theory of mimicry, Batesian mimicry.
Notes
- ^ Van Wyhe J. (2014) "A Delicate Adjustment: Wallace and Bates on the Amazon and 'The Problem of the Origin of Species'" Journal of the History of Biology 47: 627-659
- ^ Clodd, in Bates H.W. 1892. The Naturalist on the River Amazons, With a Memoir of the Author by Edward Clodd. Murray, London. pxvii
- ^ Bates, H.W. (1843). "Notes on Coleopterous insects frequenting damp places". The Zoologist. 1: 114–5.
- ^ Edwards, W.H. Voyage Up the River Amazons, Including a Residence at Pará. London, 1847.
- ^ Moon H.P. 1976. Henry Walter Bates FRS 1825–1892: Explorer, Scientist and Darwinian. Leicestershire Museums, Leicester.
- ^ Van Wyhe J. (2014) "A Delicate Adjustment: Wallace and Bates on the Amazon and 'The Problem of the Origin of Species'" Journal of the History of Biology 47: 627-659
- ^ Bates H.W. 1863. The Naturalist on the River Amazons. 2 vols, Murray, London. Preface
- ^ Crawforth, Anthony (2009). The Butterfly Hunter: The Life of Henry Walter Bates. Buckingham, England: University of Buckingham Press.
- ^ Clodd, Edward (1916). Memories. London: Chapman & Hall.
- doi:10.1038/045398c0.
- .
- ^ Carpenter GDH and Ford EB 1933. Mimicry. Methuen, London.
- ^ Wickler W. 1968. Mimicry in Plants and Animals. World University Library, London.
- ^ Ruxton GD, Sherratt TN and Speed MP 2004. Avoiding Attack: The Evolutionary Ecology of Crypsis, Warning Signals and Mimicry. Oxford.
- ^ Moon H.P. 1976. Henry Walter Bates FRS 1825–1892: Explorer, Scientist and Darwinian. Leicestershire Museums, Leicester.
- .
- ^ Ega/Tefé is on the smaller tributary Tefé, nearly opposite the junction of the large tributary Japurá with the main Amazon.
- ^ Bates H.W. 1892. The Naturalist on the River Amazons, With a Memoir of the Author by Edward Clodd. Murray, London. Chapters 10–12, esp. p. 349–353.
- ^ Bates 1892, p. 350.
- ISBN 978-1-4214-0135-5. ("Bates, H. W.", p. 19).
References
Before Bates
- Edwards W.H. 1847. Voyage Up the River Amazons, Including a Residence at Pará. London. (the book that sparked Wallace and Bates to travel to the Amazon; scanned copy of US edition at Cornell University Library website)
By Bates
- Bates, H.W. (1843). "Notes on Coleopterous insects frequenting damp places". The Zoologist. 1: 114–5.
- Bates H.W. 1863. The Naturalist on the River Amazons. 2 vols, Murray, London. Volume 1; Volume 2.
- Bates H.W. 1864. The Naturalist on the River Amazons. 2nd ed as one vol, Murray, London. (this is an abridged edition with much of the natural history cut out; and it is this truncated edition which is usually reprinted. Advice: use the 1863 or 1892 editions for professional purposes) (reissued by ISBN 978-1-108-00163-2)
- Bates H.W. 1892. The Naturalist on the River Amazons, With a Memoir of the Author by Edward Clodd. (this edition, published after Bates' death, is valuable for two reasons: it is the only time since 1863 that Murray published the full text, and it includes a good short biography by Clodd)
- Bates, H.W. (1862). "Contributions to an Insect Fauna of the Amazon Valley. Lepidoptera: Heliconidae". Transactions of the Linnean Society. 23 (3): 495–566. .
- Bates H.W. 1878. Central America, the West Indies and South America, with ethnological notes by A. H. Keane. Stanford, London; second and revised edition 1882. (based on Von Hellwald's Die Erde und ihre Volker; the natural history and geographical relations of fauna and flora are wholly written by Bates; the other aspects he extensively revised and updated)
- Bates H.W. 1881-4. Biologia Centrali-Americana: Insecta Coleoptera. Volume I, Part 1.
- Bates H.W. 1886–90. Biologia Centrali-Americana: Insecta Coleoptera: Pectinicornia and Lamellicornia. Volume II, Part 2.
- Bates H.W. and D. Sharp. 1879–86. Biologia Centrali-Americana: Insecta Coleoptera: Phytophaga (part). Volume V.
About Bates
- Bedall B.G. (ed) 1969. Wallace and Bates in the Tropics: an Introduction to the Theory of Natural Selection. Macmillan, London. (includes excerpts from Bates' River Amazons)
- Clodd, Edward 1892. Memoir (of Henry Walter Bates) 70 pages plus coloured plate 'illustrations of mimicry between butterflies', xvii–lxxxvii in Bates 1892.
- Crawforth, Anthony. 2009. The Butterfly Hunter: The Life of Henry Walter Bates, University of Buckingham Press, ISBN 978-0-9560716-1-3.
- Dickenson, John. 1992. "The Naturalist on the River Amazons and a wider world: reflections on the centenary of Henry Walter Bates". The Geographical Journal, 158(2): 207–214. (fine tribute to Bates on the centenary of his death)
- Moon H.P. 1976. Henry Walter Bates FRS 1825–1892: Explorer, Scientist and Darwinian. Leicestershire Museums, Leicester. (this booklet of about 100 pages by an emeritus professor of zoology can be strongly recommended)
- Woodcock G 1969. Henry Walter Bates, Naturalist of the Amazons. Faber & Faber, London. (This, the only book-length biography, is by an author who was not a biologist. It gives a weak account of Bates' work on mimicry, says nothing about Müller, and remarks about Wallace are undistinguished. It is good on Bates' early life and his marriage, and on the travel aspects of the Amazon. The author dismisses Bates' later life too abruptly.)
Further reading
- Blaisdell, M (1982). "Natural theology and nature's disguises". Journal of the History of Biology. 15 (2): 163–189. S2CID 84793241.
External links
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg/30px-Commons-logo.svg.png)
- Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911. .
- Dictionary of National Biography (1st supplement). 1901. .
- Popular Science Monthly. Vol. 42. November 1892.
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- Works by Henry Walter Bates at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Henry Walter Bates at Internet Archive
- Works by Henry Walter Bates at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Insecta. Coleoptera Links to three volumes authored or co-authored by Bates
- Obituary, Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, volume 14, 1892, pp, 245–257
- Bragg P.E. 2007. Biographies of Phasmatologists – 1. Henry Walter Bates Archived 14 September 2017 at the Wayback Machine