Word.ws English Dictionary

Pouyannian mimicry

Pouyannian mimicry noun: a type of mimicry exhibited by some plants, whereby certain flower parts resemble a (female) potential mate for a male of a pollinator species, thus inducing pseudocopulation.

Noun

Pouyannian mimicry (uncountable)

  1. A type of mimicry exhibited by some plants, whereby certain flower parts resemble a (female) potential mate for a male of a pollinator species, thus inducing pseudocopulation.
    • The plant world is full of mimics. In Pouyannian mimicry, a flower mimics a female insect to attract the right male pollinator.2017, Wiley Blevins, Ninja Plants, Lerner Publishing Group (Twenty-First Century Books), page 52

Origin of Pouyannian mimicry

Coined 1982 by Georges Pasteur, after Maurice-Alexandre Pouyanne, who described the behaviour in orchids in a 1916 paper.

Questions about Pouyannian mimicry

What does Pouyannian mimicry mean?
Pouyannian mimicry means a type of mimicry exhibited by some plants, whereby certain flower parts resemble a (female) potential mate for a male of a pollinator species, thus inducing pseudocopulation.
What part of speech is Pouyannian mimicry?
Pouyannian mimicry is a noun.

Words near Pouyannian mimicry in the dictionary

  1. pouts
  2. poutsome
  3. pouty
  4. Pouyan
  5. Pouyanne
  6. Pouyannian mimicry
  7. pouzacite
  8. Pouzzner
  9. pov
  10. Považská Bystrica
  11. Poveda

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Pouyannian mimicry (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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