The mimic poison frog Ranitomeya (Dendrobates) imitator is polymorphic, with a striped morph that imitates the black and yellow striped morph of Ranitomeya variabilis, a spotted morph that imitates the largely blue-green highland spotted morph also of R. variabilis, and a banded morph that imitates the red and black banded Ranitomeya summersi.
R. imitator has thus apparently evolved in separate populations to resemble different targets, i.e. it has changed to resemble (adverged on) those target species, rather than both R. imitator and the other species mutually converging in the way that Müller supposed for tropical butterflies.
Such advergence may be common. The mechanism was proposed by the entomologist F. A. Dixey in 1909 and has remained controversial; the evolutionary biologist James Mallet, reviewing the situation in 2001, suggested that in Müllerian mimicry, advergence may be more common than convergence. In advergent evolution, the mimicking species responds to predation by coming to resemble the model more and more closely. Any initial benefit is thus to the mimic, and there is no implied mutualism, as there would be with Müllers original convergence theory. However, once model and mimic have become closely similar, some degree of mutual protection becomes likely. This theory would predict that all mimicking species in an area should converge on a single pattern of coloration. This does not appear to happen in nature, however, as Heliconius' butterflies form multiple Müllerian mimicry rings in a single geographical area. The finding implies that additional evolutionary forces are probably at work.