It is only neo-darwinian pressuposition that a butterfly mimicing wasps are protected having wasp coloration. Probably no serious research has been done yet.
You would be incorrect in your guesses. Serious research has been done in the field.
For example:
In 2001 Dr. David W. Pfennig (UNC-Chapel Hill), Dr. Karin S. Pfennig (UT Austin's College of Natural Sciences), and William Harcombe (UNC-Chapel Hill undergraduate) studied the Scarlet King Snake (
Lampropeltis triangulum) a non-poisonous snake that mimics the poisonous species Eastern Coral Snake (
Micrurus fulvius).
They designed an experiment placing artificial King Snakes and an artificial brown snake as a control within the region and outside of the region that the poisonous snakes are found. The experiment was to see if mimicing the poisonous snake reduced the amount of attacks in the region where the two snake species are found together.[1]
They found that within the region where the poisonous snake was found 84% more attacks where made on the control group (brown) than the 16% of attacks on the mimicing King Snake. Outside the area however 83% of the attacks where made on the King Snake while the control only suffered 17% of the attacks.[2]
This experiment does show that the mimicing King snake does get attacked less often within the region where Coral snakes are found. It also shows that outside this region such bright colors can be a disadvantage as it suffered not an equal amount of attacks as the control but more attacks.
[1]Campbell, N.A., Reece, J.B. 2005.
Biology, seventh ed. Pearson Education, Inc., pp.22
[2]Campbell, N.A., Reece, J.B. 2005.
Biology, seventh ed. Pearson Education, Inc., pp.23