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Heliconius
''Heliconius'' comprises a colorful and widespread genus of brush-footed butterflies commonly known as the longwings or heliconians. This genus is distributed throughout the tropical and subtropical regions of the New World, from South America as far north as the southern United States. The larvae of these butterflies eat passion flower vines (Passifloraceae). Adults exhibit bright wing color patterns which signal their distastefulness to potential predators. Brought to the forefront of scientific attention by Victorian naturalists, these butterflies exhibit a striking diversity and mimicry, both amongst themselves and with species in other groups of butterflies and moths. The study of ''Heliconius'' and other groups of mimetic butterflies allowed the English naturalist Henry Walter Bates, following his return from Brazil in 1859, to lend support to Charles Darwin, who had found similar diversity amongst the Galápagos finches. Model for evolutionary study ''Heliconius'' b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heliconius Numata
''Heliconius numata'', the Numata longwing, is a brush-footed butterfly species belonging to the family Nymphalidae, subfamily Heliconiinae. Distribution and habitat This species is native to most of South America, from Venezuela to southern Brazil (Guyana, French Guiana, Surinam, Guatemala, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil and Peru). ''H. numata'' is a neotropical species, less common in virgin forest than in areas of secondary growth. It occurs at an elevation of above sea level in tall forests. Subspecies Subspecies include: *''Heliconius numata numata'' (Surinam, French Guiana, Guyana) *''Heliconius numata silvana'' (Stoll, 1781) (Surinam, Guyana, Venezuela, Guatemala, Brazil: Pará, Amazonas) *''Heliconius numata ethra'' (Hübner, 831 (Brazil: Espírito Santo) *''Heliconius numata aristiona'' Hewitson, 853/small> (Bolivia, Peru) *''Heliconius numata aurora'' Bates, 1862 (Brazil: Amazonas, Colombia, Bolivia, Peru) *''Heliconius numata euphone'' C. & R. Felder, 1862 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heliconius Erato
''Heliconius erato'', or the red postman, is one of about 40 neotropical species of butterfly belonging to the genus ''Heliconius''. It is also commonly known as the small postman, the red passion flower butterfly, or the crimson-patched longwing. It was described by Carl Linnaeus in his 1758 10th edition of ''Systema Naturae''. ''H. erato'' exhibits Müllerian mimicry with other ''Heliconius'' butterflies such as ''Heliconius melpomene'' in order to warn common predators against attacking, which contributes to its surprising longevity. It also has a unique mating ritual involving the transfer of anti-aphrodisiacs from males to females. Recent field work has confirmed the relative abundance of this butterfly. Habitat and home range ''H. erato'' is a neotropical species, found from southern Texas to northern Argentina and Paraguay, and resides on the edges of tropical rainforests. It is philopatric, having a particularly restricted home range. In areas of dense population in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heliconius Melpomene
''Heliconius melpomene'', the postman butterfly, common postman or simply postman, is a brightly colored butterfly found throughout Central and South America. It was first described by Carl Linnaeus in his 1758 10th edition of ''Systema Naturae''. Its coloration coevolved with a sister species '' H. erato'' as a warning to predators of its inedibility; this is an example of Müllerian mimicry. ''H. melpomene'' was one of the first butterfly species observed to forage for pollen, a behavior that is common in other groups but rare in butterflies. Because of the recent rapid evolutionary radiation of the genus ''Heliconius'' and overlapping of its habitat with other related species, ''H. melpomene'' has been the subject of extensive study on speciation and hybridization. These hybrids tend to have low fitness as they look different from the original species and no longer exhibit Müllerian mimicry. ''Heliconius melpomene'' possesses ultraviolet vision which enha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Papilio Charithonia
''Heliconius charithonia'', the zebra longwing or zebra heliconian, is a species of butterfly belonging to the subfamily Heliconiinae of the family Nymphalidae. It was first described by Carl Linnaeus in his 1767 12th edition of ''Systema Naturae''. The boldly striped black and white wing pattern is aposematic, warning off predators. The species is distributed across South and Central America and as far north as southern Texas and peninsular Florida; there are migrations north into other American states in the warmer months. Zebra longwing adults roost communally at night in groups of up to 60 adults for safety from predators. The adult butterflies are unusual in feeding on pollen as well as on nectar; the pollen enables them to synthesize cyanogenic glycosides that make their bodies toxic to potential predators. Caterpillars feed on various species of passionflower, evading the plants' defensive trichomes by biting them off or laying silk mats over them. Mass spraying of naled ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Müllerian Mimicry
Müllerian mimicry is a natural phenomenon in which two or more well-defended species, often foul-tasting and sharing common predators, have come to mimic each other's honest warning signals, to their mutual benefit. The benefit to Müllerian mimics is that predators only need one unpleasant encounter with one member of a set of Müllerian mimics, and thereafter avoid all similar coloration, whether or not it belongs to the same species as the initial encounter. It is named after the German naturalist Fritz Müller, who first proposed the concept in 1878, supporting his theory with the first mathematical model of frequency-dependent selection, one of the first such models anywhere in biology. Müllerian mimicry was first identified in tropical butterflies that shared colourful wing patterns, but it is found in many groups of insects such as bumblebees, and other animals including poison frogs and coral snakes. The mimicry need not be visual; for example, many snakes share a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Passion Flower
''Passiflora'', known also as the passion flowers or passion vines, is a genus of about 550 species of flowering plants, the type genus of the family Passifloraceae. They are mostly tendril-bearing vines, with some being shrubs or trees. They can be woody or herbaceous. Passion flowers produce regular and usually showy flowers with a distinctive corona. There can be as many as eight coronal series, as in the case of ''P. xiikzodz''. The flower is pentamerous and ripens into an indehiscent fruit with numerous seeds. List of species Distribution ''Passiflora'' has a largely neotropic distribution, unlike other genera in the family Passifloraceae, which includes more Old World species (such as the genus ''Adenia''). The vast majority of ''Passiflora'' are found in Mexico, Central America, the United States and South America, although there are additional representatives in Southeast Asia and Oceania. New species continue to be identified: for example, '' P. xishuangbannaensis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mimicry
In evolutionary biology, mimicry is an evolved resemblance between an organism and another object, often an organism of another species. Mimicry may evolve between different species, or between individuals of the same species. Often, mimicry functions to protect a species from predators, making it an anti-predator adaptation. Mimicry evolves if a receiver (such as a predator) perceives the similarity between a mimic (the organism that has a resemblance) and a model (the organism it resembles) and as a result changes its behaviour in a way that provides a selective advantage to the mimic. The resemblances that evolve in mimicry can be visual, acoustic, chemical, tactile, or electric, or combinations of these sensory modalities. Mimicry may be to the advantage of both organisms that share a resemblance, in which case it is a form of mutualism; or mimicry can be to the detriment of one, making it parasitic or competitive. The evolutionary convergence between groups is driven by th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Species
In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. Other ways of defining species include their karyotype, DNA sequence, morphology, behaviour or ecological niche. In addition, paleontologists use the concept of the chronospecies since fossil reproduction cannot be examined. The most recent rigorous estimate for the total number of species of eukaryotes is between 8 and 8.7 million. However, only about 14% of these had been described by 2011. All species (except viruses) are given a two-part name, a "binomial". The first part of a binomial is the genus to which the species belongs. The second part is called the specific name or the specific epithet (in botanical nomenclature, also sometimes i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Walter Bates
Henry Walter Bates (8 February 1825, in Leicester – 16 February 1892, in London) 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 rainforests of the Amazon with Alfred Russel Wallace, starting in 1848. Wallace returned in 1852, but lost his collection on the return voyage when his ship caught fire. When Bates arrived home in 1859 after a full eleven years, he had sent back over 14,712 species (mostly of insects) of which 8,000 were (according to Bates, but see Van Wyhe) new to science. Bates wrote up his findings in his best-known work, ''The Naturalist on the River Amazons''. Life Bates was born in Leicester to a literate middle-class family. However, like Wallace, T.H. Huxley and Herbert Spencer, he had a normal education to the age of about 13 when he became apprenticed to a hosiery manufacturer. He joined the Mechanics' Institute (which had a library), studied in his spare t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stalachtis
''Stalachtis'' is a genus of metalmark butterflies (family Riodinidae). It is currently the only member of the tribe Stalachtini, but many metalmark butterflies are yet to be unequivocally assigned to tribes, so this might change eventually. They are essentially limited to the Amazon biome and the surrounding regions. They are part of complex mimicry rings with ''Ithomeis'', ''Heliconius'' and Ithomiinae Ithomiini is a butterfly tribe in the nymphalid subfamily Danainae. It is sometimes referred to as the tribe of clearwing butterflies or glasswing butterflies. Some authors consider the group to be a subfamily (Ithomiinae). These butterflies are .... Selected species * '' Stalachtis calliope'' * '' Stalachtis euterpe'' * '' Stalachtis halloweeni'' * '' Stalachtis magdalena'' * '' Stalachtis phaedusa'' * '' Stalachtis phlegia'' File:Stalachtis euterpe 1.jpg, '' Stalachtis euterpe'' File: Stalachtis phaedusa MHNT.jpg, '' Stalachtis phaedusa'' References External linksT ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Papilio Zagreus
''Papilio zagreus'' is a butterfly of the family Papilionidae (swallowtails). It is found in South America, including Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and western Brazil. Description A powerfully built insect with strong neuration in the forewing. The frons is either quite black or bears a yellow mesial line, never a yellow lateral streak along the eye. The antennae are long, yellow, with thin club; the frons has a yellow mesial stripe, the breast is diagonally streaked with yellow, the abdomen is for the most part yellow, the costal margin of the forewing is not dentate, the cell of the forewing is broad and the hindwing is rounded, without a tail. The spots of the forewing orange, the marginal ones yellow; hindwing orange, a marginal band enclosing a yellow submarginal spot, a basal subcostal area, a patch in the extremity of the cell, as well as several spots on the disc, black. The wingspan is 110–130 mm. Biology ''Papilio zagreus'' is a palatable Batesian ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ithomeis
''Ithomeis'' is a genus in the butterfly family Riodinidae present only in the Neotropical realm. Species *'' Ithomeis aurantiaca'' Bates, 1862 present in Guyana, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Peru *'' Ithomeis eulema'' Hewitson, 1870 present in Costa Rica, Panama, Venezuela and Colombia Biology Both species are mimics. The pattern of black, orange, and large translucent areas found in ''Ithomeis'' is shared by toxic genera from the Ithomiinae (examples are '' Ithomia'' and '' Oleria'') and a number of toxic Arctiidae. The pattern is also shared with several other Riodinidae genera (examples are '' Stalachtis'', '' Ithomiola'', and '' Brachyglenis''), which may be part of mimicry rings. ''I. aurantiaca'' has several subspecies; some are very different in appearance and were formerly regarded as full species. '' I. a. satellites'' and '' I. a. astrea'' closely resemble species of ''Heliconius''. Other subspecies include '' I. a. mimica'' and ''I a. stalachtina'', whic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
