Müllerian Postman, Pt. 2 - _TNY_6291
The Heliconians or longwings are a genus of butterflies living in South America and a bit up through southern United States.
The larvae of these feed on pasion flower vines and they manage to store the poison from them which make themselves unpalatable.
Heliconius butterflies engage in something called Müllerian mimicry. This is different from Batesian mimicry like when a harmless hoverfly mimics a wasp to avoid predation. In Müllerian mimicry, the warning colours of the different species are honest as they are all unpalatable - but with them having similar colours it makes it easier for the predators to tell that these should be avoided as there are more species (and thus specimens) looking the same way.
Researchers sort of agree on there being 39 species in the genus, but there are loads and loads of sub species and even hybrids between the different species - there are over 2000(!) published names associated with the species of this genus.
As you can imagine, this makes figuring out an ID a bit hard, but from what I have gathered so far, this beauty best match the subspecies Heliconius melpomene emilius - which if I understand correctly actually is a hybrid between H. melpomene and H. cydno.
I am an absolute beginner with this so take my ramblings with a sizeable grain of salt. Either way, this specimen was photographed at the Haga Ocean butterfly House in Solna, Sweden and I think we can agree it is a pretty species, right?
Part one is a really successful shot, showing the just as pretty underside here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/51975345439/
Müllerian Postman, Pt. 2 - _TNY_6291
The Heliconians or longwings are a genus of butterflies living in South America and a bit up through southern United States.
The larvae of these feed on pasion flower vines and they manage to store the poison from them which make themselves unpalatable.
Heliconius butterflies engage in something called Müllerian mimicry. This is different from Batesian mimicry like when a harmless hoverfly mimics a wasp to avoid predation. In Müllerian mimicry, the warning colours of the different species are honest as they are all unpalatable - but with them having similar colours it makes it easier for the predators to tell that these should be avoided as there are more species (and thus specimens) looking the same way.
Researchers sort of agree on there being 39 species in the genus, but there are loads and loads of sub species and even hybrids between the different species - there are over 2000(!) published names associated with the species of this genus.
As you can imagine, this makes figuring out an ID a bit hard, but from what I have gathered so far, this beauty best match the subspecies Heliconius melpomene emilius - which if I understand correctly actually is a hybrid between H. melpomene and H. cydno.
I am an absolute beginner with this so take my ramblings with a sizeable grain of salt. Either way, this specimen was photographed at the Haga Ocean butterfly House in Solna, Sweden and I think we can agree it is a pretty species, right?
Part one is a really successful shot, showing the just as pretty underside here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/51975345439/