"Crenis" redirects here. As described by Boisduval in 1833, this is an invalid name of the brush-footed butterfly genus Sevenia

Sevenia

Sevenia, commonly called tree nymphs, is a genus of forest butterflies in the Nymphalidae family that, as larvae, feed on plants of the Euphorbiaceae family. There are 14 species from continental Africa and 2 species from Madagascar...

.

Heliconius comprise a colorful and widespread brush-footed butterfly genus

Genus

In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...

 distributed throughout the tropical and subtropical regions of the New World. These butterflies utilize Passion flower

Passion flower

Passiflora, known also as the passion flowers or passion vines, is a genus of about 500 species of flowering plants, the namesakes of the family Passifloraceae. They are mostly vines, with some being shrubs, and a few species being herbaceous. For information about the fruit of the passiflora...

 plants as their larval food source and rely on bright wing color patterns to signal their distastefulness to potential predators (aposematism

Aposematism

Aposematism , perhaps most commonly known in the context of warning colouration, describes a family of antipredator adaptations where a warning signal is associated with the unprofitability of a prey item to potential predators...

). Heliconius butterflies have been a subject of many studies due to their abundance and relative ease in breeding under laboratory conditions, as well as due to the extensive mimicry that occurs in this group. Studying this model group is helping scientists to understand how species are formed and why they are so diverse. They are usually unpalatable and are models for Müllerian mimicry

Müllerian mimicry

Müllerian mimicry is a natural phenomenon when two or more harmful species, that may or may not be closely related and share one or more common predators, have come to mimic each other's warning signals...

 by unrelated butterflies. Heliconius butterflies benefit from mimicking other unpalatable species of butterfly because doing so spreads the cost of educating predators. Hybrid speciation

Hybrid speciation

Hybrid speciation is the process wherein hybridization between two different closely related species leads to a distinct phenotype. This phenotype in very rare cases can also be fitter than the parental lineage and as such natural selection may then favor these individuals. Eventually, if...

 has been hypothesized to occur in this genus and may contribute to the diverse mimicry found in Heliconius butterflies. The data supporting this idea are reviewed and critiqued in.

Convergence

The Heliconius butterflies are the subjects of years of research due to the existence of Müllerian mimicry rings between species. Mimicry in Heliconius is an example of convergent evolution

Convergent evolution

Convergent evolution describes the acquisition of the same biological trait in unrelated lineages.The wing is a classic example of convergent evolution in action. Although their last common ancestor did not have wings, both birds and bats do, and are capable of powered flight. The wings are...

. Recent work has focused on understanding the genetic changes responsible for the convergent evolution of wing patterns in comimetic species. Molecular work on two distantly related Heliconius comimics, Heliconius melpomene

Heliconius melpomene

The Postman Butterfly, Common Postman, or simply Postman is one of the Heliconiine butterflies found from Mexico to northern South America. Several species in the genus have very similar markings and are difficult to distinguish.- Subspecies :Subspecies of Heliconius melpomene include:*...

and Heliconius erato

Heliconius erato

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.-Description:The species is remarkably variable in colour and form throughout...

, has revealed that homologous genomic regions in the species are responsible for the convergence in wing patterns.

Speciation

Heliconius butterflies are also models for the study of speciation

Speciation

Speciation is the evolutionary process by which new biological species arise. The biologist Orator F. Cook seems to have been the first to coin the term 'speciation' for the splitting of lineages or 'cladogenesis,' as opposed to 'anagenesis' or 'phyletic evolution' occurring within lineages...

. It has been proposed that two closely related species, H. cydno and H. melpomene, hybridized to create the species H. heurippa. Assortive mating reproductively isolates H. heurippa from its parental species. This is considered by some to represent a rare example of speciation through hybridization in animals (but see reference [1], below).

Species

Most current researchers agree that there are some 39 Heliconius species. These are listed alphabetically here, according to Gerardo Lamas' (2004) checklist. Note that the subspecific nomenclature is incomplete for many species (there are over 2000 published names associated with the genus, many of which are subjective synonyms or infrasubspecific names).

• Heliconius Kluk, 1802
  • Heliconius antiochus (Linnaeus, 1767) – Antiochus Longwing

• • Heliconius astraea Staudinger, 1897
  • Heliconius atthis
    Heliconius atthis
    False Zebra Longwing or Atthis Longwing is a species of Heliconius butterfly....
    
    Doubleday, 1847 – Athis Longwing or False Zebra Longwing
  • Heliconius beskei Ménétriés, 1857
  • Heliconius burneyi (Hübner, 1816) – Burney's Longwing

• • Heliconius charithonia (Linnaeus, 1767) – Zebra Longwing
    

• • Heliconius clysonymus Latreille, 1817 – Clysonymus Longwing

• • Heliconius congener Weymer, 1890
  • Heliconius cydno
    Heliconius cydno
    Heliconius cydno is a nymphalid butterfly commonly known as the Cydno Longwing that ranges from Mexico to northern South America....
    
    (Doubleday, 1847) – Cydno Longwing

• • Heliconius demeter Staudinger, 1897

• • Heliconius egeria (Cramer, 1775)

• • Heliconius eleuchia Hewitson, 1853 – Eleuchia Longwing

• • Heliconius elevatus Nöldner, 1901

• • Heliconius erato
    Heliconius erato
    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.-Description:The species is remarkably variable in colour and form throughout...
    
    (Linnaeus, 1764) – Crimson-patched Longwing, Red Postman

• • Heliconius ethilla (Godart, 1819) – Ethilia Longwing

• • Heliconius hecale
    Heliconius hecale
    The Tiger Longwing or Golden Helicon is a Heliconiid butterfly that occurs from Mexico to the Peruvian Amazon.-Subspecies:*H. h. hecale*H. h. anderida Hewitson, [1853]*H. h. quitalena Hewitson, [1853]...
    
    (Fabricius, 1775) – Tiger Longwing or Hecale Longwing
    

• • Heliconius hecalesia
    Heliconius hecalesia
    The Five-spotted Longwing is a species of butterfly of the Nymphalidae family. It is found from Central America to Venezuela and Ecuador.The wingspan is 50–61 mm. Adults feed on flower nectar....
    
    Hewitson, 1853 – Five-spotted Longwing

• • Heliconius hecuba (Hewitson, [1858])

• • Heliconius hermathena (Hewitson, 1853) – Hermathena Longwing

• • Heliconius heurippa
    Heliconius heurippa
    Heliconius heurippa is a butterfly of the genus Heliconius that is believed by some scientists to be a separate species from—but a hybrid of—the species Heliconius cydno and Heliconius melpomene, making H. heurippa an example of hybrid speciation.-Hybridation:The color pattern of H....
    
    (Hewitson, 1853)
  • Heliconius hewitsoni Staudinger, 1875
  • Heliconius hierax Hewitson, 1869
  • Heliconius himera Hewitson, 1867
  • Heliconius hortense Guérin, [1844] – Mexican Longwing or Mountain Langwing
  • Heliconius ismenius
    Heliconius ismenius
    Heliconius ismenius, also called the Ismenius Tiger or Tiger Heliconian, is a butterfly found in Central America and northern South America. They are highly populous as south as Ecuador and Venezuela and as north as southern Mexico, Guatemala and Belize. The H. ismenius are more commonly called...
    
    Latreille, [1817] – Ismenius Tiger or Tiger Helconian

• • Heliconius lalitae Brévignon, 1996
  • Heliconius leucadia (Bates, 1862) – Leucadia Longwing

• • Heliconius melpomene
    Heliconius melpomene
    The Postman Butterfly, Common Postman, or simply Postman is one of the Heliconiine butterflies found from Mexico to northern South America. Several species in the genus have very similar markings and are difficult to distinguish.- Subspecies :Subspecies of Heliconius melpomene include:*...
    
    (Linnaeus, 1758) – (Common) Postman
  • Heliconius nattereri Felder, 1865 – Natterer's Longwing
  • Heliconius numata
    Heliconius numata
    The Numata Longwing is a brush-footed butterfly species native to most of South America, known for its mimicry of Melinaea butterflies. Both H. numata and the species of Melinaea it resembles are unpalatable to predators, making this a case of Müllerian mimicry, a mutualistic reinforcement of the...
    
    (Cramer, 1780) – Numata Longwing

• • Heliconius pachinus Salvin, 1871 – Pachinus Longwing
  • Heliconius pardalinus (Bates, 1862)

• • Heliconius peruvianus Felder – Peruvian Longwing
  • Heliconius ricini (Linnaeus, 1758) – Ricini Longwing
  • Heliconius sapho (Drury, 1782) – Sapho Longwing

• • Heliconius sara (Fabricius, 1793) – Sara Longwing
    

• • Heliconius sergestus (Weymer, 1894)
  • Heliconius telesiphe Doubleday, 1847 – Telesiphe Longwing

• • Heliconius timareta (Hewitson, 1867)
  • Heliconius tristero Brower, 1996
  • Heliconius wallacei Reakirt, 1866 – Wallace's Longwing

• • Heliconius xanthocles Bates, 1862

Sometimes placed in Heliconius:

• Laparus doris
  Laparus doris
  The Doris Longwing is a butterfly of the Nymphalidae family and only member of the Laparus genus. It is found from Central America to the Amazon.It is found from sea level to 1800 metres in forest clearings....
  
  (Linnaeus, 1771) – Doris Longwing

External links

• Heliconius Research Worldwide
• Tree of Life: Heliconius