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Heliconius Information

About 39, see species list in text.

Synonyms

Ajantis Hübner, 1816 Apostraphia Hübner, 1816 Blanchardia Buchecker, 1880 non Castelnau, 1875: preoccupied) Crenis Hübner, 1821 Heliconia Godart 1819 Heliconius Latreille, 1804 Laparus Billberg 1820 Migonitis Hübner, 1816 (non Rafinesque, 1815: preoccupied) Neruda Turner 1976 Phlogris Hübner, 1825 Podalirius Gistel, 1848 Sunias Hübner, 1816 Sicyonia Hübner, 1816

Heliconius comprise a colorful and widespread brush-footed butterfly genus distributed throughout the tropical and subtropical regions of the New World. These butterflies utilize Passion flower plants as their larval food source and rely on bright wing color patterns to signal their distastefulness to potential predators (aposematism). 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 by unrelated butterflies. Heliconius butterflies benefit from mimicking other unpalatable species of butterfly because doing so spreads the cost of educating predators. Hybrid speciation has been hypothesized to occur in this genus and may account for the diverse mimicry found in Heliconius butterflies. The data supporting this idea are reviewed and critiqued in [1].

Contents

A Model for Evolutionary Study

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. Recent work has focused on understanding what genetic changes are responsible for the convergent evolution of wing patterns in comimicking Heliconius butterflies. Molecular work on two distantly related Heliconius comimics, Heliconius melpomene and Heliconius erato, revealed that homologous genomic regions in the species are responsible for the convergence in wing patterns.[2][3][4]

Speciation

Heliconius butterflies are also models for the study of speciation. It has been proposed that two closely related species, H. cydno and H. melpomene, hybridized to create to the species H. heurippa. Assortive mating reproductively isolates H. heurippa from its parental species.[5] This is considered by some to represent a rare example of speciation through hybridization (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.[6] 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).[7][8][9]

References

  1. ^ Brower AVZ (2011). "Hybrid speciation in Heliconius butterflies? A review and critique of the evidence". Genetica 139 (2): 589-609. doi:10.1007/s10709-010-9530-4.
  2. ^ Baxter, S. W., R. Papa, N. Chamberlain, S. J. Humphray, M. Joron, C. Morrison, R. H. Ffrench-Constant et al. 2008. Convergent evolution in the genetic basis of müllerian mimicry in heliconius butterflies. Genetics 180:1567-1577
  3. ^ Counterman, B. A., F. Araujo-Perez, H. M. Hines, S. W. Baxter, C. M. Morrison, D. P. Lindstrom, R. Papa et al. 2010. Genomic hotspots for adaptation: The population genetics of Müllerian mimicry in heliconius erato. Plos Genetics 6:-.
  4. ^ Joron, M., R. Papa, M. Beltran, N. Chamberlain, J. Mavarez, S. Baxter, M. Abanto et al. 2006. A conserved supergene locus controls colour pattern diversity in heliconius butterflies. Plos Biology 4:1831-1840
  5. ^ Mavarez, J., C. A. Salazar, E. Bermingham, C. Salcedo, C. D. Jiggins, and M. Linares. 2006. Speciation by hybridization in heliconius butterflies. Nature 441:868-871.
  6. ^ Lamas, G., Ed. (2004) Atlas of Neotropical Lepidoptera. Checklist: Part 4A Hesperioidea - Papiionoidea. Gainesville, Scientific Publishers/Association of Tropical Lepidoptera.
  7. ^ Heliconiini, Nymphalidae Study Group website
  8. ^ Heliconius, funet.fi
  9. ^ Heliconius, Neotropical Butterflies

External links

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Categories: Heliconiini | Heliconius

 

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