Home
The Heliconius or passion-vine butterflies are tropical butterflies from the new world that show a huge diversity of wing patterns. They have undergone rapid speciation and divergence, and also show an amazing amount of convergence in wing pattern due to mimcry. Evolutionary biologists have studied these butterflies for over 150 years, and we now know a great deal about their ecology, systematics and evolution. This web site offers an introduction to their biology and current research projects studying different aspects of their genetics and evolution. We hope you like them as much as we do!
The genome sequence for Heliconius melpomene is available from LepBase. You might also want to visit the Tree of Life Heliconius pages. Butterflies of America and Michel Cast’s Heliconius pages are also useful resources for species identification.
Recent Research Publications:
A complete list of Heliconius literature is available on our publications page.