Basic information
Introduction
Heliconius melpomene, the postman butterfly, common postman or simply postman, is a brightly colored butterfly found throughout Mexico and Central America. It was first described by Carl Linnaeus in his 1758 10th edition of Systema Naturae. Its coloration coevolved with a sister species Heliconius erato as a warning to predators of its inedibility; this is an example of Müllerian mimicry. Heliconius 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, Heliconius 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.
WiKi
NCBI
Sex chromosome system: ZW
