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Heliconius hortense Guérin-Méneville 1844

Margarita Beltrán
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Containing group: Heliconius

Characteristics

Early stages: Eggs are yellow and females usually place eggs singly on growing shoots of the host plant. Mature larvae have a white body with black and orange spots, black scoli and yellow head; length is around 1.3 cm. Caterpillars are solitary (Brown, 1981).

Geographical Distribution

Heliconius hortense is distributed from Mexico to Nicaragua. This map shows an approximate representation of the geographic distribution of this species. The original data used to draw these maps are derived from Brown (1979) which is available at Keith S. Brown Jr. (1979). Ecological Geography and Evolution in Neotropical Forests

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Distribution of Heliconius clysonymus and Heliconius hortense. © 2002 Margarita Beltran.

Habits

H. hortense occurs from sea level to 2,300 m in cloud forest.  Usually individuals fly rapidly and in the lowerstory. The males sit on female pupae a day before emergence, and mating occurs the next morning, before the female has completely eclosed. Adults roost at night in small groups 2-10 m above ground in twigs or tendrils (Brown, 1981).

Host plant: H. hortense larvae feed primarily on plants from the genus Passiflora, subgenus Plectostemma (Brown, 1981).

References

Brown K. S. 1981 The Biology of Heliconius and Related Genera. Annual Review of Entomology 26, 427-456.

Guérin-Méneville F E 1844. Dixième ordre.- Les lépidoptères, pp. 466-530. In: Icono-graphie du Règne Animal de G. Cuvier... Paris, J. B. Baillière

Title Illustrations
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Scientific Name Heliconius hortense
Location Selva Negra, Nicaragua
Specimen Condition Live Specimen
Sex Female
Source Mountain Longwing
Source Collection Neotropical Butterflies
Copyright © 2003 Richard Lehman
Scientific Name Heliconius hortense
Location Selva Negra, Nicaragua
Specimen Condition Live Specimen
Sex Female
Source Mountain Longwing
Source Collection Neotropical Butterflies
Copyright © 2003 Richard Lehman
About This Page


University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

Correspondence regarding this page should be directed to Margarita Beltrán at

Page: Tree of Life Heliconius hortense Guérin-Méneville 1844. Authored by Margarita Beltrán. The TEXT of this page is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License - Version 3.0. Note that images and other media featured on this page are each governed by their own license, and they may or may not be available for reuse. Click on an image or a media link to access the media data window, which provides the relevant licensing information. For the general terms and conditions of ToL material reuse and redistribution, please see the Tree of Life Copyright Policies.

Citing this page:

Beltrán, Margarita. 2008. Heliconius hortense Guérin-Méneville 1844. Version 12 August 2008 (under construction). http://tolweb.org/Heliconius_hortense/72233/2008.08.12 in The Tree of Life Web Project, http://tolweb.org/

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