on wing patterns

[Chris J. Durden]

It sounds like a hybrid swarm that was imported! There are many papers on 
Heliconiine biogeography, subspeciation and hybridization. Look up some of 
the papers by Keith Brown.
Several species have subspecies that differ as those individuals you 
describe. In areas where these species occur together the subspecies 
resemble each other. One region may hold a set of species all of which look 
like *erato*, an adjacent region may hold a set of the same species, but 
they are black-striped orange. One must resort to subtle characters like 
body spots or genitalia to identify the species in each region.
.............Chris Durden


At 12:00 PM 2/4/2001 -0400, you wrote:
>Yesterday I visited the winter greenhouse facility of the Butterfly Garden in
>Westboro, MA, operated by George Leslie, whom some of you must know. There
>were many heliconines of the same species, a colony George started with
>animals imported from a British supplier. Uncharacteristically for George, he
>couldn't think of the species name just then! What was striking was the range
>of wing patterns; some with red or yellow on a black background, like H. erato
>or H. clysonymus, others with a more D. iulia coloration (no, they weren't D.
>iulia, though he has those too).
>
>Chris or anyone, do any light bulbs click on? Do you recognize the species
>from that information alone, and can you tell me anything about this
>(possible) balanced polymorphism (or might it be hybridization)?
>
>Woody
>
>Chris J. Durden wrote:
> >
> > ... Ecotypes are the varieties that occur in balanced
> > polymorphism with the "typical" genotype and can be demonstrated to be
> > genetically determined. They coexist with the "typical"  genotype because
> > of some bi- or polymodality of the niche. There is not enough separation of
> > the modalities of selection to disconnect the genetic exchange that keeps
> > them conspecific, yet the selective peaks are strong enough to keep pulling
> > them apart.
> > ...............Chris Durden
> >
>*********************************************************
>William A. Woods Jr.
>Department of Biology
>University of Massachusetts Boston
>100 Morrissey Blvd                      Lab: 617-287-6642
>Boston, MA 02125                        Fax: 617-287-6650
>*********************************************************



 
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