New from Jessie Foley!

#Heliconius have elongated lives and excellent memory, but do they have excellent memory across their elongated lives? Find out now!*

Featuring learning and memory assays in 330 butterflies, and an absolute pig of an experiment to do.

*the title is a spoiler 🧪

A splash of colour
for a grey rainy day with this
beautiful tiger passion flower butterfly 🖤

#Heliconius #hecale #longwing #Schmetterling
#butterfly #Nikon #Fotografie 📷 🌿 🦋
#photography #wildlife

I barely found the time and now half the day is already over.

So I'll just quickly wish you all a good start to the new week🖖

Side note
The first snow has fallen outside the door ❄☃

#Heliconius #hecale #Schmetterling
#butterfly #Nikon #Fotografie 📷 🌿 🦋
#photography #wildlife

Orientation flights are well described behaviours in bees, which perform looping flights to capture visual landscape cues as part of spatial learning - ants do a similar loopy walk. #Heliconius butterflies also learn spatial information, but we understand less about how… 2/n 🧪

Very interesting work from @borreroja.bsky.social on the unique foraging behaviours of #Heliconius!

The first of Jessie Foley’s work on the #evolution of #ageing in #Heliconius for your reading pleasure.

Come for the 348 day old butterfly, stay for the evolved slower rate of ageing, species*diet effects, and weightlifting for elderly butterflies 💪🏻👵🏻

🧪

#Heliconius

Borboleta-carteiro-vermelho (Heliconius erato phyllis) pousada em flores pequenas, numerosas e tubulares de Lantana camara de cor amarela. Esta borboleta é majoritariamente preta com manchas vermelhas, irregulares e simétricas na asas dianteiras e barras horizontais também simétricas na cor verde fantasma de ambos os lados das asas traseiras. Apresenta pintas no tórax, antenas pretas e olhos compostos. O fundo são folhas de lantana parcialmente focadas e no segundo plano vegetação desfocada.

Borboleta-carteiro-vermelho (Heliconius erato phyllis)
#Nymphalidae #Heliconius

New Preprint from the lab, and the second half of Elizabeth Hodge’s masters project - we dived into whether shifts in visual #foraging behaviours and spatial #memory in #Heliconius involved changes in sensory systems🧪 1/n

Ventral and dorsal views of four Heliconius butterflies, mostly black with red, white or yellow bands and edging

David’s thesis focused in part on parallel divergence in two parapatric species pairs of #Heliconius butterflies in Colombia and Ecuador, where two species, himera and chestertonii, independently colonised high altitude (for a butterfly) Andean scrub forest 2/n

Repeated evolution of reduced visual investment at the onset of ecological speciation in high-altitude Heliconius butterflies Abstract. Colonization of new habitats is typically followed by divergent selection acting on traits that are immediately important for fitness. For exampl

New from @gadusmo.bsky.social’s PhD thesis 👐🏼 with @dickmerrill.bsky.social, Jake Morris, Camilo Salazar and Carolina Pardo-Díaz

‘Repeated evolution of reduced visual investment at the onset of ecological speciation in high-altitude #Heliconius butterflies’ 1/n 🧪

academic.oup.com/evlett/advan...

very interesting collection, expertly compiled by @ellileadbeater.bsky.social & @cornishjackdaws.bsky.social!

Featuring Hodge*, Alcalde Anton et al! ‘Modality specific long term #memory enhancement in #Heliconius butterflies’ 🧪

*Elizabeth’s 1st paper 🍾

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Rapid expansion and visual specialisation of learning and memory centres in the brains of Heliconiini butterflies - Nature Communications Changes in the abundance and diversity of neural cell types provide the substrate for behavioral evolution. This study provides evidence of extensive, mosaic expansion of an integration brain center, ...

Both posts are part of our @wellcometrust.bsky.social funded project 'Developmental control of neural cell number and type’, which builds on our work on mushroom body expansion in #Heliconius butterflies (e.g. see www.nature.com/articles/s41...)
2/n

The Postman and Red Postman #butterflies release cyanide.

Predators have learnt not to take a bite.

Thus, the Postmen help even Sypho and Cydno longwing butterflies as all participate in #MullerianMimicry.

#HeliconiusMelpomene #HeliconiusErato
#ecology #biology #maps #biodiversity
#Heliconius

Distinct evolutionary trajectories of two integration centres, the central complex and mushroom bodies, across Heliconiini butterflies Neural circuits have evolved to produce cognitive processes that facilitate a species variable behavioural repertoire. Underlying this variation are evolutionary forces, such as selection, that operat...

Really happy to share our new preprint on the central complex of Heliconiini butterflies www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1.... Check it out!
@neuroethology.org @brainevolutionnews.bsky.social @prelights.bsky.social @tibbe-evolneuro.bsky.social #brainevolution #heliconius #centralcomplex

#Heliconius

Three Heliconius melpomene butterflies feeding on an orange artificial flower, with one in the background

A Heliconius melpomene butterfly resting on a yellow microfibre cloth. The butterfly has black wings with a yellow vertical band on each fore wing and a yellow horizontal band on the hind wings.

A Heliconius melpomene larvae, white with black spines

Boxing Day at the Old Park Hill Greenhouses #Heliconius

Tiger Longwing - The Heliconius genus, often called longwings, is famous for its elongated wings and vibrant patterns of black, orange, and yellow.

Visit: pacnorthimages.mypixieset.com

#TigerLongwing #Heliconius
#ButterflyBeauty #WildlifePhotography #CostaRicaNature #TropicalButterflies

On a wing and a prayer: the hidden beauty of insect’s flight – in pictures Artist Xavi Bou has created an eye-popping series celebrating fascinating creatures that are too often seen only as a nuisance

Some unique photos of #Heliconius in here!

www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

Also the second of two awesome gifts this term after this beautiful illustration of a #Heliconius erato from Louise Bestea, whose fellowship in the lab ended recently. Louise is ridiculously talented in multiple things but is open to illustration commissions www.instagram.com/louisebestea/

PNAS Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...

Long noncoding RNA at the *cortex* locus controls adaptive coloration in butterflies; not cortex itself a case of mistaken identity? www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... There a lot to take in! #genomics #crispr #butterflies #heliconius

Butterfly on the island of Mainau.

Wish you a great weekend 🍹🖖

#Heliconius
#Schmetterling #butterfly #Papillon
#Nikon #Fotografie #naturephotography #photography #wildlife

Hybrid speciation driven by multilocus introgression of ecological traits - Nature Genomic studies of Heliconius butterflies provide evidence that Heliconius elevatus is a hybrid species, and that its speciation was driven by introgression of traits from Heliconius melpomene in...

Colaboramos em um lindo estudo sobre especiação em borboletas #Heliconius, publicado hoje na prestigiada revista científica Nature. Um esforço coletivo liderado brilhantemente por Neil Rosser.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We're excited to welcome Dr Simon Martin as another new associate editor, bringing with him expertise in #speciation, population genetics and #Heliconius butterflies! Welcome aboard @simonhmartin! 🦋

Happy for my fmr postdoc @AnaGCatalan and Sebastian Höhna that our #Heliconius paper is highlighted in Genetics this month @heliconians 🦋

Drift and Directional Selection Are the Evolutionary Forces Driving Gene Expression Divergence in Eye and Brain Tissue of Heliconius Butterflies Abstract. Characterization of gene expression patterns across species - and the evolutionary forces driving them - can reveal processes that have remained

New #Heliconius #butterfly 🦋 paper w/ @AnaGCatalan + Sebastian Hoënha @heliconians

genetics.org/content/early/…

Pleased to see @AnaGCatalan @Aide_Macias paper published! Evolution of sex-biased gene expression and dosage compensation in the eye and brain of #Heliconius butterflies

academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-ar…

Excited to be heading to #UCMerced to give a seminar on the PhD work of @Kyle_Mac1 and @Fink_about_it on #Heliconius 🦋 physiology, vision and behavior & chat with Jacqueline Shay, Lillie Pennington and Kinsey Brock @kb_kinsey @radiobio_ucm

So pleased first paper of 2018 on #Heliconius cocoonases is out w/Gil Smith @Aide_Macias @CarterButts JE Kelly and Rachel Martin @RSocPublishing

rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/285/18…

Mechanisms of #Heliconius pigmentary and structural coloration: The H. doris green morph explained. #colsci#bmcevolbiol

bmcevolbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.11…