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Heliconius telesiphe Doubleday 1847

Margarita Beltrán and Andrew V. Z. Brower
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Containing group: Heliconius

Introduction

Heliconius telesiphe occurs in mid-elevations in the Andes, where it is involved in a mimicry complex with another heliconiine species, Podotricha telesiphe.

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Mimetic heliconiines Heliconius telesiphe (center) and Podotricha telesiphe (upper right and lower left). © 2004 Kim Garwood

Characteristics

Early stages:  Eggs are yellow and approximately 1.6 x 0.8 mm (h x w). Females usually place eggs singly on growing shoots of the host plant (Brown, 1981).

Geographical Distribution

Heliconius telesiphe is distributed in the central Andes. The map below 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 hecalesia and Heliconius telesiphe. © 2002 Margarita Beltran.

Habits

H. telesiphe occurs from 600 to 2,500 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. telesiphe 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.

Doubleday E. 1847 The genera of diurnal Lepidoptera: comprising their generic characters, a notice of their habits and transformations, and a catalogue of the species of each genus. London, Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans. 1: 87-98, pls. 16-17 (9 July 1847), 99-106, pls. 18-19 (4 August 1847), 107-110, pls. 18*, 20 (1 September 1847), 111-118, pls. 21, 23 (4 October 1847), 119-124, pls. 22, 24 (2 November 1847), 125-132, pls. 25, 28 (2 December 1847), 133-136 (7 January 1848), 137-138 (3 February 1848)

Title Illustrations
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Scientific Name Heliconius telesiphe telesiphe
Specimen Condition Dead Specimen
View Dorsal
Collection Gerardo Lamas
Image Use creative commons This media file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License - Version 3.0.
Copyright ©
Scientific Name Heliconius telesiphe telesiphe
Specimen Condition Dead Specimen
View Ventral
Collection Gerardo Lamas
Image Use creative commons This media file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License - Version 3.0.
Copyright ©
About This Page


University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK


Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, USA

Correspondence regarding this page should be directed to Margarita Beltrán at and Andrew V. Z. Brower at

Page: Tree of Life Heliconius telesiphe Doubleday 1847. Authored by Margarita Beltrán and Andrew V. Z. Brower. 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 and Andrew V. Z. Brower. 2008. Heliconius telesiphe Doubleday 1847. Version 12 August 2008 (under construction). http://tolweb.org/Heliconius_telesiphe/72929/2008.08.12 in The Tree of Life Web Project, http://tolweb.org/

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