Heliconius charithonia is one of the species of butterflies whose wing patterns scientists scrutinized to better understand the evolutionary process. This butterfly is wild-type; the genetically ...

Many butterflies develop wing patterns that mimic other species to protect themselves from predators. While growing complex body parts like wings involves many genes, the difference between two ...

Researchers use genome editing to explore how certain genes influence butterfly wing colors and patterns. Gene association, mapping, and expression studies have helped link the optix gene to pattern ...

An international team of scientists working with Heliconius butterflies in Panama was faced with a mystery: how do pairs of unrelated butterflies from Peru to Costa Rica evolve nearly the same ...

The beautiful patterns on butterfly wings are emerging as exceptional model systems that may reveal much about how the shapes, sizes and colors of specific organisms have evolved, a type of study ...

Color patterns play central roles in the behavior of insects, and are important traits for taxonomic studies. Here we report striking and stable structural color patterns—wing interference patterns ...

The female swallowtail butterfly (left) has extra orange spots and a different shape on its wings to mimic species that are toxic to predators, while the male (right) has the standard set of white ...