Jambi

Postman Butterfly? - Lakeland Wildlife Oasis, Milnthorpe, UK

  • Media owner Jambi
  • Date added
I initially thought this was a Postman Butterfly, which this zoo does keep, but it looks different from some of the others so I'm not sure if it's a different species? Or just a different colour pattern?
Identify the 39 species of postman butterflies basing just in colour patterns can be tricky, since each species can have tons of different colour morphs and each of these colour morphs is very similar to the same colour morphs of various other species in same genus, an extreme case of Müllerian mimicry often used as the prime example of it in evolutionary biology. See for example:

https://www.frontiersin.org/files/Articles/540195/fevo-08-00221-HTML/image_m/fevo-08-00221-g001.jpg

where C, F, G and H are the same species and K, L, M and P are also a single species.

I think yours is just Heliconius melpomene that tends to be, together with the rather unvariable H. charithonia, the most common species of the genus displayed in butterfly houses.
 
@Kakapo Thank you for this! :)
As I've found out on here, this zoo also has Charithonia alongside their Postmans.
 

Media information

Category
Animal or Zoo Identification
Added by
Jambi
Date added
View count
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Comment count
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Image metadata

Device
samsung SM-A125F
Aperture
ƒ/2
Focal length
4.6 mm
Exposure time
1/119 second(s)
ISO
32
Filename
20220715_111856.jpg
File size
2.1 MB
Date taken
Fri, 15 July 2022 11:18 AM
Dimensions
4000px x 3000px

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