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Project Noah Nature School
Heliconius melpomene rosina
The Postman butterfly has large long wings with an orange stripe down each forewing. It is poisonous and has red patterns on its wings. They tend to look similar to the species Heliconius erato. Two features found on the underside help to distinguish H. erato from H. melpomene—H. erato has four red dots where the wing attaches to the thorax while H. melpomene has three and the yellowish white stripe on the underside reaches the margin of the hindwing in H. erato but ends before reaching in melpomene.
Butterfly Garden Monteverde.
These and the next spottings are left to experts to figure out. IDs are only temptative :-)
There is a 3rd criteria: Freshly captured Melpomene smells of fried-rice and Erato from Wytch-hazel (Hamamelis virginiana)!
Spotted on Apr 8, 2014
Submitted on May 3, 2014
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