This genus is distributed throughout the tropical and subtropical regions of the New World, from South America as far north as the southern United States.

The study of Heliconius and other groups of mimetic butterflies allowed the English naturalist Henry Walter Bates, following his return from Brazil in 1859, to lend support to Charles Darwin, who had found similar diversity amongst the Galápagos finches.

Heliconius butterflies have been a subject of many studies, due partly to their abundance and the relative ease of breeding them under laboratory conditions, but also because of the extensive mimicry that occurs in this group.

From the nineteenth century to the present day, their study has helped scientists to understand how new species are formed and why nature is so diverse.

Because of the type of plant material that Heliconius caterpillars favor and the resulting poisons they store in their tissues, the adult butterflies are usually unpalatable to predators.

[1] This warning is announced, to the mutual benefit of both parties, by bright colors and contrasting wing patterns, a phenomenon known as aposematism.

This type of mimicry typically results in convergent evolution, whereby many (sometimes unrelated) species become protected by similar patterns or coloration.

[1] Work has been done to understand the genetic changes responsible for the convergent evolution of wing patterns in comimetic species.

[2][3][4] Also, Supple had found evidence of two co-mimics H. erato and H. melpomene having no shared single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), which would be indicative of introgression, and hypothesized the same regulatory genes for color/pattern had comparably changed in response to the same selective forces.

[7] One puzzle with Müllerian mimicry/convergence is that it would be predicted the butterflies to all eventually converge on the same color and pattern for the highest predator education.

Hybrid speciation has been hypothesized to occur in this genus and may contribute to the diverse mimicry found in Heliconius butterflies.

Results from Supple and her team have shown SNP's being polymorphic mostly around hybrid zones of a genome, and they claimed this supported the mechanism of introgression over ancestral variation for genetic material exchange for certain species.

For various reasons, while it remains a good example of introgression of a color trait involved in mating from H. melpomene, H. heurippa is no longer regarded as a good example of hybrid speciation[18] [1]; the problem is that H. heurippa is today regarded as little more than a local form of the more widespread H. timareta, which occurs along the eastern slopes of the Andes between Colombia and Peru and whose divergent populations also have many other examples of different color pattern introgression from different geographic forms of H. melpomene.

Firstly, H. hecalesia is almost certainly an ancient hybrid species between H. telesiphe (+ H. clysonymus + H. hortense) and the H. erato + H. himera lineages.

[21] Aposematism, using warning colors, has been noted to improve species diversification, which may also contribute to the wide range of Heliconius butterflies.

There is an reproductive isolation between populations so while mates are attracted by pheromones they still will choose to similar patterned winged Heliconius.

[29] In order to be unpalatable, the Heliconius butterflies use cyanogenic characteristics, meaning they produce substances that have a cyanide group attached to them, ultimately making them harmful.