Caterpillars feed on various species of passionflower, evading the plants' defensive trichomes by biting them off or laying silk mats over them.
The zebra longwing, Heliconius charithonia (Linnaeus),was designated the state butterfly of Florida in 1996.
[4] However, mass spraying of naled has decimated the zebra longwing population in Miami-Dade County, Florida[citation needed].
For example, the ranges of H. charithonia and the gulf fritillary overlap; in some cases, gulf fritillaries can sometimes be subjected to competition and fighting from Heliconius charithonia vazquezae when those species have breeding populations in similar areas and within the same geographic range.
These roosts provide protection to adults, the large groups deterring predators and retaining warmth.
[9] Solitary individuals, or very small roosts, avoid exhibiting proper warning signals so as not to attract predators.
H. charithonia roosts to display collective aposematism, deterring predators by conspicuously advertising their unpalatable taste.
Butterflies that feed on pollen are more distasteful to predators, more brightly colored, and show superior mimetic diversity to those that do not.
Digestion occurs immediately after ingestion when the pollen makes contact with saliva, and amino acids are dissolved.
[17] Optimal amino acid intake occurs through abundant saliva production and gentle and slow mastication.[18][how?]
During the night, the butterflies digest pollen since optimal nutritional resources are obtained while resting or sleeping.
When pollen is absent in the diet, oviposition rates decrease and lifetime fecundity, or the number of eggs produced, drops significantly.
Amino acids from pollen are used as precursors to synthesize cyanogenic glycosides that are stored in larval and adult tissues, accounting for their toxicity.
[16] When pollen availability is low, adult butterflies recycle cyanogenic glycosides they synthesized previously.
[22] Male butterflies seek visual, olfactory, tactile, and auditory cues from females during mating.
[23] In H. charithonia, certain host plants provide these cues to males, thereby influencing the time and location of reproduction.
This happens because as larvae damage the plant upon eating it, green-leaf volatiles, six carbon alcohols, aldehydes, and acetates, are released.
Since these pupae are camouflaged and lack strong sexual pheromones, males rely on the olfactory cue from the damaged plant to find mates.
The butterfly's spatial memory is good enough to enable them to return regularly to roosts and mating sites.
[25] Mistakes are rare as males can distinguish between the emissions produced when the larvae and other herbivores eat the plant.
[27] Pupal mating arose exactly once during the evolution of Heliconius, and these species form a clade on the evolutionary tree.
Spermatophores are nuptial gifts which serve different functions, one of which is to provide chemicals (cyanogens) that protect the mother and future offspring from predators.
Pupal-mating butterflies like H. charithonia are thought to be monandrous; females rarely participate in more than one mating per lifetime.