Seasonal Patterns of Host Plant Use in an Assemblage of Heliconiini Butterflies (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) in a Neotropical forest.

Insect-plant interactions involve physiological adaptations by insects to secondary metabolic compounds synthetized by host plants, which are considered essential for the determination of resources partitioning of these insects. Data on such phenomena are important to understand evolutionary and ecological processes. However, climatic factors also seem to play a key role in affecting these patterns.

The roles of hybridization and habitat fragmentation in the evolution of Brazil's enigmatic longwing butterflies, Heliconius nattereri and H. hermathena.

Background: Heliconius butterflies are widely distributed across the Neotropics and have evolved a stunning array of wing color patterns that mediate Müllerian mimicry and mating behavior. Their rapid radiation has been strongly influenced by hybridization, which has created new species and allowed sharing of color patterning alleles between mimetic species pairs. While these processes have frequently been observed in widespread species with contiguous distributions, many Heliconius species inhabit patchy or rare habitats that may strongly influence the origin and spread of species and color patterns.

Atolchelys lepida, a new side-necked turtle from the Early Cretaceous of Brazil and the age of crown Pleurodira.

We report a new pleurodiran turtle from the Barremian Morro do Chaves Formation, Sergipe-Alagoas Basin, Brazil. We tested the phylogenetic position of Atolchelys lepida gen. et sp.