The use of chemical and visual cues in Greta morgane, a mimetic neotropical butterfly

Insects communicate and perceive using multiple modalities: chemical, visual, and tactile. Depending on the abiotic and biotic environment different modalities will be more or less informative. Butterflies are known to rely on both visual and chemical cues in approximately equal measure. Mimetic butterflies that closely resemble other species are likely constrained in the reliability of the visual modality for conspecific identification and this may cause a shift in modality use in deciding to approach potential conspecifics. Greta morgane and Ithomia patilla are members of the clearwing mimicry group and both are abundant in the Costa Rican Central Valley. A four-way test between paired visual and chemical cues indicates that Greta morgane and Ithomia patilla  can distinguish between mimetic species. When stimuli are switched, using models that have one species’ wing pattern paired with the other species’ chemical cue, Greta morgane and Ithomia patilla more often choose the model with the conspecific chemical cue and heterospecific visual cue than the model with the conspecific visual cue and heterospecific chemical cue. Since ithomiines form multispecies aggregations, the choice between a conspecific and a mimetic heterospecific is a daily occurrence. To further elucidate the use of modalities by these species experiments examining the use of cues between ithomiine species that are not comimics and using purely visual cues will also be presented.