Diversity

The adults of this family include brightly colored, often diurnal species that are involved in mimicry rings. The mimicry is likely Mullerian as many species are cyanogenic (YS ref, Scoble 1992, Tremewan 1988). Larvae are often aposematic too. Approximately 800 species in XX genera occur in all zoogeographic regions except New Zealand (Alberti 1954, Shen-Horn et al. 200x). Most species occur in tropical regions, but are a component of the Palearctic fauna(Scoble 1992).