The Heliconiinae, commonly called heliconians or longwings, are a subfamily of the brush-footed butterflies (family

Family (biology)

In biological classification, family is* a taxonomic rank. Other well-known ranks are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, genus, and species, with family fitting between order and genus. As for the other well-known ranks, there is the option of an immediately lower rank, indicated by the...

 Nymphalidae). They can be divided into 45-50 genera

Genera

Genera is a commercial operating system and development environment for Lisp machines developed by Symbolics. It is essentially a fork of an earlier operating system originating on the MIT AI Lab's Lisp machines which Symbolics had used in common with LMI and Texas Instruments...

 and were sometimes treated as a separate family Heliconiidae within the Papilionoidea

Papilionoidea

The superfamily Papilionoidea contains all the butterflies except for the skippers, which are classified in superfamily Hesperioidea, and the moth-like Hedyloidea....

. The coloration is predominantly reddish and black, and though of varying wing shape, the forewings are always elongated tipwards, hence the common name.

Most longwings are found in the Tropics

Tropics

The tropics is a region of the Earth surrounding the Equator. It is limited in latitude by the Tropic of Cancer in the northern hemisphere at approximately  N and the Tropic of Capricorn in the southern hemisphere at  S; these latitudes correspond to the axial tilt of the Earth...

, particularly in South America

South America

South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...

; only the Argynnini

Argynnini

Argynnini is a tribe of butterflies in the subfamily Heliconiinae, containing some of the fritillaries. This group has also been classified as subtribe Argynnina of the Heliconiini, or even as a distinct subfamily Argynninae in the Nymphalidae...

 are quite diverse in the Holarctic

Holarctic

The Holarctic ecozone refers to the habitats found throughout the northern continents of the world as a whole. This region is divided into the Palearctic, consisting of Northern Africa and all of Eurasia, with the exception of Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent, and the Nearctic,...

.