Ancyluris inca (female)(Inca Doctor) 
 
The genus Ancyluris comprises of 16 beautiful tailed Riodinids, all confined to the neotropical region. They are closely related to the genus Rhetus, so much so that the females of Ancyluris aristodorus and Rhetus periander are almost indistinguishable, at least from the uppersides.
Males of most Ancyluris species have black uppersides with red bands. In females these bands are broader and paler. In jurgensenii the bands on the female are pure white, and in aristodorus and formosissima they are white in both sexes. Males of all species have a blue iridescence on the underside of the wings.
Ancyluris inca is distributed from Mexico to Bolivia. There are 7 named subspecies. This is a mid-elevation cloudforest species found at elevations between about 200-1600m. As with other Ancyluris species, males can be found imbibing moisture from damp soil in the early morning and late afternoon. In late morning they perch under the leaves of trees or bushes. Any passing Ancyluris of either sex is intercepted and challenged. Both sexes nectar at Cordia, Croton, Eupatorium and other flowers.
The Ancyluris genus is a small group of eye-catching butterflies with 15 described species that inhabit from Mexico, through Central America and South America to northeast Bolivia (CALLAGHAN & LAMAS, 2004), being the Amazon region where the greater diversity of species In this work, a total of 11 species are reported for Colombia of the total of 15 that are known for the entire neotropical region, which represents 73.3% of all known species in South and Central America. In Colombia, because it is located in the transition zone between Central America and South America, there is an exchange of wildlife elements of Mesoamerica (trans-Andean region) with elements of South America (Amazon region) giving rise to a profusion of subspecies resulting from the great diversity of Biogeographical regions and centers of endemism present in the country. The three Andean mountain ranges have helped to keep geographically isolated populations in the inter-Andean valleys resulting in great speciation. This case is illustrated very well by the species A. inca Saunders, 1850, which presents in Central America a single subspecies, the tiponominal A. inca, inca , while in Colombia we find six different subspecies of A. inca , distributed in each from the biogeographical regions of the country.

The genus Ancyluris is considered the flagship group of the Riodinidae family and the most beautiful in the world, for its extraordinary iridescent coloration on the back of the wings in males, not seen in any other genus of butterflies except in Necyria, another group of butterflies recently studied for Colombia (SALAZAR, CONSTANTINO & RODRÍGUEZ, 2008). The iridescence in Ancyluris covers the entire range of metallic blue and green colors, with red spots and spots throughout the ventral part of both wings. The optical effect of the reflection of the iridescent coloration in the Ancyluris genus is a product of the very peculiar architecture of the wing scales that end abruptly in multilayers that produce a wide range of reflections in all colors, which are derived from the combined effect of the interference and diffraction of the light depending on the viewing angle you have (VUKUSIC et al ., 2001).
This effect of structural iridescence of the color of the wings seems to be involved in males as a complex signaling mechanism to mark territory and generate visual stimulation when the butterfly is perched, unlike the Morpho genus where the structural coloration and iridescence of the color blue of the dorsal side of its wings is used as a visual stimulus only during the flight (VUKUSIC et al ., 2001)