Objective To study the mechanism of visual and olfactory signal utilization in the foraging and courtship of Hebomoia glaucippe.

Method The attractive effects of different colors of flowers and artificial flowers sprayed with honey water and artificial models on H. glaucippe were verified by behavioral studies.

Result In the odorless attractive experiment of 7 different colors of artificial flowers, the male and female butterflies showed an obvious color tendency towards long-wavelength red (620-750 nm). The total number of visits to flowers by the male and female butterflies was 259, 151 and 108 respectively. After spraying honey water on the artificial flowers, the male and female butterflies visited the flowers for 583 times, 305 times and 278 times respectively. In the case of using honey water only, the total number of female and male butterfly visits was only 10, in which the numbers of female and male butterfly visit were 8 and 2 respectively. Compared to the odor group and color groups, the butterfly visiting times of color + odor group increased by 58.3 and 2.25 times, respectively. During the courtship, the chasing of the model by the H. glaucippe was inconsistent with the chasing law of the natural population. The visit to the scentless specimen model was significantly lower than that of the natural population (P<0.05). There were differences in the colors and patterns of the wings of female and male butterflies.

Conclusion H. glaucippe butterfly is mainly visual and supplemented by olfaction when foraging, and it has obvious preference for color vision. Both vision and olfaction participate in courtship recognition during courtship, using visual signals for initial spouse recognition, and then precise recognition through olfactory signals.