Dorantes longtail

The Dorantes longtail is a brown skipper butterfly with long tails on its back wings. Skippers are quick, darting butterflies with chunky bodies. It loves visiting flowers like lantana and bougainvillea.

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Fun facts
In southern Florida and Texas there are three or four families of these butterflies every year.
Its caterpillars eat wild and garden beans and other plants from the pea family.
Sometimes lost travellers turn up as far north as California and North Carolina.
One kind of it lives on the Galápagos Islands.
Most asked questions about Dorantes longtail
?What does the Dorantes longtail eat?
The butterflies drink flower nectar, and the caterpillars eat beans and other pea family plants.
?Where does the Dorantes longtail live?
From Argentina north through Central America and the Caribbean to southern Texas and Florida.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Cecropterus dorantes
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Hesperiidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Hesperiidae
- Lives on
- South America, North America
- Also known as
- Lilac-banded longtail
Where the facts come from
- Cecropterus dorantes (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Charles J. Sharp. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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