The long-tailed skipper (''Urbanus proteus'') is a spread-winged skipper

butterfly Butterflies are insects in the macrolepidopteran clade Rhopalocera from the order Lepidoptera, which also includes moths. Adult butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight. The group comprise ...

found throughout

tropical The tropics are the regions of Earth surrounding the Equator. They are defined in latitude by the Tropic of Cancer in the Northern Hemisphere at N and the Tropic of Capricorn in the Southern Hemisphere at S. The tropics are also referred to ...

and subtropical

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sout ...

, south to

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

and north into the

Eastern United States The Eastern United States, commonly referred to as the American East, Eastern America, or simply the East, is the region of the United States to the east of the Mississippi River. In some cases the term may refer to a smaller area or the East C ...

and

southern Ontario Southern Ontario is a primary region of the province of Ontario, Canada, the other primary region being Northern Ontario. It is the most densely populated and southernmost region in Canada. The exact northern boundary of Southern Ontario is disp ...

. It cannot live in areas with prolonged frost. It is a showy butterfly, with wings of light brown tinted with iridescent blue, and two long tails extending from the hindwings. The robust body is light blue dorsally. It has a large head, prominent eyes, and a wingspan between 4.5 and 6 centimeters.

Life cycle

It lays white or yellow eggs, singly or in small clusters, which hatch into a caterpillar with a yellowish body and large, dark head. After two to three weeks, the caterpillar forms a pupa. Its pupa is contained in a rolled leaf and covered in fine bluish hairs. The pupa stage may last from one to three weeks, after which the adult emerges. The caterpillar of this skipper is a common pest of crops, especially

beans A bean is the seed of several plants in the family Fabaceae, which are used as vegetables for human or animal food. They can be cooked in many different ways, including boiling, frying, and baking, and are used in many traditional dishes thr ...

, in the southern

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. For this reason, it is sometimes called the bean leafroller in that area. The caterpillars are also known to attack ornamental plants in the legume family such as

wisteria ''Wisteria'' is a genus of flowering plants in the legume family, Fabaceae (Leguminosae), that includes ten species of woody twining vines that are native to China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Southern Canada, the Eastern United States, and north ...

and butterfly peas. The caterpillars feed on leaves and then roll the leaves around themselves, lining the cavity with silk, to

pupa A pupa ( la, pupa, "doll"; plural: ''pupae'') is the life stage of some insects undergoing transformation between immature and mature stages. Insects that go through a pupal stage are holometabolous: they go through four distinct stages in thei ...

te. The adults feed on nectar from flowers. Natural enemies of this species include

wasp A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder. ...

and fly parasitoids, and the Florida predatory stink bug, (''Euthyrhynchus floridanus''). In the fall, a nuclear polyhedrosis virus killed up to 50% of the larvae.

Sub-species

''U. p. domingo'' flies in the Bahamas and throughout the West Indies, but it is only weakly differentiated from the nominate form, chiefly by its reduced white markings.R. R. Askew and P. A. van B. Stafford, ''Butterflies of the Cayman Islands'' (Apollo Books, Stenstrup 2008) , pp. 117-119 Urbanus proteus.jpg, Pupa Urbanus proteus4.jpg, Caterpillar LongTailedSkipper.jpg, Common long-tailed skipper (Urbanus proteus domingo) female.jpg, ''U. p. domingo'',

Jamaica Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of His ...

Long-tailed skipper (Urbanus proteus domingo) underside.JPG, ''U. p. domingo'',

Grand Cayman Grand Cayman is the largest of the three Cayman Islands and the location of the territory's capital, George Town. In relation to the other two Cayman Islands, it is approximately 75 miles (121 km) southwest of Little Cayman and 90 miles (1 ...

References

Butterflies and Moths of North America Fact Page

on the UF/IFAS Featured Creatures Web site * Butterflies of Houston and Southeast Texas, by John & Gloria Tveten {{Taxonbar, from=Q2361928 Hesperiidae Butterflies of Central America Butterflies of the Caribbean Butterflies of North America Hesperiidae of South America Lepidoptera of Brazil Lepidoptera of Colombia Lepidoptera of Ecuador Lepidoptera of Venezuela Fauna of the Amazon Butterflies described in 1758 Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus Agricultural pest insects