Chasing the rare arogos skipper butterfly from Florida fields to lab

Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is partnering with the Florida Museum’s Daniels Lab and the Florida Natural Area Inventory to collaborate on a two-year project, surveying portions of the state to learn where the eastern arogos skipper lives and what conditions it needs to thrive.
Researchers are focused on the Bull Creek Wildlife Management Area to find and study the butterflies. The area’s size and land management, including the prescribed burn schedule, may help explain why the butterfly persists there.
In the lab, researchers are studying the life cycle of the butterfly and experimenting with different host plants.

With their triangular shape and golden-orange wings, the eastern arogos skipper (Atrytone arogos arogos) butterflies seemed to wave down the passing crew of researchers at Herky Huffman/Bull Creek Wildlife Management Area near Orlando, Florida.

“You can just drive along and see them perched on the flowers. You don’t even have to get out of the car,” said Jaret Daniels, a curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History’s McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity. When the crew does approach, “you can just pick the individuals off the flower with your hands. It’s totally bizarre. It breaks all the rules of what you think normal butterflies do,” he said.

The insects may be easy to spot, but only if you know where to look. Today, encounters with the rare arogos skipper are uncommon.

Once found across much of the East and Gulf coasts of the U.S., the species spanned from New Jersey to Louisiana. Today it has been reduced to a small number of primarily isolated populations living in a variety of open, grassy landscapes. Many of these habitats have been lost to expanding agriculture and urban development or degraded due to fire suppression.

Central Florida remains a stronghold, with the population at Bull Creek just one of a handful known to exist in the state. The species may be a contender for federal protection, but wildlife managers need more data to build a compelling case. This is why the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission reached out to the museum’s Daniels Lab and the Florida Natural Areas Inventory to collaborate on a two-year project in which they will survey portions of the state to learn where these butterflies live and observe what conditions the species needs to thrive.