Pyrrhopyge

Pyrrhopyge is a Neotropical genus of firetips in the family Hesperiidae.

This genus comprises very numerous, partly extremely similar species which are difficult to separate and perhaps neither are separable as distinct species. Nearly all are large, strong animals with black body and wings, often with a bronze-green or deep blue lustre, often spotted red on the head and abdomen. On the broad, mostly pointed forewings the discoidal runs very obliquely, the upper median vein rising somewhat behind the middle of the cell. On the hindwing the lower radial and upper median vein rise unpetioled, the middle radial being absent. The hind tibiae are strongly haired outside. The Pyrrhopyge, according to statements by Dr. Seitz, are conspicuous animals owing to their almost invariably one-coloured black colouring and the mostly glaring-red ends of their bodies. When they fly past swiftly, these red places are difficult to notice for the human eye, but the resting insect makes the impression as if its body were bleeding in front and behind. As the flight is impetuously swift, the animal escaping its enemies scarcely needs any protection, whereas on the topmost branches of bushes of 1 or 2 metres height, which are chosen by the males as their point of observation, one of the most dangerous enemies of the tropical butterflies is lying in ambush, the praying-cricket which even catches butterflies of the size of strong Papilio with a sure dart and is able to devour several large specimens a day. In the waiting attitude taken up by the Pyrrhopyge on the tip of the twig, the forewings are half erected, the hindwings somewhat more lowered; a position sometimes met with in European Adopaea or Pamphila, whereas other Pyrrhopyginae, such as the blue-striped Jemadia, the Mimoniades, Myscelus etc. keep their wings spread out when at rest, about like Thanaos tages. The larvae of Pyrrhopyge, as far as we know, are thinly haired on the body, shaggily on the head, brown or reddish with yellow, zebra-like stripes. They live on different trees, so on guava pear-trees (Psidium pyriferum and pomiferum), in leaf-cases. The pupae are haired, too. The imagines fly along the roads and skirts of woods in a raving, somewhat skipping flight and are fond of drinking from wet places on the roads. The Jemadia and Mimoniades love the umbels of blossoming bushes, where they are met with in the company of similarly coloured hesperids from other groups, such as Phocides and Pyrrhopygopsis.