Endangered
Dakota Skipper
Hesperia dacotae
Dakota Skipper, the Dakota skipper, is a small to medium-sized North American butterfly.
Appearance
The male's wings are a tawny-orange to brown on the forewings with a prominent mark and dusty yellow on the lower part of the wing. The female wing is a darker brown orange and white spots on the forewing margin.
It has a wingspan of approximately 2.4–3.2 cm (0.9–1.3 in) and the antennae form a hook.
Range and habitat
No country pin is stored for Dakota Skipper on this catalog. That is a missing field, not proof the animal has no range.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
Their eggs, that are laid on the underside of leaves, are hatched in July and the caterpillar larvae feed on native grass until they go dormant in late summer.
In crisis
The Dakota skipper has experienced declining populations from destruction and modification of native prairie for grazing, herbicide use and building. Fish and Wildlife Service placed the Dakota skipper on the Candidate list for protections under the Endangered Species Act from 1975 to 2014, and it has been petitioned twice for protection under the Endangered Species Act in 1994 and 2003. The Dakota skipper was awarded Threatened status under the Endangered Species Act in 2014.
The Minnesota Zoo runs a rearing and breeding program to reintroduce Dakota skippers and re-establish populations. Many factors influence Dakota skipper populations.
Named moths and butterflies with a high threat category are often known from a small range and a thin series. Host-plant loss leaves little to recount.
Dakota Skipper is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Dakota Skipper, Wikidata item Q5210046. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
