{"id":1235,"date":"2011-11-13T17:21:41","date_gmt":"2011-11-14T03:21:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/?p=1235"},"modified":"2011-11-13T17:21:41","modified_gmt":"2011-11-14T03:21:41","slug":"pearl-crescent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/2011\/11\/13\/pearl-crescent\/","title":{"rendered":"Pearl Crescent"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Pearl Crescent (<em>Phyciodes tharos<\/em>) butterflies are mainly found in the eastern part of North America, but a few of these dainty butterflies can be found as far west as Arizona and the southeastern part of California. I observed this Pearl Crescent butterfly visiting the flowers of an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fireflyforest.com\/flowers\/3559\/almutaster-pauciflorus-alkali-marsh-aster\/\">Alkali Marsh Aster (<em>Almutaster pauciflorus<\/em>)<\/a> in a marshy riparian area in Tucson, Arizona.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/images\/firefly\/2011\/November\/Phyciodes-tharos-1.jpg\" alt=\"Pearl Crescent (Phyciodes tharos) butterfly\" title=\"Pearl Crescent (Phyciodes tharos) butterfly\" width=\"480\" height=\"363\" class=\"post-photo\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The dorsal wing surfaces of Pearl Crescent butterflies are orange with black or brown borders and a variable web of dark, slender, irregular lines. Their less colorful ventral wing surfaces are patterned with cream, pale orange, brown, and sometimes black and pale gray. Their antennae have orange-tipped knobs when viewed from above, but those of the males appear solid black when viewed from below. Not wanting to kneel down on the wet, marshy ground, I never did observe this butterfly from below, so I wasn&#8217;t able to figure out if it was male or female.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/images\/firefly\/2011\/November\/Phyciodes-tharos-2.jpg\" alt=\"Pearl Crescent (Phyciodes tharos) butterfly\" title=\"Pearl Crescent (Phyciodes tharos) butterfly\" width=\"480\" height=\"363\" class=\"post-photo\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Pearl Crescent butterflies feed on the nectar of a variety of flowers, but aster flowers seem to be a particular favorite, probably because asters are conveniently also their larval host plant. A Male Pearl Crescent butterfly will patrol around an aster plant waiting for any receptive females to be attracted to it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pearl Crescent (Phyciodes tharos) butterflies are mainly found in the eastern part of North America, but a few of these dainty butterflies can be found as far west as Arizona and the southeastern part of California. I observed this Pearl Crescent butterfly visiting the flowers of an Alkali Marsh Aster (Almutaster pauciflorus) in a marshy&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/2011\/11\/13\/pearl-crescent\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read More &rarr; <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arizona-butterflies-and-moths","category-arizona-invertebrates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1235"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1238,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1235\/revisions\/1238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}