Appias drusilla, the Florida White or Tropical White, is a butterfly

Butterfly

A butterfly is a mainly day-flying insect of the order Lepidoptera, which includes the butterflies and moths. Like other holometabolous insects, the butterfly's life cycle consists of four parts: egg, larva, pupa and adult. Most species are diurnal. Butterflies have large, often brightly coloured...

 in the Pieridae

Pieridae

The Pieridae are a large family of butterflies with about 76 genera containing approximately 1,100 species, mostly from tropical Africa and Asia. Most pierid butterflies are white, yellow or orange in coloration, often with black spots...

 family. It is found in tropical America from Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

 north to southern peninsular Florida

Florida

Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...

 and the Florida Keys

Florida Keys

The Florida Keys are a coral archipelago in southeast United States. They begin at the southeastern tip of the Florida peninsula, about south of Miami, and extend in a gentle arc south-southwest and then westward to Key West, the westernmost of the inhabited islands, and on to the uninhabited Dry...

 and Antilles

Antilles

The Antilles islands form the greater part of the West Indies in the Caribbean Sea. The Antilles are divided into two major groups: the "Greater Antilles" to the north and west, including the larger islands of Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola , and Puerto Rico; and the smaller "Lesser Antilles" on the...

. It frequently visits coastal Texas

Texas

Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...

 and is a rare stray to Nebraska

Nebraska

Nebraska is a state on the Great Plains of the Midwestern United States. The state's capital is Lincoln and its largest city is Omaha, on the Missouri River....

 and Colorado

Colorado

Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...

. The habitat consists of tropical lowland evergreen or semideciduous forests.

The wingspan

Wingspan

The wingspan of an airplane or a bird, is the distance from one wingtip to the other wingtip. For example, the Boeing 777 has a wingspan of about ; and a Wandering Albatross caught in 1965 had a wingspan of , the official record for a living bird.The term wingspan, more technically extent, is...

 is 53 millimetre. Males are solid white on both the upper and lower surfaces of the wings except for a narrow edging of black along the forewing costal margin. The female has two forms: the dry-season form is all white and the wet season form has black along the forewing costal margin and a yellow-orange upper hindwing. The dry-season form is on wing from October to April and the wet-season form from May to September. They feed on flower nectar from a variety of weeds and garden plants including Lantana

Lantana

Lantana is a genus of about 150 species of perennial flowering plants in the verbena family, Verbenaceae. They are native to tropical regions of the Americas and Africa but exist as an introduced species in numerous areas, especially in the Australian-Pacific region. The genus includes both...

and Eupatorium

Eupatorium

Eupatorium is a genus of flowering plants in the aster family, Asteraceae, containing from 36 to 60 species depending on the classification system. Most are herbaceous perennial plants growing to 0.5–3 m tall. A few are shrubs. The genus is native to temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere....

.

The larvae feed on Brassicaceae

Brassicaceae

Brassicaceae, a medium sized and economically important family of flowering plants , are informally known as the mustards, mustard flowers, the crucifers or the cabbage family....

 species, including Drypetes lateriflora and Capparis flexuosa in Florida. They are shade-loving and feed during the night and on cloudy days.

Subspecies

The following subspecies are recognised:

• Appias drusilla drusilla (Peru, Argentina, Brazil: Rio de Janeiro, Rondônia)
• Appias drusilla castalia (Fabricius, 1793) (Jamaica)
• Appias drusilla poeyi (Butler, 1872) (Cuba)
• Appias drusilla neumoegenii (Skinner, 1894) (Florida)
• Appias drusilla monomorpha Hall, 1936 (Grenada)
• Appias drusilla boydi Comstock, 1943 (Dominican Republic)
• Appias drusilla comstocki Dillon, 1947 (Dominica)
• Appias drusilla tenuis Lamas, 1981 (Peru)