Chrysoritis aethon
butterfly of the Lycaenidae family
Chrysoritis aethon, the Lydenburg opal, is a butterfly of the family Lycaenidae. It is found in South Africa, where it is known from northern KwaZulu-Natal to Mpumalanga, along the Drakensberg escarpment to Mariepskop in Limpopo.
The wingspan is 24–28 mm for males and 28–32 mm for females. Adults are on wing from September to April, with peaks in November and February. There are several generations per year.
The larvae feed on Rhus zeyheri and Diospyros species. They are attended to by Crematogaster liengmei ants.
The public source identifies “Chrysoritis aethon” as butterfly of the Lycaenidae family. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Chrysoritis, aethon and butterfly.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 1, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q4764249. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Chrysoritis aethon” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.