[2] E. clarus occurs in fields, gardens, and at forest edges and ranges from southern Canada throughout most of the United States to northern Mexico, but is absent in the Great Basin and western Texas.

[5] Epargyreus clarus has a wide distribution throughout North America: it ranges from southern Canada throughout most of the United States to northern Mexico, but is absent from the Great Basin and western Texas.

[3] The silver-spotted skipper prefers open ranges where nectar plants are found, such as forest edges, swamps, brushy areas, and riparian habitats at lower elevations.

[9] Innate host plant preferences confer greater performance on larvae, due to differences in leaf nutrient concentrations.

[5] They almost never visit yellow flowers, favoring those that are blue, red, pink, purple, and sometimes white and cream.

These include everlasting pea, common milkweed, red clover, buttonbush, blazing star, and thistles.

The head is described as black or reddish brown with two large, prominent anterior orange spots, which mimic eyes.

The first, second, and third instars make a simple, invariant structure that requires two incisions in the leaf and silk to fold over the flap created.

In addition, older caterpillars occasionally live in a nest made of multiple leaves connected by silk, especially when using host plants with smaller leaflets.

While wasps in the laboratory setting did spend more time on areas of the leaf damaged by feeding or silk deposition, the larval shelter prevented visual detection and posed a physical barrier.

This suggests that shelter identification and larval extraction is a learned ability, perhaps developed through visual or olfactory cues.

[6] Other predators include the sphecid wasp Stictia carolina, which sometimes supplies its nests with silver-spotted skipper larvae.

[13] Males perch on branches and tall weeds about 3.3 to 6.6 feet (1 to 2 m) above the ground, darting out when any insect passes in hopes of finding a receptive Epargyreus clarus female.

This perching behavior is part of a common mate-location strategy in which males compete for places where females are more likely to occur.

[7] Females do not engage in this behavior, but may have to fly considerable distances to find mates, depending on the proximity of male territory to their larval development site.

The places "defended" by males are roughly the size of a small room and are most likely chosen based on vegetation and topography.

The small visual field can be due to crystalline tracts in the eye that restrict the light to reach the retina only through this path.