That one looks a bit different.

in the amount of white vs. black/brown. Some look very dark and others look almost white, but the basic pattern stays the same. They are very similar to Common Checkered Skippers, and some are almost impossible to tell apart from just the upper side; however, there is one spot on the forwing that is almost always large and prominent on the Tropical that is absent or tiny and inconspicuous on the Common. That is the horizontally oriented oval white spot that is sandwiched between the (roughly) square spot in the end of the discal cell and the larger spots toward the outer margin of the wing. It is near the front margin of the wing and outside of the middle. It is a bit on the small side on this specimen. When you get used to looking seeing this spot, it looks a bit like a pair of eyes (one on each wing) looking at you. Underneith the pattern is a bit more distinctive, and that side is easier to identify from. However, they rarely sit with their wings folded, so you don't often see that side.

By the way, this one is male.

I always thought males looked like this...

Whether they are light or dark doesn't necessarily relate to gender, but females do tend to average darker. There seems perhaps (??) to be correlation, at least to some degree, with season or weather too. The one at the top of the page is a very dark one, the one at the bottom is a very light one; basically representing two extremes.

I could be wrong about it being a male too. It's hard to see the part that matters - the abdomen. The shape of the costal margin of the front wings seems to have that little hump in the middle typical of males. I have been known to goof :)

Some people won't admit Skippers into the world of butterflies yet, but they definitely belong. Giving them their own superfamily is a "fad" that hasn't died yet; however, they should just be in the Papilionoideae with the rest. They are (I think) most closely related to Swallowtails (I think closer to one another than Swallowtails are to other butterflies, but it's debatable). If you look at details of morphology, and just look at their bodies and "faces", Skippers look a lot like little Swallowtails, especially some of the smaller Asian Kite Swallowtails (ignore the coloring, just look at the shape and the way they hold themselves).

Sort of a non-sequitur here, but I thought it an interesting subject.

Awesome! Thank you! :)