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Learn about ladybirds, also known as ladybugs or lady beetles, and their amazing features, habits and diet. Find out how they protect themselves, where they live, and how they hibernate in winter.
- The collective name for ladybirds is the Coccinellidae, which has its origins in the Latin word coccineus meaning ‘scarlet’. The word ‘Ladybird’ is thought to have been inspired by early images of the Virgin Mary who would appear wearing a red cloak.
- The number of spots on a ladybird indicates what species it belongs to, not, as commonly believed, how old it is. To identify the ladybird species accurately, the colour and number of spots needs to be taken into consideration.
- The most common ladybird in the UK is the 7 Spot Ladybird - which is red with, yep, you guessed it, 7 black spots.
- There are believed to be 47 different ladybird species in the UK but over 5,000 species globally.
Learn about ladybirds, also known as ladybugs or lady beetles, and their role as natural pest controllers in gardens and fields. Discover their colour, pattern, life cycle, hibernation, and regional names.
- Not All Ladybugs Are Black and Red
- The Name "Lady" refers to The Virgin Mary
- Ladybug Defenses Include Bleeding Knees and Warning Colors
- Ladybugs Live For About A Year
- Ladybug Larvae Resemble Tiny Alligators
- Ladybugs Eat A Tremendous Number of Insects
- Farmers Use Ladybugs to Control Other Insects
- There Are Ladybug Pests
- Sometimes Masses of Ladybugs Wash Up on Shores
- Ladybugs Practice Cannibalism
Although ladybugs (called Coccinellidae) are most often red or yellow with black dots, nearly every color of the rainbow is found in some species of ladybug, often in contrasting pairs. The most common are red and black or yellow and black, but some are as plain as black and white, others as exotic as dark blue and orange. Some species of ladybug a...
According to legend, European crops during the Middle Ages were plagued by pests. Farmers began praying to the Blessed Lady, the Virgin Mary. Soon, the farmers started seeing beneficial ladybugs in their fields, and the crops were miraculously saved from the pests. The farmers began calling the red and black beetles "our lady's birds" or lady beetl...
Startle an adult ladybug and a foul-smelling hemolymph will seep from its leg joints, leaving yellow stains on the surface below. Potential predators may be deterred by the vile-smelling mix of alkaloids and equally repulsed by the sight of a seemingly sickly beetle. Ladybug larvae can also ooze alkaloids from their abdomens. Like many other insect...
The ladybug lifecyclebegins when a batch of bright-yellow eggs are laid on branches near food sources. They hatch as larvae in four to 10 days and then spend about three weeks feeding up—the earliest arrivals may eat some of the eggs that have not yet hatched. Once they're well-fed, they'll begin to build a pupa, and after seven to 10 days they eme...
If you're unfamiliar with ladybug larvae, you would probably never guess that these odd creatures are young ladybugs. Like alligators in miniature, they have long, pointed abdomens, spiny bodies, and legs that protrude from their sides. The larvae feed and grow for about a month, and during this stage they often consume hundreds of aphids.
Almost all ladybugs feed on soft-bodied insects and serve as beneficial predators of plant pests. Gardeners welcome ladybugs with open arms, knowing they will munch on the most prolific plant pests. Ladybugs love to eat scale insects, whiteflies, mites, and aphids. As larvae, they eat pests by the hundreds. A hungry adult ladybug can devour 50 aphi...
Because ladybugs have long been known to eat the gardener's pestilent aphids and other insects, there have been many attempts to use ladybugs to control these pests. The first attempt—and one of the most successful—was in the late 1880s, when an Australian ladybug (Rodolia cardinalis) was imported into California to control the cottony cushion scal...
You may have personally experienced the effects of one of the biological control experiments that had unintended consequences. The Asian or harlequin ladybug (Harmonia axyridis) was introduced to the United States in the 1980s and is now the most common ladybug in many parts of North America. While it did depress the aphid population in some crop s...
Near large bodies of water all over the world, massive numbers of Coccinellidae, dead and alive, occasionally or regularly appear on the shorelines. The largest washup to date happened in the early 1940s when an estimated 4.5 billion individuals were spread over 21 kilometers of shoreline in Libya. Only a small number of them were still alive. Why ...
If food is scarce, ladybugs will do what they must to survive, even if it means eating each other. A hungry ladybug will make a meal of any soft-bodied sibling it encounters. Newly emerged adults or recently molted larvae are soft enough for the average ladybug to chew. Eggs or pupae also provide protein to a ladybug that has run out of aphids. In ...
There are about 5,000 different species of ladybugs in the world. These much loved critters are also known as lady beetles or ladybird beetles. They come in many different colors and patterns,...
Ladybirds or Coccinellidae there 47 species currently resident in Britain - Harlequin, orange, cream-spot, 2-spot, 10-spot are some of the common ladybirds.
Ladybirds are small insects, ranging from 1 millimetre to 10 millimetres (0.04 to 0.4 inches) and are commonly yellow, orange or scarlet with small black spots on their wing covers, with black legs, head and antennae. There are over 100 species of ladybirds in europe, of which 40 species are resident in the British Isles.
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