Ladybirds

During the winter, creatures have been sleeping in your garden, unseen. They will soon awaken. Don’t worry, they are friends! They are Ladybirds.

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Ladybirds are a family (Coccinellidae) of beetles. During the colder months, ladybirds are dormant. They hide away in places like leaf-litter, the hollow stems of plants, crevices in tree bark, the soil, or nooks in your garden shed. In March, or thereabouts, ladybirds will fully emerge from their dormancy to feed and to mate. After successful mating, the females will lay a batch of eggs and then most of the adults will die. After a week or so, larvae emerge from the eggs. The larvae aren’t shaped like adult ladybirds. They are roughly cigar-shaped. For a short period, you may see more larvae than adults in your garden. As the larvae grow, they have to shed their skin. This happens in 3-4 stages (‘instars’) until the time when the larvae pupate. These pupae often sit conspicuously on leaves and then, following a short period of metamorphosis, the adult ladybirds will emerge. That’s the life-cycle of the ladybird and it is likely to be repeated again before the onset of the next winter.

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There are 47 species of ladybird in Britain, but only a few species will visit your garden. Historically, the most common species was the 7-spot Ladybird. However, recent years have witnessed a massive increase in population of the Harlequin Ladybird. This is a non-native, ‘invasive’ species and its spread is not particularly good news for our indigenous ladybirds. Many species of ladybird are named after the number of spots on their ‘back’ (the hard wing-cases or ‘Elytra’). They range from ‘2-spot’, all the way up to ‘24-spot’. Not all ladybirds are red; they can also be black (with red spots), yellow (with black spots) or orange (with white spots). Harlequin Ladybirds come in a large variety of colours and number of spots. Some ladybirds are extremely small and inconspicuous. The ‘Dot Ladybird’ measures only 1.4mm in length (and I’ve yet to see one!).

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The bright contrasting colours of a ladybird are not just there for show. They represent an effective warning to would-be predators (such as birds) that the insect would be distasteful or even toxic to eat. If disturbed, a ladybird can retract its legs under the abdomen, and it can exclude a foul-smelling yellow liquid. Ladybirds are well-equipped with deterrents!

Not all ladybirds feed on aphids. Some feed on mildew that forms on plant leaves. This is a picture of the larva of a 22-spot Ladybird grazing on Mint leaf mildew.
This is a Harlequin Ladybird. newly emerged from its pupa. Note that the adult ladybird has yet to develop its spots. These will show in a few hours after the emergence.

Ladybirds are sometimes called ‘the gardener’s friend’. This is because the common species of ladybird eat the aphids and scale insects that gardeners would prefer not to have on their garden plants. One adult ladybird can eat 60 or more aphids per day, which helps dent the population of those ‘pests’. You should think twice about spraying insecticide on your plants, as you will probably end-up also killing these natural predators of aphids and scale insects.

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Before we close, there is a last question: why, in this country, are they called ‘ladybirds’? They are clearly not ‘birds’ and not all are ‘ladies’? The explanation which has gained the most currency is that they were named, in Middle Ages, after the Virgin Mary. In early paintings, Mary (‘Our Lady’) often wore a red cloak. The spots of the common 7-spot Ladybird were said to symbolise her ‘seven joys’ and ‘seven sorrows’. In America, these insects are called ‘Ladybugs’, but I suspect the English did not want the word ‘bug’ (with its negative connotations) used for a much-loved insect with divine etymological associations.

^{All photographs taken by the author.}

^{For more information: Roy, H. Brown, P. (2018) Field Guide to the Ladybirds of Great Britain and Ireland, Bloomsbury}