A new species for the North East

At first sight you wouldn't think it was a ladybird, only 2mm long, dark and hairy.  Once I spotted it I knew I didn't know what it was.  I have seen all but one of the ladybird species recorded in the North East and I knew this wasn't the missing one.  It was tapped from a mature oak in my garden and peering at it in the net through a hand lens I could see it was black with an orange front and orange legs.

Being at home I could bring it in for a better look and more photos but for a while I still didn't recognise it.  There are quite a few rather similar micro ladybirds (also known as inconspicuous ladybirds), all small and tending to be black with orange/red markings but this didn't seem to fit with any of them, partly because most are black underneath.

Eventually the penny dropped and I realised this was Rhyzobius lophanthae, not at all something I was expecting to find.  Also known as the Bristly Ladybird it is originally from Australia and was imported to Europe to control scale insects in horticulture.

Rhyzobius lophanthae was first reported in the UK in 1999 and is now found across the southern half of the country.  This map from iRecord shows the nearest records to mine are 150km south in Beverley and Leeds - all from last year or this.  (The large concentration of reports from Shropshire probably reflects the diligence, enthusiasm and expertise of Maria Justamond who is the county recorder there.  She also wrote the book on UK micro ladybirds and validates ladybird submissions to iRecord.)

Despite its Australian origins Rhyzobius lophanthae was first described in California by a local entomologist who thought it was native.  In fact it was introduced there in the 1890s so clearly people in Australia and the US knew about it earlier.  One puzzle is how mine got here.  It obviously can't be the only one north of Leeds but being only 2mm long and inconspicuous it might easily be overlooked.  I expect this is part of its range expansion, perhaps encouraged by climate change.  I'll be looking a bit harder in the garden now, hoping to turn up something else new.

A ladybird life cycle

It takes a year to go round but I found every stage of the 2-spot ladybird's life cycle all together last month. I think this isn't turning out to be the best year for ladybirds - drought means drier plants, fewer aphids and less for larvae to eat - but these were doing well in an aphid-infested elder bush.  In truth the eggs aren't identifiable to species but I think they were probably from 2-spots because everything else was.

These are 2-spot larvae.

And a pre-pupa, a larva getting ready to pupate.

Then a pupa.

And an adult.

There were at least half a dozen pupae.  I brought them home to observe emergence as part of a study of parasitism organised by the UK Ladybird Survey.  The survey is looking at the prevalence of parasitic wasps and flies targeting ladybirds.  Over the next six days all six emerged and all were 2-spot ladybirds form typica, so no parasitism of these.  Here is one just emerging.  The pronotum has its full colour but the elytra (wing cases) are pale.

Soon after emerging the ladybird extends its wings so they can expand and harden to turn transparent.  Once that has happened they are folded under the elytra until the ladybird flies.

Over several hours the colours start to develop.

The new adults were released and will hibernate over winter, and mate and lay eggs next spring and summer - the cycle will then be complete.

East Anglian ladybirds

On holiday last month I couldn't resist also looking for ladybirds.  Wicken Fen has a lot of grassy meadows as well as wetlands so that seemed a promising place to search.  16-spot Ladybird is a grassland species in the south and was one I was keen to find.  Unlike most ladybirds it feeds on pollen, nectar and fungi.

14-spot Ladybird is pretty widespread and is found in a variety of habitats.  This one is quite pale, probably newly emerged. 

We do find 24-spot Ladybirds in the North East but only in a few localised places.  In East Anglia I found them everywhere I looked and in large numbers.  This is another vegetarian, feeding on grass and red campion leaves.

This is a 24-spot Ladybird larva.

The 22-spot Ladybird is another vegetarian.  This one feeds on mildew on umbellifers but is found in grassland.

Rhyzobius litura is a microladybird and is sometimes known as Meadow Ladybird.

All these, plus 7-spot Ladybird and Harlequin Ladybird turned up in one session in one small patch of grassland.  A couple of days later I went to Cranwich Heath in West Norfolk which is sandy acid heath.  I was hoping to find an Ant-nest Ladybird but did find an Angle-spot Ladybird, Scymnus frontalis.  This is another microladybird, not found here in the North East.  There were lots of 16-spot and 24-spot Ladybirds as well.

There are plenty more I have yet to find, mostly microladybirds and monthly in the south.  I'll have to arrange another holiday to see if I can find some.

A new generation of ladybirds

I noticed a patch of ladybird eggs on the tine of a hand cultivator in the kitchen garden.  It seemed an odd place to lay eggs with no food for larvae within easy walking distance.  As you would expect I brought it in to take some photos and waited to see what happened.  For reference the patch of 44 eggs above is about the size of a 7-spot Ladybird and the eggs are about 1mm long. 

The next morning I noticed a spider had moved in and spun some silk.  I wasn't sure if this was setting a trap for the larvae but later that day the spider was gone although some silk remained.

Two days later, early in the morning the larvae were hatching.  You can see that in fact it is the larvae that are yellow and the eggs are white.  Very soon the larvae were turning black.

Less than two hours later all but two eggs had hatched and half the larvae were black.

 At nine hours this was the view with most larvae black.

I put the cultivator out in the meadow overnight, expecting that the larvae would move off to find something to eat but next morning it looked as though they were all still in place.  This is the view at 24 hours after hatching.  The larvae look significantly bigger.

And this was the view at 34 hours and there seemed to be fewer larvae.  The cultivator was back in the meadow between photos so some could have moved away but ladybird larvae are notoriously cannibalistic so I wonder if some of the bigger ones had eaten some of the smaller ones.  Who knows?

By 48 hours they had all gone and most of the remaining egg shells looked to have been eaten by slugs.

Ladybird eggs and new larvae all look pretty much the same and can't be identified to species. As they get older the larvae develop individual markings and can usually be identified.  The eggs are laid over several weeks, mostly from late spring to mid summer.  Elsewhere in the meadow I could see lots of 7-spot Ladybird larvae of different sizes and ages feasting on the blackfly on the knapweed.

And a 14-spot Ladybird larva getting in on the action as well.

I also saw an adult 7-spot Ladybird but I can't tell if it is one of the last generation or the first of the next.  Probably the former.

A new ladybird hotspot

In the last three years that I have been looking for ladybirds I have learnt that the best places to find them are on gravestones in winter and in small Scots pine trees in the rest of the year. Some ladybirds are generalists - found in many different habitats - but others are conifer specialists and Scots pine seems to be most favoured.  I have often noticed a group of small self-seeded pines close to the A189 north of Cramlington as I have driven past and I eventually got round to visiting them a few days ago.  It's a pretty unprepossessing spot inside a large traffic interchange and apart from the pines it mostly scrub and litter.  But the trees are what attract the ladybirds and they don't mind the surroundings.  This is the habitat,

and this is an aerial view.

It was immediately apparent that there were ladybirds everywhere.  Every branch of every tree seemed to have a 7-spot Ladybird and there were Pine Ladybirds on almost every tree. Altogether I found 10 species in a place with no previous records (because no-one had looked). There were lots of great pine aphids as well which is presumably why the ladybirds were there. 

The species I found were:

Pine Ladybird.  Despite the name it is found in many habitats.

Adonis Ladybird.  Another one that seems to turn up anywhere.

Larch Ladybird.  Mostly a conifer specialist.

2-spot Ladybird.  A generalist.

10-spot Ladybird.  Often in deciduous trees but can turn up anywhere.  I found two colour forms - decempunctata and decempustulata.

7-spot Ladybird.  The most ubiquitous ladybird and very abundant everywhere at the moment.

Harlequin Ladybird.  Also common and widespread but I found only two.

Eyed Ladybird.  Our largest species and another conifer specialist.  A real beauty.

Striped Ladybird.  Perhaps the prettiest of all and mostly found in or close to Scots pine. Usually hard to find but this was the most I have seen in one place.

Pine scymnus.  Really tiny (<2mm) and the only micro ladybird I found.

It was absorbing to find so many species in one small spot.  I expect it will be worth another visit in a few weeks time when there will be larvae to look for as well.