Ladybirds

It's been a good year for ladybirds in our garden - here's a selection of the species that have visited so far:

2-spot ladybird

7-spot ladybird

10-spot ladybirds

Melanic 10-spot ladybird - black and red colours reversed

Cream-spot ladybird

Orange ladybird

14-spot ladybird


Most of these appeared on blackcurrant and gooseberry bushes - probably because both have been infested with aphids and mildew that are eaten by various ladybird species.

No ladybirds for months, then five species all at once.....

Thursday's Guardian Country Diary describes encounters with ladybirds in Weardale and Teesdale.

Back in the spring it seemed as though 2013 might be a good year for ladybirds locally - plenty of 7-spots seemed to have come out of hibernation so I anticipated a thriving population by the time their offspring hatched in summer - but it never seemed to materialise. I found a few isolated individuals of other species - notably 22-spot , 14-spot and an orange ladybird  but then last week .........

........ this huddle, near a pine plantation at Wolsingham in Weardale. It was the largest number of 7-spots I'd seen in one place all year: six that had chosen a split in a fence post as their hibernation site. 7-spot ladybirds aren't usually associated with conifer plantations but his particular row of fence posts, on the sheltered, south facing side of the plantation, as always been a good place to find other species. 

So it was no surprise to find this eyed ladybird - a conifer specialist - sunning itself on the same line of fence posts.

A small, unidentified fly with unusual up-turned antennae had even chosen to hitch a ride on it. The eyed ladybird is our largest species but ...

...... this one, a larch ladybird that shared the same fence post, is one of our smaller species ...

..... here going head-to-head with a staphylinid beetle (which it simply head-butted out of the way!)

Then, a day later at Egglestone in Teesdale I found ivy in full flower that had attracted several orange ladybirds, that were feeding on nectar.

You can see here the translucent pronotum of this species, that used to be considered scarce but seems to have increased in abundance in recent decades, supposedly because it has taken to feeding on fungi that grow on the honeydew secreted by sycamore aphids. On one occasion a few years ago I found a cluster of ten of this species hibernating on the bark of a sycamore in winter - it's certainly a species that can be added to the very small number of insects that are associated with sycamore, which has been present on these islands for around 500 years but has a very small insect fauna.

Close to the orange ladybirds on the ivy I then found a single 7-spot sunning itself on a fence post and ......

.......... scores of this very unwelcome addition to our ladybird fauna - the harlequin. The first time I saw these locally was in Durham city back in 2009, on ivy flowers at almost exactly this time of year. Harlequins are noted for their bewildering range of colour patterns but the indentations at the tail end of the elytra are also a distinctive feature, although they too vary in extent between individuals.

This group of about a dozen individuals had just hatched from their pupae and were still developing their full colours. Harlequins have a breeding season that extends well into autumn.

Some, that also seemed to be the most rotund individuals, were almost entirely black ...

..... but his was a more typical colour pattern in this population.

Finding another population of harlequins was an unwelcome discovery because this disease-resistant species is known to be a predator of our native ladybirds and can also transmit a parasite that kills other species. It also feeds extensively on eggs of butterflies and moths. Over the last decade it has spread rapidly from south east England to the Scottish border. It originated in central Asia but was introduced elsewhere in misconceived biological control programmes aimed at 'environmentally friendly' aphid control in greenhouse crops. Wherever it has been introduced it has escaped and has had a detrimental effect on native insect populations.

The predominantly black individuals seem to have blue eyes.

This was the last unhatched pupa, attached to the fence posts. At the point of attachment you can just see the remains of the larval skin, which is spiny in this species. 

Harlequin larvae also seem to have an affinity with sycamore, perhaps because of the vast supply of sycamore aphids that they find on the leaves - so it may well be that orange ladybirds will also form part of their diet too.

If you find harlequin ladybirds you can report their presence by contributing the record to the Harlequin Ladybird web site.

Sycamore Aphids

Recently there has been a lively exchange of comments in the Guardian on a piece by George Monbiot that extols the virtues of native trees because they support insect biodiversity (birch hosts no less that 266 different invertebrates, for example) and deplores the tendency of local authorities to plant non-native trees that are of relatively little value to our native fauna.

One of the most frequently cited examples of a non-native tree with a very limited insect fauna is sycamore, which hosts a paltry 15 species. It's a long-established non-native species with a  documented history here that dates back to the 16th. century, but since then only a small number of our insects have adapted to it. But what it lacks in biodiversity, it certainly makes up for in the sheer quantity of one particular insect that lives on its leaves - the sycamore aphid.

Over the summer these little insects multiply in vast numbers under its leaves - and they produce a lot of honeydew, so woe betide anyone who parks a car under the tree; it will be as sticky as a toffee apple if it's left there for long. 

The positive aspect of this sticky secretion is that the mildew that grows on the sap that the aphids excrete is an important food source for the orange ladybird Halyzia sedecimguttata, whose distribution is linked to that of sycamore.

All these aphids are certainly of real value to some of our native birds - I've often watched blackcaps and blue tits picking them off the leaves. 

One of the most striking features of the sycamore aphid is the way in which the individuals space themselves evenly under the leaf. the spacing is such that they are just close enough together to touch each other with their long antennae, so if an individual in one part of the leaf is attacked the alarm spreads from aphid to aphid in a wave of antennae-waving across the whole leaf.

The annual sycamore aphid population explosion has just about ground to a halt now and soon they'll fly to sites on twigs and buds where they'll lay overwintering eggs. They hatch in spring just as the buds burst, with perfect timing to plug their stylets into the fresh young foliage as it emerges - and that's the time when you'll often see blue tits and great tits picking the aphids off the bud scales.

What would you have done.....?

At this time of year juvenile spiders begin to set up their snares in our greenhouse and this one wove its fine, tent-like web across the top of an empty flower pot. They're welcome visitors and even though they are still very small they catch a lot of small insect pests - like winged aphids - that would otherwise infest the plants.

I haven't identified the species yet but it hangs underneath its silken sheet, ready to reach through with its fangs and impale anything that becomes trapped. [Thanks to Africa Gomez at BugBlog for identifying this spider as Neriene montana - there is no way I would have identified it without her expert asistance]

This morning this spider had caught larger prey - an orange ladybird Halyzia 16-guttata, which is another welcome and useful visitor. It feeds on moulds and there are plenty of those in the greenhouse.

So, what should I do? Release the struggling ladybird and, in doing so, destroy the spider's intricately woven web, or let nature take its course and watch one of these two beneficial visitors destroy the other? 

I toyed with the idea of rescuing the ladybird, but the issue quickly resolved itself because suddenly the spider let go and retreated. It may be that the ladybird's armour was too strong for its fangs, and perhaps its captured prey emitted some deterrent - other ladybirds, like the six-spot, secrete a noxious fluid it they are attacked. 

But would the ladybird then remain entangled in the web and simply die of starvation if I didn't rescue it?

As it turned out, no. It simply walked around on the finely woven surface of the web until it found an exit and then flew away.

It often seems that much of what we humans do under the banner of 'conservation' should really be called 'conscience-driven intervention'. We intervene to alter checks and balances between species, often using criteria that have little to do with science but have more to do with sentiment, Sunday school notions of 'good' and 'bad' in nature and that widespread fantasy called the balance of nature. Maybe sometimes it's better to just stand and watch.