Introduction

Good day all of my fellow beetles fans. I am not talking about the band I am talking about the insect, and how they relate to human life. Today I hope answer all of your questions. One of the most popular questions that I find is that people ask k is: Are lady bugs are harmless? Well they are harmless. If you need proof next time you see a lady bug let I crawl on your hand and see what happens. I will tell you first it will crawl on your hand and walk around, then probably sit for a while then eventually fly away.

The real name of Lady Bugs Is Lady beetles. They made a new name for it only because it made more sense according to witch group it came from. A lady bug came from the insects group witch are also known are known as bugs. There are different types of bugs there are spiders, ants, and so on. some of the bugs are poisons they can eject the poison in to your body by just one or more bites on any surface of your body. The thing is Lady bugs can not affect you in any ways there are no poison lady bugs.

So now I am going to give you a presentation on the life style of a lady bug.

Presentation

Coleomegilla maculata, commonly known as the spotted lady beetle, pink spotted lady beetle or twelve-spotted lady beetle, is a large coccinellid beetle native to North America. The adults and larvae feed primarily on aphids and the species has been used as a biological control agent.

The spotted lady beetle is about six millimetres long, more flattened than most species of lady beetle, pink or red with six spots on each wing cover. The thorax is a similar shade of red with two large triangular black patches. The larvae resemble miniature alligators and are dark coloured. They have three pairs of legs and grow to about six millimetres long. The eggs are spindle shaped and laid upright in groups near

potential prey.

A female beetle may lay up to 1,000 eggs in small groups in protected sites on stems and leaves over a three month period. The larvae actively seek out prey and may travel as far as twelve metres in their search for food. The larvae grow rapidly, moulting four times before attaching themselves by the abdomen to a leaf or other surface to pupate. The adult beetles emerge from three to twelve days later depending on the temperature. There are two to five generations per year. This species is most abundant in September when they congregate before mating and winter hibernation. They overwinter in large aggregations in leaf litter, under stones and in other protected sites at the edge of fields and hedgerows. They emerge in spring and look for suitable prey and egg laying sites in nearby crops, often dispersing by walking along the ground.

These lady beetles can be seen wherever the insects on which they prey are found. Crops which support aphid populations include wheat, sorghum, sweet corn, alfalfa, soybeans, peas, beans, cotton, potatoes, brassicacious crops, tomatoes, asparagus and apples. Besides aphids, they include in their diet adelgids, mites, insect eggs and small larvae. They also eat pollen which may constitute up to 50% of their food intake, nectar, water and honeydew. When normal prey is scarce, both adults and larvae sometimes exhibit cannibalistic tendencies, eating eggs, larvae and pupae of their own species.

These lady beetles can be seen wherever the insects on which they prey are found. Crops which support aphid populations include wheat, sorghum, sweet corn, alfalfa, soybeans, peas, beans, cotton, potatoes, brassicacious crops, tomatoes, asparagus and apples. Besides aphids, they include in their diet adelgids, mites, insect eggs and small larvae. They also eat pollen which may constitute up to 50% of their food intake, nectar, water and honeydew. When normal prey is scarce, both adults and larvae sometimes exhibit cannibalistic tendencies, eating eggs, larvae and pupae of their own species.

It has been found experimentally that interplanting a crop susceptible to aphid attack with a flowering plant such as the dandelion, Taraxacum officinale, encouraged predation on aphids because the spotted lady beetles were attracted to their pollen-rich flowers.

The spotted lady beetle commonly oviposits on the native weed, Acalypha ostryaefolia, when it grows near sweet corn crops in Kentucky. A research study showed that the insect favoured the weed over the corn even though it housed no prey insects. The first instar larvae fell from the weed plants and crawled across the soil for a distance of up to eight metres a day before ascending a sweet corn plant or another weed plant. The presence of this weed, in close proximity to the crop, resulted in more beetle larvae on the crop than was the case when the weed was absent.

Research showed that spotted lady beetle larvae were an important cause of natural mortality for Helicoverpa zea eggs on sweet corn.

A study identified the spotted lady beetle as a significant predator of the eggs of the European corn borer, Pyrausta nubilalis, with consumption averaging sixty eggs per day.

Another study has shown that the spotted lady beetle reduced populations of eggs and small larvae of the Colorado potato beetle, Leptinotarsa decemlineata, on potatoes and that the rate of consumption was highly correlated with the air temperature.

Manipulative biological control aims to make use of the lady beetles already present in the environment by making conditions as favorable as possible for them and by avoiding spraying chemicals that will interfere with their predation.

Augmentative biological control recognises that lady beetles may be present but may be insufficient in numbers to control the pest species and seeks to make up this deficit.

Classical biological control seeks to introduce a species that is not already present in the environment in the hope that it will become established and eventually control the pest. Supplies of the spotted lady beetle are available commercially for this purpose.

So what do ladybugs eat? Most ladybugs are predators. They eat other insects, most of which are considered pests to humans who like to grow plants for food or beauty. They are often called a 'gardener's best friend'.

The most common insects that ladybugs eat are aphids, which are serious pest of plants. That's why ladybugs can be the gardener's best friend. They will control the pest insects in the garden without the gardener having to use chemical pesticides. Even larval ladybugs eat aphids. They also eat other insects that have soft bodies, like mites, white flies, and scale insects – all of which are pests of plants.

However, the question of what do ladybugs eat is much more complex than this. There are exceptions to most every rule, for example sub family Epilachninae can actually be considered vegetarian ladybugs. Some of them eat fungus, like mushrooms. There are some that like to dine on mildew. Still others prefer eating leaves and can even become pests of some plants.

Still, most ladybugs are not pests. In fact, due to what they eat, most of them can almost be thought of as exterminators. After all, the majority of ladybugs subscribe to a diet that allows them to eat other pests. Hence as a group they are considered predators. At the very least, the fact that they can effectively keep a garden – and all the plants in it – free of aphids is certainly beneficial. It's great that what a ladybug eats helps humans with the food that humans eat.

The ladybug life cycle is not much different from the life cycle of a butterfly. The ladybug goes through the same four stages as a butterfly, the egg stage, the larvae stage, the pupa stage, and the adult ladybug stage. You know what adult ladybugs look like, but you wouldn't even recognize them before they get to that final stage of their lives.

Female ladybugs lay their eggs on the underside of leaves. This is to protect them from being seen by flying predators as well as from the weather. A mother ladybug will lay from ten to fifteen eggs in one place and she will make sure that it is a place where the babies can find food when they hatch. The ladybug eggs look similar to yellow jellybeans, except that they are tiny. The next time you are in the park in springtime, carefully look under some plant leaves and see if you can pick out some ladybug eggs, but don't touch them because you could kill the babies.

In the winter time lady bugs hibernate like any other animal only because they do not want to freeze like the rest of the animals. So they would probably travel some were else or ever go in to your home. The most important thing to them is staying alive at this point. So all of the lady bugs do not usually travel in packs they will scatter all over the place. They do not travel in packs like bees. They do this so when the "ladies" of the lady bugs lay their eggs there a lot of them as said before in the life cycle of a lady bug. So they do this to avoid the over crowding of one particular area that they will stay in for the entire winter. Lady bugs are very spacious bugs they like to spread out and line their lives like a family in modern society. For example there was a family a mother, father, two sons, and three daughters. of course they are all grown up now for all of them living in the same house must be uncomfortable with bring in their families and such. So before it is too late they would want to explore the world. So what they would do is move out, just like how the lady bugs are before winter and the beginning of spring. if you think of it in a way the lady bugs are just like humans and human life.

Recourses

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Lady Beetles

By: Kelsie Crooks

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