Ladybugs

Alex Re (00:00): Hello, welcome to On Wildlife. I'm your host Alex Re. On this podcast, we bring the wild to you. We take you on a journey into the life of a different animal every week, and I guarantee you, you're going to come out of here knowing more about your favorite animal than you did before. This week's animal can be found in the wild in gardens and on farms, and they not only help the ecosystems that they live in, but they also help us with small red and black bodies. They're easy to identify and you've probably seen them many times throughout your life. So grab a magnifying glass because you're going to have to zoom in to get a better look at ladybugs.

(00:58): Ladybugs, also known as lady beetles or Ladybird. Beetles are a group of insects in the order. This is the order that has all the beetles in it. All beetles have a front pair of wings that have become a hardened wing case that sometimes called an elra. They're kind of like an outer shell of protection for their wings. There are over 400,000 species of beetles on earth. That's more than a third of all the world's insect species. Entomologists, which are people that study insects, prefer to call ladybugs lady bird beetles, or lady beetles because they're not actually true bugs. True bugs are any insect contained within the suborder heop terra, such as cicadas, leaf hoppers, and bedbugs. The word ladybug stems from European farmers who were said to pray to the Virgin Mary after their crops were eaten by pests. The ladybugs ate all of the pests and were affectionately named the beetles of our lady, which then became lady Beetle and then ladybug.

(02:03): Of the 400,000 species of beetles, there are 5,000 species of ladybugs and counting. They come in all different shapes and sizes. Ladybugs are smaller than a lot of other types of beetles, and they usually have round or oval shaped bodies. They're usually about three-tenths to four-tenths of an inch in length, and they also have six legs, like other insects and a pair of antennae. The exoskeleton that protects their body is made of keratin, which is the same stuff that makes up our hair and nails. Ladybugs are divided into three body segments like all other insects, the head, thorax and abdomen. The head of a ladybug contains the mouth parts, the eyes, and the antennae. The thorax holds the three pairs of legs and two pairs of wings, and the abdomen houses all of the organs for breathing, feeding and reproduction. Their first pair of wings divide their backs into two half spheres that house their second pair of wings.

(03:06): Their wings can beat around 85 times per second to keep them in the air. And when you think of a ladybug, you probably think of the distinctive red body with black spots, but ladybugs can also be yellow, orange or solid black instead of spots. Some ladybugs may have stripes or no markings at all, and the reason why they have these bright colors is because it's a warning to predators that they don't taste good and shouldn't be eaten. Ladybugs can live in many habitats and they live on every continent except for Antarctica. Some of their main habitats are grasslands, urban areas, forests and riverside habitats. The seven spotted ladybug is one of the most common species, and they're known for having three spots on each side of their body and one in the middle. They're originally from Europe, but they were brought over to North America in the 18th century to help control populations of pests like aphids.

(04:06): And because they're known to control pests, sometimes they're gathered up out in nature and sold to people in bulk. Ladybugs are usually at their most active between the spring and fall seasons. When it gets colder, they like to find warmer places where they can rest until the weather gets warm again. And this is why you might start to see them on your window sill trying to get in your house. When it gets cold outside, they're looking for warmth. Ladybugs are a very symbolic animal in a lot of cultures too. To some, they symbolize the springtime because the arrival marks the beginning of the warmer spring months. In folk medicine, they're believed to cure measles and toothaches, and a lot of people believe that there are sign of good luck. And ladybugs are the state insect of five different US states, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, and Tennessee. And luckily ladybug populations are doing pretty well throughout their environments, but we'll talk about that later on in the episode. We've got a whole lot more to talk about including what ladybugs eat, and we'll get to that right after the break. This week, I want to give a shout out to Sean from Colorado. His favorite animal is a dog. Did you know that all dog breeds are the same species? One of the reasons why is because they can all interbreed with each other. If you want me to give you a shout out on the next episode, send an email to on wildlife dot podcast@gmail.com, telling me your first name, where you're from and your favorite animal.

(05:57): Now back to the episode. Even though we might think of ladybugs as cute and harmless, they're not so kind to other small insects because most species of ladybug are carnivores. Like I mentioned earlier, they eat insects that we would describe as pests. Their favorite food is aphids. Some species of ladybug do eat plants, though like the Mexican bean beetle and the squash beetle who eat bean plants and squashes respectively. And although they're small, ladybugs can eat a lot. A single ladybug may eat 75 aphids in just a day and can eat a total of 5,000 insects throughout their lifetime. Ladybug larvae can eat 300 to 400 aphids over the course of a few weeks as they need the nutrients to help them grow and develop from larvae to adults. Luckily for them, aphids are pretty easy to hunt. They're slow and wingless. So groups of ladybugs just fly into an area where aphids are munching away on plants and they can eat them by the hundreds.

(07:03): In an attempt to avoid being hunted by ladybugs, aphids may employ a certain strategy to defend themselves. Some aphids will use gravity to their advantage and purposefully drop from the leaves onto the ground. But because ladybugs can fly, they usually find them eventually. Interestingly, a study was conducted in 1999 where aphids and ladybugs were brought to space to see if the aphids could still escape under the effect of zero gravity, the aphids were unable to adapt to the lack of gravity, and they became the first astronauts to be eaten by a ladybug. In addition to aphids, some ladybugs eat mites and fruit flies, but they might also eat pollen, nectar, fungus, mildew, and insect eggs. So all in all, this makes ladybugs, herbivorous, insectivorous or omnivorous depending on the species. Now let's talk about some ladybug mating. In May, male and female ladybugs come together to mate, they're retracted to each other by pheromones that they secrete.

(08:07): Female ladybugs can wait months after she mates to lay her eggs, and she lays them on the underside of leaves in close proximity to colonies of aphids. One female ladybug can lay hundreds of eggs at a time in June or July. Their eggs are a bright orange color, so you can check under leaves and easily see if a ladybug female has later eggs. There. The eggs hatch after about a week of incubation where the ladybugs enter their larval stage. The larval stage is characterized by long slender bodies that are usually gray with different markings of a variety of colors. In their larval stage, they have to eat a ton of aphids, like I mentioned earlier. Also during this stage, they shed their skin and will enter the pube stage. This is called molting. Just before entering their pupil stage, they'll attach themselves to a plant where they'll develop over the course of a few weeks into their adult stage after becoming an adult, they'll have an exoskeleton, but it'll be soft and lack a lot of color.

(09:15): It takes a few hours for the exoskeleton to harden and gain its color. Finally, giving the ladybug its distinctive appearance. Their whole life cycle takes between three and seven weeks with most ladybug species living for around a year. But some species can live as long as three years. Ladybugs are normally solitary insects, and even though groups of them may form around food sources like aphids, they don't hunt together. They can form groups called aggregations at certain times of the year, and they take the form of large clumps on rocks, branches, or locks. The aggregations can have so many ladybugs that it could be several layers. Thick scientists believe that these aggregations can be made up of hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of ladybugs. And this is an evolved behavior to get the normally solitary bugs to reproduce and share food when there's a limited food supply in the winter months. The movement of ladybugs in these clumps is unpredictable, unlike the movement of bees in a hive or ants in their colonies. Okay, we're going to take our last break, and when we get back, we're going to talk about some more ladybug behaviors.

(10:44): Time for our trivia question. What kind of food do honeybee queens eat? The answer is royal jelly. Royal jelly is made from water, proteins, and sugar and is secreted from glands in the worker bees head ed.

(11:13): Okay, now back to the episode. Each species of ladybug has a different set of behaviors, but most species are diurnal, meaning that they're active during the day, and they also like the warmer weather. When the weather gets too cold for ladybugs, it impedes their day-to-day functions and they enter a state of hibernation that's called diapause. Diapause takes place when the temperature drops below 55 degrees Fahrenheit, and periods of diapause can last for up to nine months. Once it warms up again and reaches above 55, the ladybugs will leave their diapause. And we already talked about how ladybugs have bright coloration to ward off predators, but how does this work? Well, if a ladybug is eaten by a predator, they can secrete fluid from their joints, and that fluid gives the ladybug a foul taste. If a predator has a run-in with a ladybug before they may remember that bad taste was left in its mouth and leave another individual alone, they can also play dead if they need to.

(12:18): Ladybugs will also engage in cannibalism in both their larval and adult forms. They often lay a mix of both fertile and infertile eggs, and when the first larva start to emerge, they begin their lives by eating the infertile eggs for a boost of nutrients. If the other larvae don't hatch from their eggs in time, the stronger hatchlings will eat the others. Even some adult ladybugs will eat larvae that they stumble upon, or they'll eat other adults if given the chance. Now, why are ladybugs important? Well, one of the most important things that they do is eat other insects, and because they eat so much, they're great at regulating insect populations. They're also a prey species for birds, frogs, spiders, and other insects. So they play a really important role in the food web. They're also a huge help to farmers because they're kind of like a natural pesticide.

(13:16): They'll eat insects that destroy crops. So not only does that save farmers money, it also causes them to use less pesticides on their plants. Reducing the use of pesticides means that farmers can grow healthier crops and they won't harm the environment as much. And even though most species don't eat nectar, they can actually be pollinators because the land on plants to look for their prey. Some of the biggest issues that ladybugs are facing right now are habitat loss, climate change, and the use of pesticides. We just talked about how temperature can have a huge impact on ladybug behavior, so when the climate starts to change, the natural lifecycle of ladybug will also change. But there are ways we can help them starting by supporting organizations that protect ladybug habitats, engage younger generations in science and fight against the use of pesticides. You should check out The Lost Ladybug Project, pesticide Action Network, and The Nature Conservancy. Thank you so much for coming on this adventure with me as we explored the world of ladybugs. You can find the sources that we use for this podcast and links to organizations that we reference at onwildlife.org. You can also email us with any questions at On Wildlife dot podcast@gmail.com, and you can follow us on Instagram at On Wildlife, or on TikTok at Wildlife. Don't forget to tune in next Wednesday for another awesome episode, and that's On Wildlife.

Jess Avellino (14:59): You've Been listening to On Wildlife with Alex Re. On Wildlife provides general educational information on various topics as a public service, which should not be construed as professional financial, real estate tax, or legal advice. These are our personal opinions only. Please refer to our full disclaimer policy on our website for full details.