Are Ladybugs A Beneficial Insect?

The Coccinellidae are a family of small beetles, normally called "Ladybird", "ladybug", and "lady beetle". They are commonly yellow, orange, or red with small black spots on their wing covers, with black legs, heads and antennae. Such color patterns vary greatly, however; for example, a minority of species, such as Vibidia duodecimguttata, a twelve-spotted species, have whitish spots on a brown background. Coccinellids are found worldwide, with over 6,000 species described.

Coccinellidae are known as ladybugs in North America, and ladybirds in other areas. Entomologists in the United States widely prefer the names ladybird beetles or lady beetles as these insects are not true bugs.

The Coccinellidae are generally considered useful insects, because many species feed on aphids or scale insects, which are pests in gardens, agricultural fields, orchards, and similar places. Within the colonies of such plant-eating pests, they will lay hundreds of eggs, and when these hatch, the larvae will commence feeding immediately. However, some species do have unwelcome effects; among these, the most prominent are the subfamily Epilachninae, which are plant eaters. Usually, Epilachninae are only mild agricultural pests, eating the leaves of grain, potatoes, beans, and various other crops, but their numbers can increase explosively in years when their natural enemies, such as parasitoid wasps that attack their eggs, are few. In such situations, they can do major crop damage. They occur in practically all the major crop-producing regions of temperate and tropical countries.

Most ladybugs have oval, dome-shaped bodies with six short legs. Depending on the species, they can have spots, stripes, or no markings at all. Seven-spotted coccinellids are red or orange with three spots on each side and one in the middle; they have a black head with white patches on each side.

As well as the usual yellow and deep red colorings, many coccinellid species are mostly, or entirely, black, dark grey, gray, or brown, and may be difficult for an entomologist / nonentomologists to recognise as coccinellids at all. Conversely, non-entomologists might easily mistake many other small beetles for coccinellids. For example, the tortoise beetles, like the ladybird beetles, look similar because they are shaped so that they can cling to a flat surface so closely that ants and many other enemies cannot grip them.

Beetles are particularly prone to such misidentification if they are spotted in red, orange or yellow and black. Examples include the much larger scarabaeid grapevine beetles and spotted species of the Chrysomelidae, Melyridae and others. Conversely, laymen may fail to identify unmarked species of Coccinellidae as "ladybirds". Other beetles that have a defensive hemispherical shape, like that of the Coccinellidae (for example the Cassidinae), also are often taken for ladybirds.

A common myth, totally unfounded, is that the number of spots on the insect's back indicates its age. In fact, the underlying pattern and coloration are determined by the species and genetics of the beetle, and develop as the insect matures. In some species its appearance is fixed by the time it emerges from its pupa, though in most it may take some days for the color of the adult beetle to mature and stabilize. Generally, the mature color tends to be fuller and darker than the color of the callow.

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