Information about Ladybugs

Class: Insecta (Insects)
Order: Coleoptera

Family: Coccinellidae: These great little garden helpers are widely referred to as ladybugs but in fact these helpful insects are not bugs at all, they are beetles. The term ladybug is considered scientifically to be slang for the correct name Lady Beetle. Other popular names include ladybird and ladybird beetle. Coccinellidae means "little sphere" and their shiny, often brightly colored bodies are dome shaped, oval, or convex.

Genera: 360


Species: There are about 5,000 different species of ladybugs in the world! Approximately 400 species of these great little beetles can be found here in North America. There are about 175 of those species in our home state of California. The most common beneficial species in North America is the Convergent Lady Beetle. It gets it's name from a pair of white convergent dashes on the pronotum / prothorax. Other species common to the USA:

Ladybug bullet 2-spotted Lady Beetle Ladybug bullet 7-spotted Lady Beetle Ladybug bullet 9-spotted Lady Beetle Ladybug bullet 11-spotted Lady Beetle

Ladybug bullet 13-spotted Lady Beetle Ladybug bullet 14-spotted Lady Beetle Ladybug bullet 15-spotted Lady Beetle

Ladybug bullet Eye-spotted Lady Beetle Ladybug bullet Pine Lady Beetle Ladybug bullet Parenthesis Lady Beetle

Ladybug bullet Timberlake spotted Lady Beetle Ladybug bullet Transverse Lady Beetle Ladybug bullet Twice-stabbed Lady Beetle

You can learn more about ladybug species here.

Body length: 0.08 to 0.4 inches (2 to 10 millimeters), depending on species. You will also find the females are often larger than the males

Life span: Ladybugs generally live about a year, however some species, such as the Asian Lady Beetle, will live 2-3 years if the conditions are right. We have detailed information and pictures about a ladybug's lifecycle here.

Incubation: approximately a week or 5-8 days, ladybugs will merge from their eggs in their larval form.

Age of maturity: 3 to 7 weeks

Number of eggs laid: Depending on the species, a ladybug may only lay just a few eggs to upwards of 2000 in it's lifetime. That's a lot of baby ladybugs!

Diet - What do ladybugs Eat? Ladybugs are omnivores and eat a variety of things that make them famous as a source for organic and biological pest control.

Ladybugs particularly like aphids and may eat upwards of 5,000 in it's lifetime. Also on the menu for these hungry little pest eaters are small insects such as whitefly, mealybugs, scales, mites, bollworm, broccoli worm, tomato hornworm and cabbage moth. They will also eat the eggs of some insects such as moth eggs and certain ladybugs eat pollen and mildew. Rarely but if necessary a ladybug may resort to cannibalism.

Do ladybugs Sleep?

Ladybugs are active during the day and go into a state of rest at night. In this period of rest, they are unresponsive to things going on around them. When an individual ladybug goes into this state seems to vary slightly from ladybug to ladybug. In our backyard for example we have seen ladybugs (Hippodamia Convergens) in the evening completely immobilized in the stems of our cosmos, while a few others were still actively searching for food and crawling around. The "sleeping" ladybugs were unresponsive to our flashlights, or camera flashes whereas at daytime even my shadow falling on them from feet away would cause a disturbance.