ladybugging

On Friday I led a group of citizen scientists out into a gorgeous milkweed meadow, where we hunted for ladybugs. In a short walk that involved no sweep nets (we didn’t want to whack all the beautiful, about-to-pop blooms off the milkweed), we recorded four species of ladybugs: ursine anthill ladybug (Brachiacantha ursine), polished ladybug (Cycloneda mundi), seven-spotted ladybug (Cocinella septempunctata), and multi-colored Asian ladybug (Harmonia axyridris).

Because we didn’t collect specimens but, rather, recorded them photographically as we hiked, our numbers of individuals within a species are not precise. There was a single mating pair of ursines (see photo), one individual polished, and one individual seven-spotted. My best guess is that we spotted at least five Asian ladybugs, but I can’t be sure we didn’t recount the same individual.

Anyway, it was a great afternoon in the sunshine, celebrating insects that live in our neck of the woods. For more information on ladybug citizen science, or to view ladybugs we and others have found over the years, click on over to the Lost Ladybug Project website.

This past Saturday was a glorious–sunny and warm with a lovely breeze all day long–and I spent the early part of it talking about citizen science at the Harvard Museum of Natural History. That’s where I met Zepur, age six, who arrived sporting ladbybug earrings and clutching her own copy of Citizen Scientists. She told me she and her dad had already begun listening for frogs near their house, and then she pulled these hand-written checklists and notes from inside the front cover of her book. It was the sort of moment that makes a writer like me giddy.

I gave my talk, including a little introduction to the Lost Ladybug Project, and then Zepur, her dad, myself, and a dozen hearty ladybugging newbies headed out into the Museum’s courtyard for a look around. We were in the middle of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and I wasn’t sure what to expect. We tried to shake ladybugs out of magnolias trees and lilac bushes, but came up empty. In fact, I was gearing up to launch my “sometimes science is like this” schtick when we approached what I now call the Crabapple Tree of Happiness. There we found the mother lode of ladybug larvae, enough for everyone to have a closer look. And then, with much cheering and oohing and ahhing, we spotted one mighty fine and much-appreciated Asian multicolored ladybug.

Thank you Zepur and friends. It was fun hunting ladybugs with you!

Tag: ladybugging

Ladybugging

Harvard Museum of Natural History