Three black spots on each wing case plus one straddling the join, making an odd number
Seven-spot ladybird — the shared front spot is what makes the count seven, not six or eight.
Nature · Insects & other invertebrates
Seven-spot ladybird
Adults March–October, hibernating over winter · 5–8 mm
Coccinella septempunctata — Coccinellidae (ladybirds), order Coleoptera
Britain's archetypal ladybird, and the answer to the quiz staple that a ladybird is a beetle, not a bug. It is glossy red with seven black spots — three on each wing case and one straddling the join behind the head — plus two small white patches either side of the black pronotum. Adults and larvae both eat aphids in large numbers, which is why gardeners welcome them, and threatened adults ooze bitter yellow blood from their leg joints.
How to spot them
- ▸Exactly seven black spots: three on each elytron and one shared across the midline at the front
- ▸Glossy red, unmarked between the spots, with two white patches at the front corners of the black pronotum
- ▸Legs entirely black (the harlequin's are brown)
- ▸Larva slate-blue-grey and spiky with orange spots — quite unlike the adult
- ▸Gives off bitter yellow fluid from the leg joints when handled; smells acrid
How to know it
It is a beetle, not a bug: its forewings are hardened into the cases that snap shut over the flight wings
Seven-spot ladybird — order Coleoptera, family Coccinellidae.
Its legs are entirely black, which separates it from the bigger invader that has brown ones
Seven-spot ladybird versus harlequin ladybird.
When handled it bleeds bitter yellow fluid from its leg joints
Seven-spot ladybird — reflex bleeding of alkaloid-laden haemolymph.
Its blue-grey spiky orange-spotted larva looks nothing like the adult and eats several hundred aphids before pupating
Seven-spot ladybird larva, a voracious aphid predator.
Swarms of it made news in the drought summer of 1976, when they crowded British beaches
Seven-spot ladybird — the 1976 ladybird plague followed a huge aphid year.
Its English name is a contraction honouring the Virgin Mary, whose red cloak the beetle's wing cases were said to match
Seven-spot ladybird — 'Our Lady's bird'; the seven spots were her seven joys and seven sorrows.
Quick-fire facts
- •Coccinella septempunctata — septem punctata, 'seven-spotted'
- •A ladybird is a beetle (order Coleoptera), not a bug (Hemiptera); Americans call them ladybugs and entomologists prefer ladybird beetle
- •'Ladybird' is short for 'Our Lady's bird': the red cloak of the Virgin Mary, with the seven spots as her seven joys and seven sorrows
- •Adults and larvae are both aphid predators; a single larva may eat several hundred aphids
- •Reflex bleeding releases bitter alkaloids from the leg joints as a defence; the red-and-black colouring is aposematic warning colour
- •It overwinters as an adult, often in groups in dead plant stems, leaf litter and window frames
- •The drought summer of 1976 produced a famous British ladybird plague, mostly of this species, driven by an aphid boom
- •The RHS puts the number of ladybird species in Britain and Ireland at about 40; the two-spot, once as common as the seven-spot, has declined sharply since the harlequin arrived
Drill it — 8 cards
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Sources
- Royal Horticultural Society — Ladybirds
- Paul D. Brock — Britain's Insects: A Field Guide to the Insects of Great Britain and Ireland