Lost ladybird found in Devon

The 13-spot ladybird, long thought to be extinct in Britain, has turned up in a sleepy corner of the south-west.

Always considered rare, the insect Hippodamia 13-punctata was thought to have died out from the British Isles around 1952.

There have been occasional sightings since, but they've tended to be written off as strays that have managed to cross the channel. But now the discovery of a young ladybird, coming after several more sightings of adults over the least decade, proves there's a breeding population deep in the West Country.

13-spot ladybird larva.

Richard Comont, a PhD student at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and part of the UK Ladybird Survey, made the find while taking part in a recent BioBlitz on the Axe Estuary Wetlands. The insect was still in its immature larval form, so it couldn't have hatched far away.

'As soon as I saw the larva I was fairly sure it was a 13-spot - it's something I've dreamt of finding,' he says. 'It's such a significant discovery that I took it back to rear to adulthood to make absolutely sure, and when it finally hatched into an adult I could confirm it as the first native 13-spot for 60 years.'
The 13-spot ladybird, which can have anything between 7 and 15 spots, is slimmer than its better-known 7-spot cousin. It's longer and slimmer than its famous relation, with more of a teardrop shape than a rounded one.

'How exciting to rediscover this ladybird breeding in Devon after being declared extinct in the 1950s - it makes you wonder what else is out there waiting to be rediscovered,' comments Andrew Whitehouse, a conservation officer for Buglife in south-west England. 'Many of Britain's invertebrate populations are declining at a drastic rate, so it is great to have some good news.'

'With the experts we had on the day I knew that we would find loads of really interesting and unusual creatures, but never for a second did I think we'd make a discovery of this magnitude,' adds James Chubb, an education ranger for East Devon County Council.

A BioBlitz is an event at which members of the public try to find as many species as possible in a small area of land, under the guidance of experts. These events have turned up some rare and unexpected creatures in the past, but few as much so as this 'extinct' insect. This one was organised by East Devon District Council to showcase the variety of wildlife found in the Axe Estuary Woodlands.

A spot of summer fun: make your mark on ladybird maps

Scientists are asking families for help this month by counting and photographing ladybirds they find in their gardens, parks and fields. The information that people collect will help to create detailed ladybird maps for the UK.

Several species of ladybird are being seen in particularly high numbers at the moment, including 7-spot, 14-spot and Harlequin, prompting the UK ladybird Survey to declare the next few weeks as the perfect time to get out and count these hidden gems.

Ladybird recording is an ideal, fun activity for children, parents and grandparents alike during the summer holidays and UK ladybirds are readily identifiable, requiring no specialist equipment or training. To help with identification images of common ladybirds can be found here (on this website) and here (on CEH's Flickr site).

http://www.ceh.ac.uk/news/news_archive/Aspotofsummerfun-Ladybirdrecording_2011_48.html

There are 47 different species in the UK and ladybird recording is very important in helping scientists to assess the effects of environmental change, such as the arrival of a new species, on biodiversity.
The survey scientists, who run the hugely popular UK Ladybird Survey website, are particularly interested in records of native ladybird species, the 7-spot, Adonis and 11-spot, all of which should be seen in high numbers during the month of August, as well as the invasive non-native Harlequin ladybird, which arrived in 2003 and has now spread across vast tracts of the UK countryside.

Dr Helen Roy, an ecologist at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and who leads the UK Ladybird Survey, said, "This has been a particularly good year for some species of ladybirds, making this summer holiday an ideal opportunity for people to send in their sightings of ladybirds, preferably with a photograph, so we can keep track of the distribution of ladybirds. We really do need records from all corners of the UK, as some areas such as Scotland, Wales, Lincolnshire and parts of the South-west are surprisingly under-recorded."

A new atlas, Ladybirds (Coccinellidae) of Britain and Ireland, was published in June 2011 by the UK Ladybird Survey team. The survey team is now looking to further investigate trends and report again in five years. By filling in some of these gaps the team will create the most accurate picture possible for the next set of population and distribution maps.

Everyone can log on, find out more and submit their ladybird records via UK Ladybird Survey website. Feedback is provided on all photographs sent in.

Ladybird facts
Britain has 47 different species of native ladybird, which play a key role in our ecosystem.
Many ladybirds are voracious predators of crop and garden pest insects, particularly aphids.
In recent years a new ladybird arrival has been spotted in the UK. The Harlequin ladybird was introduced to North America in 1988, where it is now the most widespread ladybird species on the continent. It has already invaded much of north-western Europe, and arrived in Britain in summer 2004.

The public has played a key role in monitoring the invasion through the Harlequin Ladybird Survey, which was launched in 2005, and has now received more than 55,000 online records.
The harlequin can eat over 12,000 aphids in a year. Unfortunately, harlequins prey on more than just pest insects, and will eat non-pest and beneficial insects, including the larvae of other ladybirds.

Additional information

For press queries, please contact the CEH press office. The Centre for Ecology & Hydrology issued a press release to accompany this announcement.

http://www.ceh.ac.uk/news/news_archive/Aspotofsummerfun-Ladybirdrecording_2011_48.html

Parasitism: wasp uses ladybird as “zombie bodyguard”

The parasitic wasp Dinocampus coccinellae is no fool! It controls a ladybird, lays an egg in its abdomen and turns it into the bodyguard of its cocoon. This surprising host-parasite manipulation has been observed and analyzed by researchers from the Laboratoire Maladies Infectieuses et Vecteurs: Ecologie, Génétique, Evolution et Contrôle (CNRS/IRD/Université Montpellier 1) and the Université de Montréal. Although this strategy enables the wasps to protect their larvae from predation, it has a cost: the wasps pay for it in terms of fertility. The researchers have also demonstrated the reversible character of this manipulation: once the larvae have hatched, some ladybirds can recover normal behavior. This work is published on-line on the website of Biology Letters.


Dinocampus coccinellae is a common parasitic wasp of the spotted lady beetle Coleomegilla maculata. Females deposit a single egg in the abdomen of their host, the ladybird, and during larval development (around twenty days) the parasite feeds on the host’s tissues. Then, the wasp larva breaks out through the ladybird’s abdomen, without killing it, and begins spinning a cocoon between the ladybird's legs. The ladybird, partially paralyzed, is forced to stand guard over the cocoon!

The novel manipulation strategy is intriguing in several ways: whereas the immense majority of parasitic wasps kill their host while they grow, the ladybird parasited by D. coccinellae remains alive. In addition, the behavioral manipulation occurs once the larva has left its host.

The mechanisms of this manipulation have been closely scrutinized by Frédéric Thomas’ team at the Laboratoire Maladies Infectieuses et Vecteurs: Ecologie, Génétique, Evolution et Contrôle (CNRS/IRD/Universités Montpellier 1 et 2), in collaboration with researchers from the Université de Montréal. The researchers believe that the ladybird’s atypical behavior results from a manipulation orchestrated by the wasp in order to be protected from predation up to the end of its larval development, in other words up to the emergence of the adult wasp. The scientists have shown in the laboratory that the cocoons of wasps guarded by a ladybird are much less vulnerable to predation than cocoons left on their own, or cocoons guarded by a ladybird killed for experimental purposes. Secretions left by the larva when it breaks out could force the ladybird to protect the cocoon once the larva has come out.

The wasp larva grows by using the resources of its host. However, these resources must remain sufficient for the ladybird, since it cannot feed itself while guarding the cocoon.

This work also enabled the researchers to validate a theoretical model, according to which parasites cannot maximize both their effort of reproduction and manipulation.

The researchers have demonstrated a negative correlation between the length of the ladybird's guarding period and the fecundity of the wasp. Everything happens as if the wasp larva had to “choose” between using the resources of the ladybird to produce eggs (which will be available at the adult age) or making them last while sparing the ladybird and keeping it alive.

Finally, the researchers were surprised to observe that around 25% of the manipulated ladybirds recovered normal behavior after the emergence of the adult wasp, a very rare case of reversible manipulation.


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