I didn’t have much time over the last year for gardening. As a result, a large clump of nettles established themselves at the end of my back garden. However, every cloud has a silver lining, and in the case of my nettles, it was a huge colony of ladybirds. On any day, dozens of ladybirds were visible on the nettles – so much so that I will probably leave a patch of nettles to grow next year too, to encourage these colourful little beetles to visit again. It helped that the nettles were also home to massive swarms of aphids (which provided food for the ladybirds). The vast majority of the ladybirds were of the red, two-spot variety which means that they have a single black dot on each side of their shell (the scientific name is adalia bipunctata). Apparently, they are not that common in the west of Ireland. I saw only one seven-spot ladybird (coccinella 7-punctata), which is the most common type in Ireland, and saw the occasional yellow-and-black, fourteen-spot ladybird (proplea 14-punctata) which is pictured above, and looks rather dazzling.
If you want to contribute to an all-Ireland survey of ladybirds, you can do so at Biology.ie.
References
[1] More information on ladybirds can be found at Roy Anderson’s Ladybirds of Ireland website.
[2] A view of the distribution of ladybirds in Ireland and the UK can be found at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology‘s website.
[3] An identification chart for the most common ladybirds can be found on the British Wildlife’s website here.
[4] An identification chart of the 15 ladybird species in Ireland can also by found at BiodiversityIreland’s website too.