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Photo#334420
Lady Beetle - Chilocorus

Lady Beetle - Chilocorus
Camden County, New Jersey, USA
September 18, 2009
Size: ~5mm
All black head, 2 red spots on body.

Images of this individual: tag all
Lady Beetle - Chilocorus Lady Beetle - Chilocorus Lady Beetle - Chilocorus

Moved
Moved from ID Request.

Chilocorus - stigma or kuwanae
You know, of all the "black with two red spots" lady beetle pics on ID Request in the last month, yours may be the first one that's actually the twice-stabbed lady beetle, Chilocorus stigma.

It may be C. kuwanae, though - I found a lot of them across the river in Philadelphia this summer. I've got to drag myself away for dinner now, I'll be back to look at these some more.

 
Thanks
This is the first I've seen. I was busy photographing a leafhopper nymph on a Holly tree when this lady beetle walked right in front of my camera. I snapped a few shots and it flew away.

 
They eat scale insects in trees
The ones I found were under the leaves of a weeping birch tree, and were invisible from outside its draping branches. But when I went inside, I saw a beetle every six inches!

These beauties don't often turn up in gardens, flower beds, meadows, or basically anywhere at ground level, since their prey is arboreal. Most of the "black with two red spots" beetles that are submitted to ID Request are actually a variant color form of the multicolored Asian lady beetle, the ashy gray lady beetle, or a member of the genus Hyperaspis.

The differences immediately apparent in your beetle are its short, stout antennae; helmet-shaped profile with a flared (explanate) "rim"; surface texture; size; and to some extent the lack of white markings on the head and pronotum - that doesn't rule out all the other species by itself, but if you ever see a black-with-two-red-spots lady beetle that does have white markings on it, it's definitely not Chilocorus.

Whew! I do go on, huh? But I've been studying up on the black-with-two-red-spots species and enjoy the challenge of ID'ing them.

 
:-)
Thanks for all the information!

 
C. tumidus?
From Gordon's ref., it looks like C. tumidus is also a possibility around these parts (we have yet to determine on here at BugGuide). We'd need to see the underside to tell for sure. In any case, I'd vote against C. kuwanae, as to me the spots look too round.

 
Chilocorus, oh my...
The spots seem small for C. stigma but of course that's variable, and they're not aft of middle like C. kuwanae - not particularly squared-off, either, as you point out. I just didn't want to rule it out since I found hundreds of them just across the river.

I looked at Gordon's figure of C. tumidus and yes, that's awfully similar dorsally too! Its spots have a more transverse appearance, but that's hard to determine w/o a straight-down dorsal shot. And w/o seeing the venter you're right, we can't rule it out.

 
Thanks
.

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