Lady Bug - Chilocorus kuwanae

Moved

… Phil Huntley-Franck, 18 October, 2009 - 1:57pm

Chilocorus kuwanae

Rectangular spots aft of middle - unmistakable in this photo. It's actually a pretty easy ID, as "black ladybugs with red spots" go, if you see the insect at the correct angle. But they don't always cooperate by giving you a perfect profile or straight-down dorsal view :-)

I'd venture to say that this is the only black-with-red-spots Chilocorus in North America that can be identified by dorsum only - some of the others can be ID'd by range, but where ranges overlap you need to flip them over and get a view of the venter, and even that doesn't help with the orbus/fraternus and hexacyclus/tricyclus complexes. (The latter two can't even be separated by male genitalia, they require DNA analysis!)

… Abigail M. Parker, 18 October, 2009 - 8:55am

sexacyclus or whatever you call them...

...proudly wear T-shirts that say "inseparable by male genitalia"

… v belov, 18 October, 2009 - 2:00pm

Literal LOL!

Really, it startled my cat. It's easy to forget how things sound to other people when you're deeply into a group of insects...boy, the day I was researching Scymninae over my lunch break and had Google searches for male genitalia and dorsal pubescence on the screen, I had a lot of explaining to do to my manager. (At least I was using Safe Search. I once looked up "sexing lady beetles" without it and got a screenful of nekkid people in Volkswagens.)

… Abigail M. Parker, 18 October, 2009 - 5:43pm

must be a Chilocorus

i wonder if the experts could bring it any further from this pix...

… v belov, 18 October, 2009 - 1:33am