I can't tell if they're a trick of the light or not. I've tried talking myself in and out of several different species! I wouldn't think H. axyridis because it's so small and the scutellum is more prominent. Darned lighting is messing with me, though. I really wish I'd been in the habit of carrying around calipers in 2008 so I could have gotten a better measurement.

(signata group) would be my guess, although I wish the images were a bit sharper. Still, the spots look very Chilocorus-like, and there's at least some lateral explainate elytra.

That would be my guess, too, but mostly I wanted to defend the quality of your images:-) These things are *so* convex, *so* shiny, and won't sit still. It is a wonder you did as well as you did.

I initially thought Chilocorus but I'm no longer sure that the elytra are explanate enough, and dang, those eyes are hyperaspine blue if I ever saw blue eyes. Other LBs can appear to have steel-blue or blue-gray eyes in the right lighting, but I haven't seen that effect very often in Chilocorinae, and danged if this little critter doesn't have electric-blue headlights. And there's that big ol' scutellum, too; seems proportionately larger than Chilocorinae, but Hyperaspini have prominent scutella.

I'll let this sit here a bit longer, see if anyone else chimes in. Maybe I can get the 2nd-4th images a bit better in Photoshop, I'll see if that's possible over the weekend.