Tiny Black Ladybug Species Spotted
Recently I opened up a pack of strawberries that I bought from Trader Joe’s and I was looking through the package to pick out the bad ones. I looked down and there was a little beetle on the side of one of the strawberries and I thought it was some sort of pest beetle. On closer inspection it turned out to be a ladybug. What ladybug species it was, I wasn’t immediately sure. This was the first time I have encountered this type of ladybug.
This is a very tiny ladybug species as you can see from the pictures. It’s all black with four orange spots on its outer wings and it has two orange markings on the pronotum.
I immediately grabbed my camera and started taking pictures of the little black critter while it was asleep. It had been in my refrigerator for a day or two so he or she was in a dormant state and easy to pose for pictures. It was only a matter of minutes before this tiny black ladybug woke up and wanted to head outside.
I have sent some of the pictures over to bugguide.net for identification purposes. There are a lot of experienced and amateur entomologists who volunteer their time identifying insects there.
This is the second ladybug we’ve had in the last few weeks that has hitchhiked into our house on some fruits and vegetables and survived the process of being packaged, passed through groceries, hot cars and refrigerated. These little ladybugs are resilient little creatures. Read about our other little hitchiking ladybug here.
Ladybug Species Identified!
The volunteers at bugguide.net as well as the wonderful crew at the lost ladybug project have gotten back to me and confirmed that this little ladybug species is Hyperaspis quadrioculata.
Look closely next time you see a little beetle type bug, you never know, it might be a ladybug!
