Convergent Lady Beetle

• It owes its name to the two converging white marks on its thorax.
• It gathers in its millions to overwinter in the mountains of California, and those aggregations are collected with portable vacuums and sold: several billion individuals a year are reckoned to be harvested and traded.
• The practice dates from the early twentieth century, but the University of California has long advised against releasing ladybirds collected this way: on arrival they tend to disperse rather than stay.
• They also carry parasites: microsporidia have been found in individuals from thirteen of twenty-two commercial shipments tested, and an infected female lays barely half as many eggs.
• A single adult can eat more than 5,000 aphids over its lifetime.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - chitin exoskeleton (insect)

Habitat and environment

Any habitat with aphid-infested plants; in California it spends summer and winter aggregated in mountain canyons and comes down to the valleys in late winter

Size at birth

Oblong yellow egg of about 1 mm, laid upright in clusters of 10 to 30

Sexual maturity

Between 5 and 13 days from the emergence of the adult to the first laying

Gestation / incubation

From egg to adult, between 4 and 7 weeks

Litter / clutch size

Clutches of 10 to 30 eggs, and several hundred per female

Sources consulted: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippodamia_convergens; Animal Diversity Web, Hippodamia convergens; Michigan State University, guia de enemigos naturales; Ficha tecnica de cria de Hippodamia convergens; Animal Diversity Web; UC IPM; UC IPM, ficha Convergent lady beetle

Best time: Bivoltine: one generation in spring and another in autumn; in winter it forms aggregations in low vegetation of damp areas and mountain foothills