Seven-spotted Lady Beetle

• It feeds mainly on aphids, eating hundreds of them during its larval stage.
• In winter it gathers in large clusters to hibernate together.
• It releases pheromones that draw others in and ensure there are mates on hand when they wake in spring.
• It is the classic seven-spot ladybird, the one that appears in European popular iconography. Its name in several languages links it to the Virgin Mary, which is where ladybird, coccinelle and mariquita come from.
• When threatened it practises reflex bleeding: it expels from its leg joints a yellow, bitter liquid loaded with alkaloids, above all coccinelline. It leaves a stain that smells bad and tastes worse.
• The seven spots are an aposematic warning, and it works: birds quickly learn to avoid it.
• A single larva can eat several hundred aphids before pupating, and the adult keeps doing the same, which makes it a classic ally of horticulture.
• It overwinters in groups under bark, among leaf litter or inside houses, in aggregations that can gather hundreds of individuals.
• It was deliberately introduced into North America as a biological control and is now an established species there, competing with the native ladybirds.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - chitin exoskeleton (insect)

Habitat and environment

Meadows, gardens and well-vegetated ground where aphids are plentiful, in Europe, Asia, North Africa and North America (introduced)

Birth weight

A small oval egg roughly 1 mm long

Size at birth

The larva is 1-2 mm long on hatching and reaches 8 mm in the fourth instar; as soon as it emerges it eats its own eggshell and any infertile eggs it finds around it

Sexual maturity

It reaches sexual maturity between ten and fourteen days after emerging as an adult; the breeding season begins in late spring

Gestation / incubation

The eggs incubate for about four days; the larva goes through four instars over some three weeks and the pupa lasts about eight days. The full cycle from egg to adult is about six weeks, and there can be up to five generations a year

Litter / clutch size

Orange spindle-shaped eggs, 1 mm long, laid in groups of 10 to 30 on vegetation, close to aphid colonies

Sources consulted: iNaturalist; Zoo Tycoon Movie Fandom Wiki; Bantam Earth; EBSCO Research Starters; UC IPM; The Animal Facts; Animal Diversity Web; PMC (demographic parameters study); recopilacion de biologia de C. septempunctata; Ficha de especie de Coccinella septempunctata; First Nature; Wellcome Open Research, genoma de Coccinella septempunctata; Animal Diversity Web, Coccinella septempunctata