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 & 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

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