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-spotted lady beetle, 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

Habitat & 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

A dark, spiny newly hatched larva, very unlike the adult

Sexual maturity

10-14 days after emerging as an adult

Gestation / incubation

Several days of egg development; a larval stage of 10-15 days

Litter / clutch size

250 to 1,000 eggs over its lifetime, in groups of up to 15 per surface

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)