How to spot the difference between a ladybug and an Asian lady beetle

Few insects are as beloved by humans as the native American ladybug, that little gal with the black-spotted red body.

Most of us were taught as youngsters that the ladybug is a good-luck talisman and a beneficial insect to anyone growing vegetables and flowers. That’s because it destroys the bad insects that can destroy our gardens and orchards.

Not surprisingly, the 50 million-year-old ladybug discovered in amber from the Eocene epoch is the subject of modern songs, poems, nursery rhymes and quaint myths. It’s one of the few bugs humans tolerate without trying to find ways to kill it.

The ladybug, most importantly, teaches us to appreciate the beneficial side of other insects. That’s important because no matter how pesky, they remain the biological foundation of our ecosystems.

I once had a Biloxi neighbor accuse me of “writing too much” about bugs. Impossible! Bugs are vital to our existence.

They pollinate plants so we can have fruit, veggies, grasses and flowers. They disperse seeds for the future. They help maintain soil structure and turn leaves, clippings and such into new dirt. They are a food source for birds, frogs and such, and in an about-face, they help maintain our food sources through their habit of munching on plant-destroying pests.

Through this beloved royalty of the insect world, we can learn much about nature’s balance.

We also can learn how easy it is for humans to unbalance our own world.

Enter the Asian lady beetle. It resembles our cherished American ladybug but occasionally bites and definitely smells bad. It also invades our houses.

The lady beetle is not native to America. We purposely introduced it as a natural insect control for our booming agriculture production. There just weren’t enough of our native ladybugs to handle the load, partly because of habitat loss, weather changes and chemical overuse.

So we reached out to the Asian cousin. This introduced lady beetle did what she was supposed to do to help control the aphids and insect scale. But then it multiplied. And multiplied. And multiplied.

My first encounter with her hordes was in 2000 while visiting my younger sister in Virginia. Estelle’s husband took us for a mountain drive and pulled into an overlook of the Allegheny ablaze in autumn leaf color. We parked, got out, cameras in hand.

Something splatted in the middle of my forehead and began crawling. I turned to Estelle to ask what she saw. Akkk. “Ladybugs” were crawling in her long locks and on Mark’s glasses. I felt more splats and realized we were in the midst of a mega swarm worthy of a horror film.

We high-tailed it to the SUV and burned rubber leaving, then spent an hour de-bugging, throwing the critters out the window.

They weren’t like any ladybug I’d ever seen. And they stunk like a bug skunk.

Being an intrepid reporter, I researched what I soon learned was the imported Asian lady beetle. Twenty-one years later, entomologists know a lot more about this insect now designate it as “an alien invasive species.”

The Asian look-alike is now in most states, 40 European countries, and even Africa. In Europe and other parts of the world and occasionally here you’ll hear any sort of ladybug called “ladybirds.”

Part of this story is that this alien eats the natives, depleting the population of our own ladybugs.

The two are obviously related. Both are in the Coccinellidae beetle family, with our classic native ladybug as Coccinella magnifica and the Eastern Asian import as Harmonia axyridis, whose original home was Japan, China, Korea and other nearby Asian countries.

With more than 5,000 species in this family, I’ll simplify by sticking with these two most prominent ones. Note that the Harmonias are often referred to at the harlequin lady beetle.

Imported ladybugs were first introduced in the U.S. in 1916 as a biological control agent for aphids and scale insects. Even though numerous releases followed, these lady beetles weren’t considered an established insect in the U.S. until 1988, in the state of Louisiana.

Some histories say the current harlequins descend from beetles that entered New Orleans and Seattle on ships, but many were also deliberately released to control aphids and scale because there just weren’t enough native ladybugs for America’s flourishing agriculture trade.

In case you didn’t know, aphids are the bane of many agriculture products, including pecans, soybeans, flowers, peaches, apples, even cabbage.

The harlequins did their duty, but as mentioned, they multiplied over decades. Because they eat other insects, including our native ladybugs, and because they can damage fruit they did not turn out to be an aphid-killing panacea.

Some other qualities that separate the Asian lady beetle from our ladybug: They can bite you with a grasshopper-like mandible and when disturbed secret a strong odor that stains clothes. In the colder months of winter, they’ll come into our homes, a smelly nuisance able to find minute cracks for entry by the hundreds seeking warmth.

The native ladybug does none of the above.

Truthfully as long as I don’t have to re-live that 2000 alien swarm, I don’t care what kinds of ladybugs are on my flowers and vegetables. I won’t kill them and I won’t poison them. I just want them to do their natural aphid and bad insect duty, which all varieties do with military precision.

The other day I spied a ladybug whose smaller size and brilliant red whisked me back to the bugs of my youth. I encouraged her to walk on my hand. No smell! No bite!

I reacquainted myself with that old research, and now pass along tips for those who want to ID these too-similar insects. Both are technically beetles and both can have assorted numbers of spots numbering from 0 to 20.

The Asian import, however, is slightly bigger and has more color variations from red-orange to yellow, even black. Our most common native tends to be nicely red but can be reddish-orange, too.

The most distinguishing mark is found on the Asian lady beetle, a line that cures inward to form a thick “M” or “W” pattern at the back of the head where the wings meet. The native does not have that mark and her white cheeks are smaller than the Asian invader.

What, might you ask, is the lesson from this story? It might be that we still have a lot to learn about introducing alien species to new regions and countries for pest control, experimentations and beauty.

Surely you’ve heard of the Burmese pythons in Florida, the Japanese kudzu vines swallowing up Mississippi, the South American nutria in Louisiana swamps, the Eurasean gypsy moths that damages Eastern oaks, the European starling that can decimates American bird populations?

That’s just a few of our species introductions gone awry. In today’s case study, let’s end on a good note with a popular childhood poem, author unknown:

Ladybug in my garden,

As hungry as can be.

Eating up the aphids,

So somethings left for me.

Kat Bergeron, a veteran feature writer specializing in Gulf Coast history and sense of place, is retired from the Sun Herald. She writes the Mississippi Coast Chronicles column as a freelance correspondent. Reach her at BergeronKat@gmail.com or at Southern Possum Tales, P.O. Box 33, Barboursville, VA 22923