Ladybug Metamorphosis

Gather 'round kids, today's science lesson will be on the life cycle of the ladybug.

We recently had a neighbor tell us about a conversation she had with the base's horticulturist which explains just exactly what is that sticky film all over our cars, trash cans, and street. I found it pretty interesting and so I thought I'd share.

Apparently, when the Navy was landscaping the base here they chose shade trees for the yards that are particularly susceptible to aphids. The horticulturist says he explained this to the powers that be at that time -- that these trees were not a good choice, but the Navy wanted trees that were inexpensive and grew fast.

So every year in the Spring these trees become infested with aphids. An interesting note here is that apparently ants and aphids have a symbiotic relationship. As aphids feed on plants, they expel a sugar water (that's the sticky film all over everything outside). Ants like that sugar water and so when the weather starts to turn cold in the Fall/Winter they will take the aphid eggs underground to protect them and then bring the eggs back up in the spring. The aphids hatch and get a kick start on eating the trees and the ants have a guaranteed supply of sugar water.

How is this related to the metamorphosis of a ladybug? Well, ladybugs eat aphids... and since we have an aphid infested tree in the front yard, we now also have a ladybug infested tree. All the kids on the street have started their own ladybug farms. Clara got her bug jar today and I took pictures as we loaded it up.

This is obviously a chart that shows the life cycle of a ladybug. To be honest, I didn't even know a ladybug went through a metamorphosis until this weekend when Chris put it all together and found this chart online to show Clara. That's when I decided it would be good for Clara to get her own bug jar and learn. I took all of these pictures today in our front yard.

Aphids (the little white things on the backs of the leaves)

This leaf was particularly bad.

Larval stage as shown in the chart above. I didn't find any eggs, but once the eggs hatch the 'ladybug' looks like this. It eats and eats (Just like the very hungry catepillar)...

...and then enters the pupa stage. The chart above made this stage appear to have feet - but from all the ones I've found they seem to be stationary, attached to the leaf by the dark 'head' end.

The body parts are moved around and reconfigured while in this pupal stage, until about a week later when they hatch.

When they first hatch from the pupa, the ladybug is bright yellow and soft. Notice the pupa at this point just looks like a coccoon sort of caseing

I thought this was really pretty! It was hanging on the bird house Chris and Clara painted.

Eventually they turn darker red or orange and get their spots.

This is Clara with her bug jar. It's a pretty cool contraption. There's a magnifying glass built into the lid. It came with another handheld magnifying glass, some plastic tweezers and an array of pretend bugs (Thankfully, she didn't argue when I told her we wouldn't be keeping all the pretend spiders that came with it!)

The view inside her bug jar.

I thought this was a cool picture of a ladybug climbing up my hairy arm.

One of the brighter ladybugs we found today

I was playing with the 'color accent' setting on my camera. I was trying to get it to black out all colors, but red. This was the best it did, but I still thought it was a cool effect.

I hope you enjoyed your science lesson today. It's exciting to find cool things like that in your own front yard to teach your kids.