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A collage of pictures of UK ladybirds

Ladybird Snapshot

Project Lead: Dr Linda Birkin

Contact: BuzzClub@sussex.ac.uk

Running: May - September

What is the Ladybird Snapshot? 

There are 26 species of ladybirds in the UK*, and these brightly coloured beetles are pretty easy to spot on plants. While they can fly, they spend most of their time walking around, making them much easier to spot (and photograph) than insects that spend more time in the air.

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This short 'snapshot' project will compare ladybird found in in different garden habitats, to see if there are any differences in distribution or abundances between those habitats. In other words - which ladybirds are present, how many are there, and do some like certain habitats better than others?

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(* there are 46 UK species in the 'ladybird family', the Coccinellidae, but we are only focused on the 'conspicuous' ladybirds for this project.)

How can you help?

We are looking for volunteers to find, count and identify ladybirds found in different parts of their gardens.

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Counting should be done on a sunny day, for ten minutes per patch. Record the number of ladybirds found (including larvae) and the species you think they are. The UK Ladybird Survey has a handy quick guide to adults of common UK species here, and of larvae here. You can also take photographs for us to confirm ID.

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The habitat patches we want to compare are:

1) An area of the garden primarily used to grow crops (e.g. fruits / vegetables).

2) An area of the garden primarily used to grow flowers (this can be a wilder space or a specific flowerbed; mostly just not somewhere set up to grow food).

3) Optional. An area of bushes / shrubs.

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This project will run until September, and you can do it as many times as you like!

Ladybird Snapshot.jpg

What do you get out of it?

By taking part in this project, you will be helping us compare the use of different garden habitat niches by different species of ladybirds.  Ladybird species can compete with each other for space and resources (they are predatory, after all) and we hope to use the results to improve our advice about how to manage gardens for ladybirds.  You will have an opportunity to get to know your own garden's ladybird inhabitants better and improve your ID skills.
 

The UK Ladybird Survey

Please note that this Buzz Club project is specifically interested in how the abundance (how many) and the diversity (which species) of ladybirds compares between habitat patches within gardens.  We do not have a method to transfer the ladybird records that are sent to us into the wider UK Ladybird Survey (which has 'gardens' as part of a larger habitat category, so cannot be used to answer our question).

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It would be a shame not to include participants' carefully-counted ladybirds in the UK Ladybird Survey dataset, so we ask that if you do take part in this project, that you also send in your ladybird records to iRecord via this link.

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