''Chilocorus bipustulatus'', the heather ladybird, is a

beetle Beetles are insects that form the order Coleoptera (), in the superorder Endopterygota. Their front pair of wings are hardened into wing-cases, elytra, distinguishing them from most other insects. The Coleoptera, with about 400,000 describ ...

species belonging to the family

Coccinellidae Coccinellidae () is a widespread family of small beetles ranging in size from . They are commonly known as ladybugs in North America and ladybirds in Great Britain. Some entomologists prefer the names ladybird beetles or lady beetles as they ...

, subfamily Chilocorinae. These beetles are found in most of the

Palearctic realm The Palearctic or Palaearctic is the largest of the eight biogeographic realms of the Earth. It stretches across all of Eurasia north of the foothills of the Himalayas, and North Africa. The realm consists of several bioregions: the Euro-Sibe ...

,Fauna Europaea
/ref> (Europe, North Africa, Asia north of the Himalayan foothills, and northern and central Arabian Peninsula), and has been introduced to tropical

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...

, and

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

. The elytra of this small beetle are a shiny brown with two reddish-orange spots on each elytron (hence the Latin word ', meaning two-blistered). Sometime three spots run in an horizontal line and join into two larger stains. The mature larva is about long. Wintering occurs as an adult. The adults grow up to long and can be encountered from May through October. In Europe it occurs in fruit gardens, pine forests, and stone quarries. In Poland it was found on grasses, low vegetation and bushes, on heath lands, under flakes of bark on pines and fruit trees, occasionally in leaf litter and in mossBurakowski, B., Mroczkowski, M., and Stefańska, J.,'' Katalog Fauny Polski.'' Szęść XXIII, Chrząszcze– Coleoptera. Tom 13. Cucujoidea, część Heather ladybirds feed on aphids and

scale insects Scale insects are small insects of the order Hemiptera, suborder Sternorrhyncha. Of dramatically variable appearance and extreme sexual dimorphism, they comprise the infraorder Coccomorpha which is considered a more convenient grouping than the ...

(mainly belonging to the family

Coccidae The Coccidae are a family of scale insects belonging to the superfamily Coccoidea. They are commonly known as soft scales, wax scales or tortoise scales. The females are flat with elongated oval bodies and a smooth integument which may be cover ...

and

Diaspididae Diaspididae is the largest family of scale insects with over 2650 described species in around 400 genera. As with all scale insects, the female produces a waxy protective scale beneath which it feeds on its host plant. Diaspidid scales are far mo ...

) and is often introduced as a biological control in cases of infestation.Commercially used biological control agents
/ref> In France it is considered to be useful in Citrus orchards.

References

External links

Invertebrate Ireland On Line

Bugguide

Coccinellidae Beetles of Europe Beetles described in 1758 Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus {{Coccinellidae-stub