''Olla v-nigrum'' is a species in 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 ...
("lady beetles"), in the suborder
Polyphaga
Polyphaga is the largest and most diverse suborder of beetles. It comprises 144 families in 16 superfamilies, and displays an enormous variety of specialization and adaptation, with over 350,000 described species, or approximately 90% of the b ...
.
The species is known generally as the ashy gray lady beetle.
The distribution range of ''Olla v-nigrum'' includes Central America, North America, and Oceania.
[ It is usually gray or pale tan with small black spots on its ]elytra
An elytron (; ; , ) is a modified, hardened forewing of beetles (Coleoptera), though a few of the true bugs (Hemiptera) such as the family Schizopteridae are extremely similar; in true bugs, the forewings are called hemelytra (sometimes alterna ...
and thorax
The thorax or chest is a part of the anatomy of humans, mammals, and other tetrapod animals located between the neck and the abdomen. In insects, crustaceans, and the extinct trilobites, the thorax is one of the three main divisions of the cre ...
. However, a variation can resemble ''Chilocorus orbus
''Chilocorus orbus'' is a species of lady beetle in the family Coccinellidae. It is native to North America. It is a black, domed beetle with two large red spots and is commonly called the twice-stabbed lady beetle. Both adults and larvae feed o ...
.'' This form is black with two red spots on the wing covers and has white on the edge of the prothorax
The prothorax is the foremost of the three segments in the thorax of an insect, and bears the first pair of legs. Its principal sclerites (exoskeletal plates) are the pronotum (dorsal), the prosternum (ventral), and the propleuron (lateral) on ea ...
.
References
Further reading
* "The Coccinellidae (Coleoptera) of America North of Mexico", Robert D. Gordon. 1985. ''Journal of the New York Entomological Society, Vol. 93, No. 1''.
* Arnett, R.H. Jr., M. C. Thomas, P. E. Skelley and J. H. Frank. (eds.). (2002). ''American Beetles, Volume II: Polyphaga: Scarabaeoidea through Curculionoidea''. CRC Press LLC, Boca Raton, FL.
* Arnett, Ross H. (2000). ''American Insects: A Handbook of the Insects of America North of Mexico''. CRC Press.
* Belicek, Joseph (1976). "Coccinellidae of western Canada and Alaska with analyses of the transmontane zoogeographic relationships between the fauna of British Columbia and Alberta (Insecta: Coleoptera: Coccinellidae)". ''Quaestiones Entomologicae, vol. 12, no. 4'', 283–409.
* Gordon, Robert D. (1985). "The Coccinellidae (Coleoptera) of America North of Mexico". ''Journal of the New York Entomological Society, vol. 93, no. 1'', 1–912.
* Richard E. White. (1983). ''Peterson Field Guides: Beetles''. Houghton Mifflin Company.
External links
NCBI Taxonomy Browser, ''Olla v-nigrum''
Coccinellidae
Beetles described in 1866
{{Beetle-stub