Twenty-eight-spotted potato ladybird
This ladybird is covered in lots of little black spots, twenty-eight of them, which is where its name comes from. Most ladybirds hunt tiny bugs, but this one is different. It munches the leaves of potato plants instead.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
It is one of the few ladybirds that eats plants instead of other bugs.
Warm, damp weather makes its numbers grow fast.
Tiny wasps lay their eggs in its babies, which helps keep it from becoming too many.
People carried it by accident to faraway countries, and it reached South America in 1996.
A very similar ladybird lives in Russia, China, Japan and Korea, and people often mix the two up.
Most asked questions about Twenty-eight-spotted potato ladybird
?Is the 28-spotted ladybird harmful?
Not to people. It is harmful to crops, because it eats the leaves of potatoes and other vegetables.
?What does the 28-spotted ladybird eat?
Leaves of potato plants and their relatives, and also pumpkin, beans, radishes and spinach.
?Where does it come from?
From Southeast Asia, mostly India. It has spread to Australia, New Zealand and South America.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Henosepilachna vigintioctopunctata
- Group
- Ladybirds
- Family
- Coccinellidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Coleoptera > Coccinellidae
- Lives on
- Asia, Australia and Oceania, South America
- Also known as
- 28-spotted potato ladybird, Hadda beetle
Where the facts come from
- Henosepilachna vigintioctopunctata (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Summerdrought. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at hello@bugwiki.app and we will fix it.
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