Everybody likes ladybugs, which is somewhat of a misnomer as they are in fact beetles, and are in the family Coccinellidae. Almost everyone has seen these insects and the red-with-black-dots pattern is familiar to all. What almost nobody knows save entomologists is that what you've seen and what most people know to be a ladybeetle is actually the vast minority in terms of species. There are thousands of species of these beetles and most of them are only a few millimeters in size and most aren't even red, like those in the genus Scymnus.
The species I'm doing today, Hippodamia convergens are one of those exceptions to the rule. The Convergent Ladybeetle gets it's name from their habit of congregating en masse in the thousands and thousands, as in the photo above. You can also see in this picture an important point about ladybeetles; they're very variable in appearance (phenotypic variance). I've found that for the larger species, the pattern on the head and pronotum is much more stable and better for identification purposes. A case in point is the subspecies of Coccinella trifasciata called C. trifasciata subversa. The nominate subspecies has three black bands across the elytra, but the subversa subspecies only has one,
but the pattern on the pronotum and head give it away.
Taxonomically, Coccinellids are in a new superfamily, Cucujoidea, the bark beetles and allies. This is a pretty large group that has a lot of very small and hard to ID species in a lot of different families.
Taxonomy:
Superfamily Cucujoidea<Family Coccinellidae<Hippodamia convergens
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