Ladylike behavior lacking in beetle

The puns and jokes are obvious. But Leon Higley isn't laughing.

Armadas of ladybugs have been floating through the sky, small brigades have entered homes, and angry renegades are biting unsuspecting humans.

The ladybug is, well, no longer a lady.

A foreign version of the domestic ladybug, known as the Asian lady beetle, has seen its population boom this year in the Midlands. It's something that's been made noticeable by their natural tendency to mass together in the fall.

“What a pain in the butt,” said Higley, professor of entomology and forensic science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “They're really an annoying insect.”

So what bugs Higley?

“They bite. They're not supposed to bite people, but they do,” Higley said.

“They have occurred in such large numbers that they're a nuisance, getting into houses. ... And it sounds like I'm making this up, but I'm not: Their blood has the unhappy property of staining paint.”

Higley said there's no real deterrent to the bug.

The best you can do to keep them out of your home is to seal any cracks, experts advise. Higley's weapon for the ones that do make it indoors is the vacuum cleaner.

But that's little defense against the ones that group together on the side of your home, staining the paint.

The college professor, who has spent decades studying bugs, said he has come up with only one reason why this tiny bug, unprovoked, bites humans.

“It's because they're stupid,” he said. “And I'm speaking as a scientist: They have tiny little brains.”

Researchers at Michigan State University theorize that the “sting” of the Asian ladybug sometimes may be caused by spurs on the beetle's legs that dig into skin.

Oh, if you swat at one or squish it? It goes postal, squirting a bloody irritant from between its knees — blood that can stain surfaces.

For a variety of reasons, insecticides are useless, Higley said. Not to mention that spraying a bug killer indoors would probably be more unhealthy for you than the beetle, he said.

The beetles aren't all bad news, though, Higley noted. Like their domestic cousins, they're voracious predators of aphids, which are one of the most damaging garden and agricultural pests.

It remains to be seen, Higley said, whether this beetle goes beyond annoying and becomes another of those invasive species that destabilizes an ecological system.

“The chief danger is that it could displace the native ladybug or some other native predator,” he said. “When invasive species come in, it's much more common to see wild fluctuations with other species, which runs the risk of local or larger extinctions.”

Contact the writer:

444-1102, >nancy.gaarder@owh.com