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New Hampshire designated the ladybug (also called ladybird or lady beetle) as the official state insect in 1977 (championed by the pupils of Broken Gound grammar school of Concord).
Ladybugs help gardeners and farmers by eating tiny insect pests that damage plants. A ladybug can consume up to 60 aphids per day, and will also eat a variety of other harmful insects and larvae (including scales, mealy bugs, leaf hoppers, mites, and other types of soft-bodied insects), as well as pollen and nectar. Ohio, Massachusetts, New York, Tennessee, and Delaware also designate the ladybug as an official state symbol (see list of state insects for all 50 states).
According to John Losey, a Cornell University entomologist who leads the Lost Ladybug Project. (a project funded by a National Science Foundation grant recruiting citizen scientists, particularly children, to search for nine-spotted ladybug and other ladybug species and send photos of them to Cornell for identification and inclusion in a database), there are about 5,000 species of ladybugs, also known as ladybird beetles, with about 450 species in the United States.
Two-spotted ladybug photo © Auntie P on Flickr
noncommercial use permitted with attribution / share alikeTwo spot
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