Lost Ladybug Project

Happy Monday! A little ninespot to start the week.

Don't forget about our Fall Fundraiser: $9, $19, $99 for the Ninespot! Check out our post below and thanks for helping to fund our reintroduction efforts of this iconic species!

Fall is upon us and with its arrival we are launching The Lost Ladybug Project’s First Annual Fall Fundraiser!

$9 $19 $99 for the Ninespot!!!

DONATE at http://www.lostladybug.org

After more than a decade of working with YOU, the citizen scientists who perform the all-important task of sending us images of lady beetles, we have amassed one of the largest lady beetle image databases in the world. THANK YOU! Your hard work and generosity are what make our success possible.

This year, for the first time, we here at the LLP are attempting a large-scale ninespotted lady beetle reintroduction in upstate New York. We have started ‘ranching’ the ultra-rare ninespotted lady beetle. We did this by growing and releasing more than 500 adult ninespots into a farm plot that we seeded with lady beetles’ favorite food, APHIDS! This helps to keep these rare beetles in one place with abundant food. Our hope is that the field will be filled with new ninespots soon and that they will return next spring. We will definitely keep you posted on this story.

If you would like to help support our ninespotted lady beetle reintroduction efforts, please consider making a donation today! Your contribution will be used to help maintain our beetle colony and to make more large reintroduction releases.

No donation is too small and we have several options: you can make a one-time or recurring gift, it can be a scheduled gift for a fixed amount over a period of time you specify, we have a planned gift option or you can give a gift in honor or in memory of a loved one.

Thank you all for your help over the years and we hope to continue this relationship for a long time to come.

Best,

The Lost Ladybug Project

It's a rare lady beetle and a rare day when we make two FB posts. We are trying to raise funds to sequence the 9spot genome as part of our research program. We started a crowd-sourced fundraising campaign on Experiment.com (different from our Fall Fundraiser). Check it out, ❤️ the post, leave a 💬, share the post on your own feed, maybe donate a few dollars if you can. We'd love to hear from you and would REALLY like your help. 🐞
(https://experiment.com/projects/sequencing-the-genome-of-a-lost-ladybug)

Sequencing the genome of a lost ladybug The introduction of non-native lady beetles into North America led to the disappearance of several once-ubiquitous species including the New York State insect, the ninespotted lady beetle. Our goal is to sequence the genome of this iconic species and characterize key differences between it and...

It's like the landscape is conspiring to make easy-to-compose photographs for me. Our beautiful fava bean field, full of ladybugs.

Happy Friday! We have a ninespot out in our bean plot along with a couple of Adonis lady beetles.