Wisconsin Public Television University Place  Scott Perez Lost Ladybug Project Part 1  January 27, 2011 UP548    cc >> Sue wants you to write your letter about Beakman and Jacs, which you heard about the first time. Thanks to Barb Volker... Heidi, Shannon, can't read it, somebody, who else brought treats? Levi. Nelsons? Okay. Thank you very much. They're all gone, oh, not quite. (laughter) Okay, so today we have Wisconsin Public Television videotaping and when will this be on? >> Probably in six weeks. >> Six weeks. So just before we end, we'll get the information to let you know how to see it. Okay. 

Today we're going to learn about one of those elegant, in the engineering sense of the word, citizen science projects that Cornell has come up with. Aren't they brilliant? I mean, I spent many an hour sitting around with people from various botanic gardens trying to think of just as elegant a project as their Project Feeder Watch. And we couldn't come up with one, and here they'd come up with another or ten. So they've really got it down and we are very lucky to have with us today Scott Perez, who has been a member of the Ladybug Project and also the tribal liaison for the project and Cornell. He can tell you a little bit more about himself. He's going to take us through the project today. Scott. (applause)  >> Scott Perez: Oh, great. My name is Scott. Greetings from the --. 

I'm from the -- association of Cornell. That's the way we have to formally start off all of our presentations. Actually, if I wanted to do it formally, I would have to do the entire -- address and that could eat up the first 45 minutes. (laughter) We'll just skip that part for today. Anyway, yes, I've been part of this Ladybug Project since the beginning. It's a National Science Foundation-funded project, and it is citizen science like Molly said. How many of you have ever heard of this project before? Ah, great. We at least have a few. How many of you know why we would have a citizen science project on ladybugs? (audience talking) What's that? (inaudible) They're easy to find? (inaudible) Some are disappearing. Yes, they're eating soybean aphids. 

Yeah, ladybugs are important to our crops. >> People like them? >> Perez: People like them, and that's why it's a great citizen science project because little kids, what could be better than little ladybugs? Until they get to the non-native ones, which tend to bite. (laughter) Well, it depends. It's perspective. If you're this big and a ladybug bites you, it's a little harder. Yeah, ladybugs are a very nice project to work with and I was lucky to get involved with this. Part of the funding was specifically written to reach out to rural communities, Latino communities, African American communities, and Native American communities. Communities that aren't generally well-represented into the sciences and in the natural sciences in particular. So in my line of work, I was lucky enough to get in on this. Does anybody know how these non-native ladybugs got here, particularly the ones that you see in your houses and all over the place? (audience chatters) >> (inaudible)  >> Perez: Actually, -- our government. 

The USDA thought, well, you know, if the native ladybugs are doing a pretty good job, let's see if we can bring in more different kinds of ladybugs and increase this. Well, for 20 or 30 years, the balance actually worked out pretty well. The non-natives did not rapidly increase and the natives did not rapidly decrease, and somewhere in the '80s something started to happen. All of a sudden, we started to see more and more of the non-natives, particularly the Harmonias, the Asian ladybugs. And our native ones are disappearing. If any of you get a chance to look at the poster over there, it tells about how New York, this ladybug, the nine-spot, was so common in New York, it became the state insect. By the time it became the state insect, nobody could find it anymore. It disappeared that quickly. What we're trying to do with this project, we're trying to find out just what is going on. If you just anecdotally look at it, you're going to say, well, we brought in these non-natives, they're out-competing. 

Maybe they're out-breeding, maybe they're just out-competing in the field. So they're decimating the native numbers. That's one good theory. But we don't know that's what's happening. What if the native ones are disappearing because of something else? Could it be that the pesticides and things we've used on our crops are dropping the numbers down and the other ones somehow aren't affected quite so much? Could it be that genetically engineered crops affect the aphids and things that the ladybugs eat, which in turn affect the ladybugs? We don't know. Part of this project is to start finding those answers. But there's no baseline to work from. No one has gone out and systematically looked for ladybugs. We have some old records from some old journals. There were some entomologists, some researchers who did go out and study, but that's only one person or maybe a small research group going out. 

We need to find out what's going on in the whole country, therefore citizen science. Get everybody out there looking for them. In states where we thought the nine-spot was extinct, indeed it is not extinct, including here in Wisconsin. There were two found in Buffalo County. I went over and looked at the land out there in Buffalo County where these were found, and then I come here and look at what you have here. It's almost identical. So there's really no reason why there aren't nine-spots around here. I found a fairly rare one out here this summer. The polish ladybug. Just in a little bit of time as I was walking around. 

So we've got to get people out looking for them. It's a great thing for kids of all ages. Another theory is that one of the non-natives, the seven-spot, is actually breeding with the nine-spot and it's being bred out of existence. It's kind of like the mallards and the black ducks. Mallards will mate with black ducks and black duck populations are declining rapidly. One of the reasons we think this is, in the lab, one of the undergraduates accidentally put some seven-spots and a couple nine-spots in together and they were observed mating. But then to cover up his mistake, he kind of put them somewhere else, so we have no idea if they actually produced anything or not. Some of the ones that have been found, some of the nine-spots that have been found, or the seven-spots that have been found, actually have a couple "ghost" spots, they call them. Those very faint spots that would have been a nine-spot pattern. So we don't really know what's going on and we're hoping that you all can tell us. 

There isn't a definitive guide for ladybugs in this country, either. There's over 500 different types of ladybugs in North America. There's no definitive guide that you can really look at. You can get online and you can find a lot, but how many of you carry your computers around while you're walking around outside? So we've been using, how many remember a guy on PBS named John Acorn? Acorn the Nature Nut? It was a PBS show. (laughter) Well, that's the kind of humor he has. He's part of this project and he actually did a book. I'll pass this around for you to look at. "The Ladybugs of Alberta." It's not definitive, by any means, but it covers a wide spectrum. As you're looking through this, I want you to look at the pictures closely and at the end, I want you to tell me if you really think these are all ladybugs or not.  Anybody have any questions so far? I'm real free for them. 

I don't really prepare talks. (laughter) I just get up and I start talking and it goes wherever it's going to go. I take questions, and that goes where it's going to go. I am going to go through the website in a little while, and we can go through the website and show you everything that's there so you can work with your kids, your communities, your neighbors, or just you're really addicted to it, like one woman. I think all she does now is sit around and look for ladybugs. Even in the winter, you can find them. We could go out here and it would take some effort, but we could find ladybugs out here. I was looking out the window under that evergreen tree and I was thinking, that might be a likely spot to look. Get down, dig into the duff a little bit and might just find some ladybugs. Question? >> (inaudible) >> Perez: I'm Mohawk. 

Yeah, I'm northern New York. But we traveled, we had a big highway that went back and forth between here and there. The Ho-Chunk and the Mohawk are old friends and enemies. >> I think a lot of people in this room are familiar with backyard bird watching and doing feeder watch stuff, as citizen science. What kind of data do you have to collect? You're obviously not going to count all those things you sweep up and throw out. But what kind of data are you going to be asking besides to identify them and location? >> Perez: Well, let's see if... >> Is this in the realm of citizens?  >> How do you define a ladybug? >> Perez: Well, when you look through this book, you're going to have that same question after you're done looking through this book. There's several different genuses and species. I am not an entomologist. If you have real technical entomology questions, I'm going to have you contact Dr. Leslie Allee at Cornell. 

There are a whole bunch of different genuses and species that they consider to be ladybugs. I don't know why they consider them, unless it's just because of common traits such as what they eat, the types of habitats and things. Whoever categorized these things... I don't know. (laughs) All right. Let's go ahead, you wanted to know what we're asking for. Let's start with the easy one. Okay, here we have a typical data submission sheet. The goal is to go out and find ladybugs. First you go out and find them, whether it's in the winter, it's in your house, wherever. 

I was at my brother's house in Ohio and found one in his house just the other day, so they are around. He, unfortunately, did not survive being in the trunk in the below-zero weather on the drive over here, but since it's a non-native one, I'm not too concerned about it. What you want to do is, you want to have a little catching vial, which I'm sure most of you are familiar with. Sweep nets are always good. We'll go through some of the ways to catch them. Then you want to take their picture on a digital camera, phone, whatever. We have suggestions, there are some pamphlets over there, and it tells you how to do it. But the first thing you have to do, especially in the summer, you have to chill them down. You have to put them in the refrigerator for a little bit or the freezer for a little bit, to get them to quit moving, because anybody's that's ever tried to take pictures of a little insect when it's up and active, you're going to know how quickly it doesn't work very well. It's not an exact science. 

They give you a guideline, so many minutes for a freezer, so many minutes for a refrigerator. (laughter) Experience has told me that those guidelines work pretty well. They're pretty accurate for our natives, but for these non-native Harmonias, you might want to chill them out a little longer. They tend to come to quicker. We've taken pictures of groups, too. If we were to sweep up a whole bunch, we might chill them all, lay them all down, take a group picture to show them all together. If you've got a mixture in there, by the time you get them all on their stomachs so you can identify them, you've got the non-natives going this way and the natives are just kind, "Aw man, what's going on?" It's not exact science, so don't be surprised if you chill it according to directions and then you come out and your ladybug's crawling across the counter. Once you've got your ladybug, you've taken the picture, you're going to upload it into your computer and save it somewhere.  The easy stuff first, unless of course you don't know your name or where you are. You put in your name, your email address. 

There's a place that says, do you want your email address displayed to the public so other researchers or other groups can get a hold of you and talk to you? If so, you can check yes. It says, select your county and your state, etc. What I have had happen is, people have gone out and, say they've been in New Mexico and found ladybugs, then they go home and they put in their county and their state and it kind of skews the data a little bit. So make sure you put it in where the ladybug was found. We've had a few glitches in the program here we're still working on to make that clearer. Then we get down to the collection data. That's pretty easy. Then the habitat. They give you options for habitat.  The options are kind of very generic. 

I've found them to be somewhat problematic if you're looking at, say, bushes and shrubs, but you're in the woods. Where do you want to put that? It's just kind of, pick your best guess as to what it is, but later on there will be a place where you can go into more detail. People don't really give us much detail, and we really wish everybody would fill all of these out, but they don't. We still get useful data, but when it comes to identifying habitats and stuff, the more information, the better. Then you have your number of spotters, your ages. Those of you who work with children or with groups, that's great. That gives us even more information on how many people are really engaged in this project. We try to keep statistics on that. Anybody that's worked with government agencies of any kind knows they like numbers, so we try to keep that up to date for them. The length of time searching. 

You can put in names, or you can leave that blank. The time of day. What was your search plan? Did you take these groups out, or was it, you just happened to drive along? Like my son was in the truck with me one day and a ladybug landed on the windshield, so he insisted we take a picture of it. That wasn't a planned search. If you happen to have GPS, that's great. It makes it even more accurate, particularly if you find one of the rare ones. If you have a GPS location for it, if there are any entomologists or researchers in the area, they may just be descending on that and spread out and see if they can find more. Method of searching. We'll talk about this a little bit.  Photographed on plants. 

That's actually a fairly easy one, but you'll note, the native ones, particularly the nine-spot, are camera shy. They tend to try to keep crawling around the leaf so you can't get their picture, so it may not work for you, unless it's a nice cool time of the day. Collected by hand. That's when you have your vial and you just walk out there and get one on a plant and just cap it and put it in. Sweep net. I'm sure you're all familiar with using a sweep net and there are instructions on the website we'll get to on how to make your own with pillowcases and coat hangers and sticks. Kids love that. A beading sheet. Are any of you familiar with using a beading sheet? It's simple. You just lay a sheet down under a tree or under some bushes and you just kind of shake the bushes or the trees, or tap on it with a stick, and then you collect whatever lands on the sheet. 

Gives you a nice way to find them. Both with the beading sheet and with the net, when you're with little children, you kind of have to be careful with them. I'm sure I'm not telling you anything you don't know if you work with kids a lot, but if they're out there sweeping in this meadow, there's a really good chance they're going to pick up some bees or things like that. And when they go to open that net up, the bee might come out, and rarely do you get stung, but a bee flying in your face is kind of traumatic for children, so you might want to help them when they actually come around to start opening things up and see what they have. Any other information you want to put in here. Additional comments. That's where you can really put some detail in about where you found them. Somebody mentioned soybeans. They eat aphids on soybeans. So you'd want to say, "I found these in a soybean field." Because above, it just says "ag crops." You say, "In a soybean field, eating soybean aphids." That's another thing that's important. 

If you see the ladybugs eating anything, it's great to note that because we really don't know what all they eat or what time periods they eat it, which makes raising them difficult. They found a good colony of nine-spots out in Washington state. They brought some back to the lab to raise, to maybe do some releases in different places, try to establish populations. It was a real struggle at first to figure out what diet they actually needed. They tried a typical aphid that, I guess you get through an aphid supply store? I don't know. (laughter) They didn't do well on that. They had to do some experimenting, and they found that it worked best on a type of aphid that feeds on peas. So they went with that. You'll find that these things can eat other things, too. One that's very important to our people is, they call it the "pink ladybug," and it eats corn pollen. 

While it's waiting for the aphids or other pests to come out, it will survive on corn pollen during the downtime when there aren't insects crawling around. We aren't sure what all ladybugs eat. Yes? >> Don't the adults and the larvae eat the --? >> Perez: Yeah, they're both pretty good carnivores, but the adults are the ones that - The larval stage, from what I understand, and this varies among species, isn't that long. The life span of a ladybug isn't that long. I haven't figured any of that out yet, and hopefully this project will give us some better information. Have any of you ever seen the pictures on, I think they've even posted them on YouTube, of the ladybug colonies they found up in the mountains of Colorado, in the Sierra Nevadas? These ladybugs come in by the thousands and just kind of gather together, and they will over-winter in these places. It's pretty incredible. I will give you contact information. Whatever you can't find on this website, we have two educators on the staff to answer any questions you might have. I'm sorry. 

>> I remember taking pictures of ladybugs years and years ago up on the shores of Lake Superior. Would you want something like that in the past? Or just the present? >> Perez: You mean, did they do that before? >> This was probably in the 1980s. >> Perez: Did you take them as a kid, were they right on the shoreline? >> They were all over a stump, like thousands of them. >> Perez: Close to the water or even in the water? >> Close to the water. >> Perez: Yeah, these are called wash-ups. We're not sure, there's an article that's linked on this site and we'll touch on it, where ladybugs end up in the water and they're not sure if they get picked up during a storm and then get knocked down into the water, or how this actually happens. We have a few of the grad students, that's all they do. Every time there's a storm, they go out in -- Lake and other lakes and start surveying for wash-ups. >> Do you want loaded up to your site these older pictures? I have some pictures back from the '70s of ladybugs. Do you want us to upload those, too? >> Perez: Yeah, as long as they're dated, and put them in your comments. 

Then Rebecca, who runs most of the site, she will then put them in the appropriate places for researchers. That's another benefit of this. If any of you happen to be, or have kids that are interested in insects, or kids that want to go to college, there are unlimited projects that could come out of this. Everything from grade school science projects up to PhD projects. We'll get into some of the data that's there that you can work with. Any other questions? Yes, sir. >> Besides detailed descriptions, would it not be helpful to have people submit a photograph of the environment, and that goes in along with the picture. >> Perez: That would be great. That would be great. >> Would you make that mandatory? >> Perez: Well, we can't... 

>> Strongly encouraged. (laughter) >> Perez: I think it even says that somewhere on the site. We want to see a good picture of the habitat. Mandatory doesn't work too well in citizen science. (laughter) Of course, I've heard professors say, "Mandatory doesn't work very well for me, either." (laughter) Anyway, that's pretty much all you have to do for this. Enter all your information, then it goes, "Did you find and photograph ladybugs?" Now, you could go out, not find ladybugs. You did a planned search. You went out, you did not find ladybugs. We request that you fill out this page anyway. Because it's just as important for us to know where they're not, or when they're not, as to where they are. 

You fill out this page anyway. Then you go down below, and it says, "Did you find and photograph ladybugs?" You would click No, and then you're pretty much done. Or you would click Yes and I don't think it's going to let me do anything, because I didn't fill anything out. Oh, it did. Anyway, if you say yes, then it has you take your pictures and upload them into the system. >> On those where you don't find beetles, it might be useful to say how much time you spent searching, because people do time transects, and that kind of tells... >> That was part of the information. >> Perez: Yeah, I think there was a section in there. >> Oh, I can't see it from here. >> Perez: I think there was a section in there on that. 

 Again, there's another example, "length of time searching." There's another example of a project somebody could get in on. Does anybody have any questions on how you would upload or do that? >> (inaudible)  >> Perez: We don't know. I don't know if the ladybug that you collect out here and one that somebody picks up in Madison is the same ladybug or not. So we don't know how big an area they live in. If you consider the wash-ups phenomenon -- (inaudible)  They could be anywhere. They could cover a very, very wide area. But I would assume, if you go out here, and especially when you're looking during the summer season, if you're looking in clumps of grass and things like that, if they found an area where they have plenty of food and shelter, that's probably pretty much where they're going to live out their life cycle. But these are the questions we don't really know. We don't really know. Yes, ma'am. 

>> (inaudible) Access to mentors in this program that could help them choose the best questions to answer or the best techniques, or whatever. >> Perez: She wanted to know if we have access through this project to mentors to get information about what questions to ask, what the best techniques are for searching, and so on. Yes, that's one of the things Dr. Leslie Allee, our main educator, is the person who you would want to contact for that kind of information. Her email address, and I can leave it here at the arboretum, and it's on the website, it's lla1@cornell.edu. All right, yes, ma'am. >> We were just talking up the wash-ups. Are those ladybugs then dead and drowned, or are some of them alive? >> Perez: Some of them are alive, some of them are drowned, and some of them look like they're drowned, but you pull them out and put them up on the shore, and suddenly what you thought was a dead, drowned ladybug, is crawling around, drying its wings, getting ready to move on. Up here we have, I collected a lot on the shores of Lake Ontario where it gets narrow by the St. Lawrence River, so they're just kind of blowing across from Canada and we haven't told Homeland Security yet. (laughter) We have this serious illegal immigration problem. 

(laughter)  All right, let's...  If you were to open up this site, you get your welcome and we have pictures that rotate through. This is a good selling point for kids. If their picture's chosen, they get their name put up there and hopefully, the site is not complete yet, and it is going to go on even when the funding for the entire project rolls out. The entomology department is going to keep the site up. It's still a work in progress. We have things we want to do that we haven't been able to do yet because of time. We want to make it so that kids' groups, children's groups from all over can actually link to each other and talk to each other. (inaudible)  >> Perez: Right, this is covered by the NSF --. >> So if you want to do this, you don't have to pay your $20 a year. 

>> Perez: No, this is free. This is free to the public. NSF covers it and the entomology department will cover it, yeah. Getting people to do citizen science is such a great thing, charging people to do it would really be counterproductive. >> How long has this site been up and how much information is on it? >> Perez: This is the third year, I believe, almost complete third year. We've had 10,000 hits on the site and something like 1,000 different people have submitted photographs. I haven't looked at the most recent data. They were crunching that last week and I was already on the road. Did they put it up there? (inaudible) Okay, they did put it up there. They were still crunching that data. 

You can go search the ladybugs to see what's been in your area. These are not the non-natives. These are the native ladybugs, the ones I was talking about that you might have seen the pictures of them swarming and stuff. They really are a gardener's friend. These are the kind we were talking about, these are the native ones. They kind of hang outside and do this. The non-native ones, they come in your house. >> I assume that if you send a picture, you don't have to know what it is. >> Perez: No, that's the beauty of it. Cornell will identify it. 

Rebecca identifies all the pictures, and if she doesn't know what it is, it goes around to a whole bunch of different entomologists until they come to some consensus of what it is. So far we haven't had any where they said, we don't know. Another interesting thing about this, say you're in your garden and you see some insect in there and you don't know what it is, never seen one before. Submit it, too. (laughter) Let's use this for a little private gain. Submit it and Rebecca will come up with a picture, and I've done that. I go, what is this thing I just found? Rebecca will send back, "This is such-and-such, and it lives here." You can get more than just ladybug information from the folks. All right, we looked at how to find and photograph ladybugs. Molly, how are we doing on time? What do you want to do with breaks or whatever? >> We've got 20 more minutes. >> Perez: All right, let's go to the kid's page and see what all they've got up these days. 

 "Coming Soon," apparently it's not up. This is where they do plan on putting the links so kid's groups can talk to each other and connect with each other and share photographs and stuff. We'll go back. I know there's at least one more "coming soon" page on here. All right. Learning. This is the stuff that you're all going to want to be able to use, I'm sure, with your groups. A lot of it we have already on here, it's download-able and you can take it down and print it off and make your own copies. If there's things on there that aren't, you can always contact Leslie and, depending on the funding availability, there's a good chance she'll be able to ship you something that you can then copy or whatever. This is the page you're going to want to go to, for those of you who want to make lesson plans or really try to get your kids involved, this will be a good page for you to go to. 

Before I get into the good stuff, is anybody in here a good musician? (audience chattering) Got some good musicians in here? All right. We have an official Lost Ladybug song. I personally don't like it. (laughter) So I'm trying to recruit people to come up with a better song. Let's see if we can...  I do not know the folks who did this, so I'm not... I don't know if we can get sound, can we get sound on this? >> Yeah, sort of. >> Perez: Sort of?  We'll try to play it for you. You know, you've got have simple words, I understand that part, but I'd really much rather hear some folk singing or something.  (inaudible)  I want to tell you, I am not a technical type person, and I manage to actually be able to function in this site. 

(music begins) § § § LIVE IN GARDENS § § WEEDS AND SHRUBS § § LADYBUG, LADYBUG § § LADY BUG BUG BUG § § THERE ARE 5,000 SPECIES § § WORLDWIDE § § LADYBUG, LADYBUG § § LADY BUG BUG BUG § § THEIR NUMBER OF SPOTS § § IDENTIFIES THE KIND § § LADYBUG, LADYBUG § § LADY BUG BUG BUG § § §  § LADYBUG, LADYBUG § § LADY BUG BUG BUG § § LADYBUGS HAVE § § TWO SETS OF WINGS § § LADYBUG, LADYBUG § § LADY BUG BUG BUG § § ANTENNAE HELP THEM § § SMELL, TOUCH, TASTE THINGS § § LADYBUG, LADYBUG § § LADY BUG BUG BUG § § EATING BUGS CHEW § § FROM SIDE TO SIDE § § LADYBUG, LADYBUG § § LADY BUG BUG BUG § § IF IT'S COLD OR DARK § § THEY MIGHT NOT FLY § § LADYBUG, LADYBUG § § LADY BUG BUG BUG § § § § ROLL OVER AND PLAY DEAD § § § § TASTE TERRIBLE § § IN SELF-DEFENSE § § §  § LADYBUGS HAVE § § IMPORTANT JOBS § § LADYBUG, LADYBUG § § LADY BUG BUG BUG § § THEY EAT APHIDS § § THAT DESTROY OUR CROPS § § LADYBUG, LADYBUG § § LADY BUG BUG BUG § § WE NEED LOTS § § OF DIFFERENT KINDS § § LADYBUG, LADYBUG § § LADY BUG BUG BUG § § SOME SPECIES § § ARE NOW HARD TO FIND § § LADYBUG, LADYBUG § § LADY BUG BUG BUG § § § >> Perez: All right, I think you've got the idea. (laughter) You think we can do better here? Could we have a Wisconsin ladybug song? (laughter) >> (inaudible)  >> Perez: Every time I come to this town, I go to events and there's always good music going on. A bluegrass version of this would be nice! (laughter) Thanks. >> It's too long. >> Perez: Yeah, it's a little bit long for kids, or my age, really. (laughter) >> (inaudible) >> Perez: Anyway, come up with a Wisconsin ladybug song. We'll be famous. See if we can get a Grammy. I'm not sure that this is a big category, so there's a good chance. Does anybody know where the first nine-spot was found? After they had disappeared. 

Who found it? It was some little kids in Virginia. Found it in their backyard. Up till then everybody just assumed it was gone. It's pretty amazing how kids can get so involved in this. >> (inaudible)  >> Perez: Well, I wish I knew how they disappear. That's part of what we're trying to figure out, is how they disappear. We don't know if there's something going on. We're losing other insects and other animals, too. Is that connected? Is there some kind of ecological problem happening that's making things disappear? Well, yeah, there are, but we don't know specifically what's going on here. Or, like I said, are the non-natives coming in and just out-competing them and driving them away? Ladybugs are cannibals. 

They will eat their own young. They will eat other young. Have the non-native populations gotten so big they're actually eating the native ones? We don't know. >> (inaudible)  >> Perez: They started not being found, well, in 1985, it was some little kids who wanted to name the New York state insect. Moving rather quickly for New York, in 1989 they made it the state insect. But by 1989, nobody could find it there anymore. It's been in this last 30-year span. The non-natives were brought here way back in the '60s, so for about 20 years there, it didn't seem to be a real problem, and then all of a sudden, the numbers really started to take a dive on the natives. So we just really don't know. >> (inaudible)  >> Perez: Let me see. 

I don't remember the exact number, but... The most common of the non-natives... Are the multi-colored Asian ladybug, the checker-spot ladybug, and the seven-spotted ladybug. Those are the most common of the non-natives. How many different non-native species, I'm not sure. The USDA's responsible for the multi-colored Asian ladybug and the seven-spotted ladybug. >> And why did they bring them in? >> Perez: Well, they figured if our ladybugs were doing a good job, more would be better. >> Actually, they brought the Harmonia in for the pecan aphid in the South. >> Perez: For pecan aphids? Yeah, they were brought in for various reasons. If you read one article, the guy talks about when they started raising them, they didn't do any tests before they did releases. 

They didn't gather up other ladybugs and put them in with them for a while to see what was going on. They just did the releases. Now we can't do that. One of the things we've done up on the reservation, is we've released beetles to control purple loostrife. But before we ever did any of the releases of that beetle, we had to go through a whole process where we put them in with all different kinds of plants and gave them the no-choice test. In other words, we put the beetle in with a plant and the beetle had a choice. It could either eat the plant, or it could die. If it chose to die and not eat the plant, then we just figured, they're not necessarily going to eat that plant. So we felt fairly confident in releasing these beetles that they would only affect the loostrife, although they do a little bit of damage to a couple of our native loostrifes, but not too significant. So far we're pretty confident. 

We had to make sure they didn't touch medicinals, cultural plants, and stuff. That being said, evolution continues to happen. At some point, if they happen to eat all the loostrife, are they going to learn to eat something else? We don't know, but if we have a choice of solving a problem and hoping for the best, or planning long-range, how far out in the future do you want to try to look? It's a difficult decision. Science, as a scientist, science doesn't do a very good job of that kind of planning. Sometimes we put things out there that we really don't know what kind of effect it's going to have, because we don't study it enough, or, if science is tied to money, whoever's funding it, they may want you to come up with a product and get it on the market. We have that kind of issue. >> (inaudible)  >> Perez: The only ones I've looked at have been native ones, but that's probably because the people who told me about them, "Oh, check this out, you can buy whatever." I'm sure there are probably still people out there selling the non-natives. >> When I was a kid, the neighbor next door paid us to collect ladybugs and then dump them in his garden. (laughter) And we got 5 cents a hundred, or something like that. Maybe it was a quarter, I forget. 

I'm wondering, is that a good thing, to manipulate the populations, and would it be worthwhile thinking about developing a kid ladybug collecting corps? (laughter) So we could disseminate them where they're most useful? >> Perez: Wow, that's a good question. You must have had a wealthy neighbor. >> No, he was quite stingy, actually. (laughter) >> Perez: That's a really good question. >> Can you repeat the question? It's hard to hear. >> Perez: I'm sorry. Yeah, she used to get paid by someone to collect ladybugs and bring them over and put them on  his garden. So, there were two questions to this. One, is that really a good thing to do? You're manipulating the ecosystem in a way. And two, could we therefore, if I get the question straight, get children's groups together to do this. 

Collect ladybugs and go put them where they might be needed. So, I don't think you're hurting the ecosystem too badly by putting ladybugs there, because they're just going to eat what's there and go away anyway. They're going to kind of go back to where they were. They're not a problem. But as far as having children collect, one big business collects ladybugs, the ones you saw that were swarming up there, they do go out and collect those in the wild and they do sell them to gardeners and stuff. They don't breed their own, they go and collect in the wild. I'm not sure, maybe some of you might have some thoughts on this, too. Do you think that's a good idea, or do you think these people, if they're going to make a profit off these things and help gardeners, should they have to raise their own ladybugs? You think they should be able to go out and just collect them by the tens of thousands? >> I think that's a terrible thing! Most of what they collect are non-natives. Then we're propagating more of what we don't really want! >> Perez: This particular group, they just collect the native ones, because there are still huge populations of them. But how much of this kind of harvesting can a population take? So there's another project in there for somebody that wants to get into this. 

Maybe you want to pick up a PhD, another Master's. (laughter) >> I actually like finding the Asiatic ladybeetles in my house, because I winter over impatiens plants, and they're very subject to spider mites, and I've found that the Asiatic ladybugs will eat the spider mites off my impatiens plants. So I would find them in the house and I'd be happy to see them, and I'd put them on my plants and have them patrolling for spider mites. (laughter) But lately, I have not seen many at all. I don't think I've seen one at all this winter and I'm not sure I saw more than one or two last winter, where I used to see quite a few. What's happening with that population? >> Perez: That's an interesting question. We were talking about this yesterday. Completely anecdotal. Talking to people like you. They're not seeing as many of the non-natives in their houses the last year or two. 

Gardeners are saying they're seeing more of the native ones out there than they used to. Also, speaking to organic farmers and gardeners, we're starting to see more of the native bees, the native pollinators, and fewer of the European ones. Maybe that's because of the colony collapse that the beekeepers are suffering, maybe that's opening the niche for the natives again. I don't know. That's another question. If we were to go through our records, the problem is the system hasn't been up long enough. Had it been up and had we had, say, 1,000 people looking every year for six years, then we could kind of go back and say, did the numbers really drop off or didn't they? Right now, it's completely anecdotal. You might accept that, I might accept that, everybody in this room might accept that, but if some scientific entomologist, an entomologist isn't going to accept that. They're going to want more data to prove that. It's great that they come in and they take care of your plants and stuff. 

That's what they were brought here for anyway. But some people don't like them because some people don't raise plants and they just come in, and they do smell bad when they die. (laughter) They do bite. Whether it's hard or not, it's really annoying. There's a ski area up in New York where, in the winter, in the fall before it opens for the season, the ladybugs swarm inside and go dormant. Then they come up, they open up the restaurant and bar for the winter and they heat it up, and suddenly you have thousands of ladybugs flying around the room. It's pretty incredible to watch. Some people get annoyed, little kids chase them around. It's a mixed bag. >> (inaudible) >> The Ladybug Festival, yeah. 

They can make festivals out of everything. They have the Fruitcake Festival. (laughter) Where people take fruitcakes in January and they put them on catapults and see how far they can heave them. (laughter) Before we get into some of the rest of this, you want to take a little break? Get yourself some coffee and some folks brought in some really good cookies and stuff. I'm going to be around all afternoon, too, so if you have any questions afterwards, if you're too shy to talk to the crowd, please grab me. (audience chattering)