cc >> Scott Perez: I heard that
about the Coopers Hawk... Was that Congress or the Library
of Congress? >> Library of Congress.
>> If it was in Congress, it'd be more intelligence than
that's been there for years. ( laughter )
Anyway, I had a good question asked over the break.
How do we identify these critters?
Again, the disclaimer. I'm not an entomologist,
particularly since there's at least one real entomologist
in the room. The Asian Ladybugs, as you know,
come in all different kinds of shapes, colors, spot patterns,
and everything else. We have the two-spotted ladybug,
one of our rarer native ladybugs, which may or may not
have two spots. We have the seven-spotted, which
may have the two ghost spots, and the nine-spotted.
We have the nine-spotted, who we don't know because when it just
comes out, it doesn't have any spots.
So they are difficult to identify.
That's why we send them to the site and have Rebecca do it.
But if you're really into that, and you're trying to identify,
and there's a place on the site when you put your picture in,
you can take your best guess as to which one it is.
I'll tell you if you're right or wrong.
If you really want to learn to identify, I'll show you a chart
we do have available. What you want to do is look up
around the thorax on the back of the head, what would be the
head, and stuff, and look at the patterns and the colors up
there. The whites, the blacks, the
yellows. That's a more reliable guide to
what type of ladybug you're looking at than just counting
spots. So, the book that's going
around, the Acorn book, you can look, some of the pictures in
there are really good. You can look and you can really
clearly see the patterns on the thorax.
Some of them look just like the University of Michigan's M, so
please don't kill the ladybugs because of that, it's not their
fault. ( laughter )
Yeah, stand them upside down, then you've got a W, good.
( laughter ) Anyway, that's the best I can
answer that, because still, I cannot, even after doing this
for a long time, I cannot identify all the ladybugs.
I rely heavily on Rebecca.
As a matter of fact, maybe Rebecca should get a raise.
>> I would just mention that the bookstore has ordered four of
the books that Scott recommended.
But as of yesterday, they hadn't come in.
So I'll let you know. >> All right, so, while we're
on that subject, let's take a look at some of our
lesson plans.
Okay, you can read this when you go to the Website.
It's just kind of an informational toolkit.
We've done a lot of work with 4-H, so a lot of this has been
geared toward 4-H. It can all be adapted.
I have some copies up here, that I'm actually going to leave here
at the arboretum for folks. We have ladybug books in
Spanish. Anybody working with farm worker
communities, or Hispanic communities.
This one is really multicultural.
This is the Iroquois Thanksgiving address that I
referred to earlier. It's a brief version of it,
written in Spanish. So we have a tri-cultural thing
going on here. Young women.
Getting young women interested in science has been one of our
goals. Here's a book for children, it's
called "Girls Who Looked Under Rocks."
It's about the lives of six pioneering naturalists.
It's really a nice book. And if any of you do work with
under-served communities, this is a really good book.
It's called "Black and Brown Faces in America's Wild Places."
So, we could go into it, and part of my dissertation work is
on cultural values in the environment, and why are these
people in different communities not well represented in the
sciences, and stuff. One thing is a lot of people
think that science is just something you do in a lab
wearing a white jacket with a microscope and all of that
stuff. What I try to tell people is,
no, science is something we do every day.
Everything we do is science. Walking around is physics.
I mean, we constantly are evaluating.
We're looking at data. We're processing it, and we make
decisions based on that. Everything we do is a scientific
process. When you get that across to
kids, suddenly it becomes a little more relevant to them,
and they're not as intimidated by it.
So, we have a coloring book for kids, if you have young kids.
All of this stuff is accessible.
You can download this and print it off.
It's all real accessible. It was written by our educators
and our PIs. If anybody sees anything as
I'm whipping through these real quickly that you really want to
look at or ask a question about, just stop me.
Yeah? ( inaudible )
The books can be bought. Which ones did you order
for here? >> I'm not sure.
We have "Black and Brown Faces" because he was a presenter here
some years ago, so we've had that book for a long time.
The two Spanish ones, I don't think we have.
I'll have to check in the bookstore to see what are the
four books that we ordered. >> I know they can all be found
online. If you have difficulty finding
them, like they're sold out or whatever, contact Leslie, our
educator. She's pretty amazing at the
things she can find. >> Is there a list of all these
books on this Website? >> I don't think they're
on the Website. We do have one here.
I sent one to Molly, so we have a complete list of what's here.
We have the song, which you all have heard.
We have a story. This is, again, to read to the
children. This project started out really,
really to get kids involved, along with gathering our
science, but to get kids involved with science, to get
kids involved in the academic world.
What we're finding is yes, the kids are involved, and we're
really getting them involved. But we're really getting their
parents involved. We're getting parents out there
that are driving their kids crazy.
So you know, we have to start changing a little bit.
We have to start working on the Website to get more
age appropriate type information out there.
What seems to be with ladybugs, you have pure academic stuff,
you have some entertaining stuff like John Acorn's, and then you
have the children's stuff. For someone who's a naturalist,
or an ecologist, who wants a general good background but
doesn't want to have to get into the jargon and other stuff,
there's really nothing there yet.
All right, a game for kids. I must have had a deprived
childhood. We didn't have this when I was a
kid. But anyway, we have the games.
We have a whole bunch of games. We also have, and you can buy
these sets of all the different life stages of the ladybugs.
They're fairly large and kids can use them, and get out there,
because if a child sees a ladybug larva, they don't
necessarily know that's a ladybug, unless you point it out
to them. >> Do you have pictures
of the larva on the Website? >> I should.
( laughter ) Let's see if we can get
the pictures here in just a few moments.
Anybody want words for ladybugs in 30 languages?
( laughter )
There you go.
When it comes to the native languages, the indigenous
languages, it's kind of fascinating, because there are
all kinds of names for ladybugs. The names they had actually
remain for the different spot patterns and things.
And we don't have any names for, like the Mohawk word,
look at that. That's what one elder told us.
Two other elders got in a big argument with him.
They really disagreed that that's what it was.
But I think Leslie could spell this one.
( laughter )
There you go. ( indistinct )
Anyway, this is a pretty good diagram for kids to get into
start looking for the different aspects of it.
Make sure when you send you pictures in, they ladybugs are
right-side up. ( laughter )
I sent a group in and three of them were upside down, and she
called me on it. She said she was good,
but not that good. ( laughter )
How to make an origami ladybug.
Anyway, these are some of the things we have on the education
page there. It's a long, long page.
Does anybody have any other questions while I'm getting back
to a different page? Yes?
>> I want to know, on the Website, I do a lot of work with
kids in general on insect studies, and work with the
sheets. But for ladybugs, you said that
particular plants, do you have any information about what some
of our native plants are their favorites, or on what we would
be most likely to find ladybugs? >> That's a good question.
Let's see if we have it on the Website.
We were kind of developing that, because like I said, we're not
sure what that is. And we were developing that just
by what we've been finding in the field.
I'm not sure if it's on the Website or not.
In the early part of the year, milkweed is a good place to
look, because there's lots of aphids on the milkweed.
Sunflowers, when you're out in the prairie, the sunflowers are
another excellent place to look. And of course, crops, any of
your garden crops and things like that.
These are all .pdf files that you can download and print.
This is really for your basic, the kinds to look for and most
common. This is probably a really good
sheet. Yes?
>> Who decided to go with the term ladybugs?
I understand the reason, I think.
>> It's on here. >> Oh, okay.
Great, okay.
>> All right, so we have--
Like the Checkerspot one. I'm sure you're familiar here
with the St. Lawrence Seaway and all the issues that come
with exotic species from the seaway.
This is one of them that came in from the St. Lawrence, along
with who knows what all else. But you normally wouldn't
consider that to be a ladybug, probably, if you saw a yellow
and black beetle that didn't even have spots.
But anyway, the Parenthesis ladybug, you'll see a lot of
those around.
The Two-spot. Again, if you look through that
book that's going around, you'll see all different kinds
of patterns and colors for the Two-spot.
We have the brochure, which is going around.
Bookmarks. These are really popular
for kids.
Just print them off. Print the whole sheet
and cut them in strips. Kids really like these,
and the stickers. I think a sticker of anything
is popular with a kid.
And for another one for kids for the winter, inside,
draw your own ladybug. Print it out.
They have to put their own colors, or their own patterns
on the front of them. Anyway, as you can see, there's
a lot of stuff available here.
Here are the directions for the sweep net.
You can buy sweep nets relatively cheap, but if you've
got a large group of kids, and you've got a rainy day when you
don't want to take them out, this is a pretty easy little
project. Again, you can just
pull this down.
Just download it, print it and put them to work.
Of course, everybody has to have something official.
You always have to have some sort of award, so you have
your Spotter's Certificate, suitable for framing.
( light laughter )
We're back to the ladybug song.
Okay, now for people who are more interested in the data.
And this is the part we've really been focusing on.
We're doing some real experimentation right now, so
feed back is really important. Any of you that are really
interested in data and crunching data, we can use feedback
on this site. What's useful to you
and what's not. Or, is it in a format that you
can clearly understand, or is it in a format that you have no
idea what this is. Granted, some of it is purely
for academic purposes, but we're trying to get away from that.
We're trying to make every single thing on there accessible
to everyone, even if it has to be in several different formats.
So feedback on this is important.
So make sure, if you're interested in this stuff at all,
please don't be shy about commenting to the site about
hey, I looked at this, I really enjoyed it, whatever, or I'm not
clear on this, or you could do this to make it easier to
understand. So we have this broken down in
several different ways. We do have this map here that's
pretty much useless. We do have, you can see, we do
have spotters through north and central America.
Even over in Hawaii, we do have people looking for ladybugs.
Okay, if you just wanted to see--
If you wanted to, say, find out who's found ladybugs here in
Dane County, or what kinds have they found, or whatever, this
gives you access to that. We're not going to spend a whole
bunch of time on that. But say if you're going on
vacation or going to Alabama, well you want to take a look
there. This gives you a way to do that.
Just for the heck of it, let's select by state,
go to Wisconsin.
Why couldn't you have state that started with an "A".
( laughter )
The funny thing is, when you get to the bottom of this list, it
has some other ones that don't belong there, either.
Well, you know, you might want to take a trip.
It's a nice time to go to Wyoming.
And there you go. You can just scroll down.
You've got your city, your spotter names.
So if for some reason, you're going to Bayfield, and you
really wanted to get into this, you could probably contact this
spotter and say hey, I'm coming up there, I really want to look
at ladybugs, would you be interested in showing me where
you found them. I've found that the people are
really good about sharing that information and letting you
come and join their searches. It's been kind of fun driving
around the country and just meeting with different folks who
have turned in pictures, and get to visit with them and find out
why they're into this, and what they've found out so far.
Anyway, that's the way you can work this site.
You want to keep scrolling on Wisconsin, sure.
( inaudible )
There's the nine-spot in Buffalo County.
The spotter has several hundred acres of old farmland that she's
restoring to native prairie habitat.
That's the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe School
that I've got set up there. They've been out searching
for a couple years now. ( inaudible )
Up in Hayward. ( inaudible )
That was me. It found me.
( inaudible ) There we go.
We've got some in Madison, here. Someone you may know, Rachel,
with the school district. She's had her students involved.
That one under my name was found right out here,
right out front.
>> So we can blitz this, this summer.
>> Yeah, I would think you could cover it pretty well this
summer. And any of you over at the
Aldo Leopold Center, you could cover that prairie over there.
There's the other nine-spot that was found.
It's actually on the same property as the first one,
but found by a different person. This woman found it
and added it to her collection. That's just the way it goes,
sometimes.
Look at that, a little difference in size there.
Some of the spots are fairly large.
That's kind of really an exaggeration.
>> Do they encourage catch and release?
>> Yes. That depends on how you feel
about the non-native ones. ( laughter )
I catch and release everything, but I've had people tell me they
take their pictures of the non-native ones and then suck
them up in a vacuum cleaner, or do whatever, and make them
disappear. I don't have the same respect
for doing river surveys. When I find round gobies,
I don't catch and release them.
Let's see if there's any more from Wisconsin.
Nope. That's what's in from Wisconsin
so far. I'm sure you guys can triple
that by next year.
>> Can you search that by county rather than by city?
>> Yeah, I think there was a tab for county, or by person.
I'll go back to that.
This is supposed to be set up so you could search by just about
any category, including county, group name, genus, species,
if you just wanted to see where nine-spots were.
>> Can you define though, within Wisconsin, what county?
>> Yeah. ( inaudible )
Let's go back to the summary page or the data,
back to that other page. >> When you're on data, can you
get us a picture of the life cycle, so we can see
what a larva looks like? >> Yeah, I'm sure we've got it
here somewhere, but I'm not finding it.
We'll get there. I hope.
So if someone wants to do some quantitative work.
Here's where it gets tricky. If you really wanted to do
quantitative work, is this a valid sample to go from?
Well, because-- We've got a lot of people
looking in New York. We've got a lot of people
looking in a few places. But we've got very few people
looking in other places. So, can it really tell you
anything about the distribution yet?
That's why it's important we get the word spread and get more
people looking.
Pie charts. Here's one we really want
some feedback on.
We've run this through several of us, but we haven't got much
feedback from the public yet. All right, say you want
a pie chart, you want to know what we found so far.
Let's say the US, all states. For species, let's just say you
want to see natives. Then habitats, let's go with
meadow grass, which would be what your prairie
would be considered here. I don't know why you'd make
a pie chart from "I don't know."
But anyway, let's create the chart and see what happens.
It'll probably come back and tell me I didn't--
There we go.
And there you go. The graphics,
I know could use some work. Those lines, the way they're
kind of fuzzy, makes it tough, particularly when you get small
percentages. From that, you can now look and
say, okay, here's what we've got from these different spaces.
The "other" just means there were so few of them,
you couldn't really delineate them on a pie chart
of this size. Okay, Colorado.
Obviously, we've got a lot of people looking in Colorado.
I see Wisconsin is not even on this map.
Can we fix that next year? And get you out of the other
category. >> Is that all species?
>> That's all native species. But you can break it down
further. Anyway, this is one we really
want feedback on. You know, if you have any ideas
on how to make these charts more usable, please let us know.
And I still have to find that-- I still have to find
our pictures. >> There must be a query box
someplace that you can ask a question.
Let's go back to the home page.
They've played with this. They're constantly working
on this. Every time I open it,
I find something new. >> Tell them you need
a little box where you can type in something.
>> A search for the site. >> So you don't have to go
through everything. >> Yeah, that would be useful.
>> It's so common. I don't know why you don't
have one.
>> Does your links page have resources, as far as any
university websites? >> Yeah, there are a lot
of those kinds of things on the links.
>> It looks like the photo gallery is on the kids' page,
which was under construction.
>> Here's just some different media sources.
If anybody has any questions, just holler them out while
I'm trying-- Yeah?
>> A group of young people made their nets and then went into
a prairie section to sweep, how likely are they to find
more than one kind of ladybug? >> They're pretty likely to find
more than one kind. >> Okay, so you would find
different kinds. >> Yeah, you should more
than one kind around here, in this prairie.
But again, that's something that at least I don't know, and I
know working with Leslie a lot, she's not clear on, because we
don't know when every species is most active or most available
what time of the year in what habitat.
We're not sure on that. We don't have enough information
on that, so you know, you could go out and find only one kind.
But I've only had that happen maybe once or twice out of all
the searches I've been on. I usually find several different
kinds. >> Can you point out
the ghost spots? >> Ghost spots.
( inaudible ) >> The white ones?
>> No. ( inaudible )
( laughter ) >> Look up above this spot,
follow the curve of the wing around and look kind of
in the middle. See that?
I don't use technology. There's your ghost spots.
( inaudible ) >> They're gray?
>> They're gray. >> Okay.
>> Could you do just a review, sort of a general review for us
of the life cycle? I think many ladybugs
over-winter as adults. Can you just kind of do
a general review of life cycles? >> I can, but I'm not
comfortable doing it, because I don't know enough about
all the different species. I'm not that comfortable.
Yeah, adults do over-winter. Adults will over-winter.
Besides the ones that come in your house and hang out in the
heat, there are, like I said earlier, if we were to go out
here and dig around under some of these evergreens down under
the duff, there's a good chance we'll find some.
You know, get out in the base of trees, under crops,
under firewood piles, you'll find them down at the bottom.
If you have some firewood that you hardly ever get to,
look down in there. Non-natives like stuff
like that, too. I've seen firewood brought into
the house, and suddenly the house is alive with ladybugs who
have come out of the firewood. >> What other countries are
doing similar studies? >> I believe they were doing one
in Australia, but I don't think anything to this extent.
Nothing that I know of. But again, that's not my area.
>> What about Canada and Mexico? >> Canada and Mexico
are all part of this. >> But not Central
and South America? >> Right, we're focused mostly
on North America. We consider Mexico and
the islands Central America. I mean, we were lucky to get
an NSF grant. Without the NSF, this project
probably would not have happened.
It had the important thing. It had the things the NSF
was looking for. Okay, you have a valid
ecological question here. You know, this is going on.
Why is it going on? You had getting citizen
involvement in science going on, and focusing also on
under-represented communities. So we had three of the important
things that NSF is looking for when we wrote for this project.
( inaudible ) >> I'm wondering if the reason
it's hard to find a larva is that the adults are infinitely
easier to identify. And the purpose of this is to
help find these adults. In the book you're passing
around now, the Acorn book, it has pictures of the larvae,
which kind of look like little hela monsters.
They're black on the surface. It shows pictures of the eggs
also, but they're a lot harder to identify the species, and
I suspect that's why they don't emphasize it very much
on the website. >> Yeah, probably.
Kids don't-- Ladybugs are kind of cute
and cuddly. And the larvae, kind of
gnarly looking. ( inaudible )
They could be kind of scary. I'm hoping I'll find a picture
here on this site. ( inaudible )
>> There's one on the Arboretum site.
>> Are the native species mostly habitat specific?
>> Well, again that's something we don't know.
John Losey, one of the PIs, because of where they were
finding the first of the nine-spots, he came to the
conclusion they were, well okay, they were in arid prairie
habitats. Then we started finding them in
places that were not that way. That's part of the mapping on
here. You can go to the map and you
can look at the different locations things were found.
Then you can kind of pick them out.
Nine-spots were so common, I mean, if it's common enough
for kids to want them to be made a state insect, it really
couldn't have been too specific. It must have been pretty broad
ranging. But another thing we'd like to
do-- Any history buffs in here? People who like to get into
archives and like to dig through old journals and things?
We'd really like to get into doing a literature search, not
the academic literature, but a gray literature search, getting
into the journals from the old naturalists, the old settlers,
pioneers, anything that might mention, you know, ladybugs.
Say, somebody was a farmer and they settled here in 1850, or
something. Did they mention in their
journals, oh, I've got ladybugs in my garden to help eat aphids.
You know, if we can get some of that kind of stuff back, we can
go back and we can get a better idea of distribution patterns
and change over time. But there's just so many
opportunities and so many options here.
I no longer work for the project.
My part of the funding is over. But I stick with it, just
because it's so much fun. It's a lot of fun to do, and
there are so many opportunities, so many questions.
When we were talking earlier, in science we don't always find
answers, but we come up with some really good questions.
So, you know, there's half the battle there.
Yes, ma'am? >> The name ladybug,
where did that come from? >> It's written on the back.
>> Oh, is it?
>> For those of you who didn't pick up a folder--
>> But then, how long ago? They're talking about--
>> Well, this looks like it was quite a long time ago.
For those of you who didn't pick it up, some people believe
ladybugs were given their name in Europe after the Red Rose
of Virgin Mary, Our Lady, or because farmers believed they
were sent by her to deliver them from the ravages of pests.
That kind of infers it was quite a while back.
I don't honestly know. In other countries,
England calls them Ladybeetles. Like butterflies, people named
butterflies "butterflies" when they were originally called
flutterbys, which makes more sense if you think about it.
They flutter by you. Butterfly?
Where'd that come from? Anyway, anybody have any
questions? >> Will birds eat them?
>> Birds will eat them. I don't know about
the non-native ones, since they smell so bad.
They may taste bad. >> Maybe once.
( laughter ) >> Then would you just want
to bring birds into your house to get rid of them?
( inaudible ) No, just the Asian ones seem
to be the only ones that bite. Yes?
>> Can we use the non-native ones as a dye?
>> As a dye? It would be a really smelly
process. ( laughter )
( inaudible ) Yeah, so far as I can tell.
>> About how many genera are there?
>> I have no clue. I really know that answer.
( laughter ) >> If you see one in your house
in the late fall, you can't put them outside anymore because
it's getting cold. Can you help them over-winter?
>> You can put them back outside.
You can put them back outside. If you've got a wood pile,
stick them in there, or under a flat rock.
If you've got flat rocks laying out there--
Yeah, if they're non-natives, you may not want to help them
over-winter, but you might. No, they can survive outside.
Chances are, if they're in your house, they're a non-native
anyway. >> Are the non-natives
as effective, as far as eating aphids off crops, like soybeans
and things? >> For this, I'm going to
go to the crop expert, who happens to be here.
>> The question was what? >> Are the non-natives as
effective eating the aphids and things on crops like soybeans
as the native ones? >> The non-native came from
Asia, and over there, the soybean aphid is native to Asia.
And there, it's a key predator. So yes, it's highly effective.
But the problem-- Quite often, the aphid
populations are outstripping the harmonia.
When they finally catch up, it may be before the farmer
is willing to put up with that amount of damage.
So, they'll get sprayed, or something like that.
Yeah, they're as effective. They can be important.
I'm thinking, why were not seeing quite as many harmonia
right now, the last year or two, as he said up here, is because
the soybean aphid populations have been down.
Time will tell whether it comes back or not.
So that might be why. Yes, to answer your question,
they're quite effective, just sometimes it's is it
effective enough. The best thing to do is getting
the farmers to realize what is an economic level.
We have established those numbers.
They have crop scouts. They check themselves.
And if it's not at an economic level, it's not going to hurt
their yield, let the population be there.
That keeps not only the lady beetles, you have parasitic
wasps and other predators that are out there.
That's a key feature. I was wondering,
are the people at Cornell-- ( several people talking )
Oh, I'm sorry. >> I forgot about a mic.
The question was, whether the introduced harmonia are as
effective as knocking down aphid population in farmers crops as
the native species. The answer is yes, because
harmonia, the introduced lady beetle, and the soybean aphids
are native to Asia. The soybean aphid somehow showed
up in the states, we found it in 2001.
How it got here is conjecture, but its primary host is
buckthorn. If you realize how many species
of buckthorn we've got in the United States from Asia and
places like that, which might be how the aphid got here.
In Asia, the aphid is the lady beetle's primary prey.
So it's one of the few cases I know of in history of insects
where the pest insect got here after the "beneficial" insect
was here. Scott mentioned earlier that the
harmonia was brought here by the folks, who wanted a better way
of controlling insects. Is that your question?
I was wondering if your folks at Cornell are contacting
museums. Like here in Wisconsin, there is
a museum in Russell Labs, and they're vastly collected.
They could probably check and see what species of lady beetles
are here. I know my state, Nebraska,
they were collecting insects in the 1880s.
It's wonderful just for historical references.
>> We've talked about that, but it has not been done so far.
I think that's actually written into the follow-up grant, which
they just proposed, to get some people to start doing that kind
of thing, go back to the journals, go to the museum,
go to different places. New York State's Natural History
Museum has boxes and boxes of stuff buried in a room that, you
know, Adirondack Park is another place where I know there's just
thousands of records that no one's looked at in years, you
know, about the natural life of the area.
So yeah, we'll see if we get another grant.
Or we'll see if they get another grant.
Any other questions? ( inaudible )
I would imagine-- Someone just suggested we take
ladybugs and make dye out of them.
Maybe we could do that with the non-natives.
It'd be a smelly process, but I'm not sure.
Once again, I'm not an entomologist.
I can't tell you how closely related they would be.
It would make sense, since their names are so close.
>> I think the -- beetle feeds directly on the cactus pads,
sucking juices, rather than eating aphids, so I don't think
it's a predatory beetle. I think the ladybug is,
so I don't think it's related. >> I don't know.
>> Does anyone know its Latin name?
>> One thing that's important that we really would like is, if
you go out, say spring comes and you go out with the kids, you do
your search, you don't find any ladybugs.
Well, with kids, I understand, you want to take them some place
that they're going to go find ladybugs, so you'll try a
different place next time, or a different place.
Come back to that first place. Keep coming back to the place
you didn't find any. Because where you may not find
any in May or June, you may find a whole bunch of them in July
and August, and no more in September.
Those are patterns we need to look at, too.
That's part of the process. Here's some links.
There are other citizen scientist projects on here.
Like I said, the list of books is here.
Fun places to go. Photos.
Let's see if we have a picture of, just so we can find one
before I shut up, a picture of a larva.
I could do that, I guess.
Okay. ( laughter )
Okay, we're going to have to--
( indistinct talking )
( laughter )
There we go! We've got pictures!
You can see why the kids might not be as anxious
to pick that one up.
So does anybody have any final questions?
Yes? >> I'm looking at --, and
I'm looking under multi-colored Asian lady beetles.
It says this beetle has a huge appetite and has adapted in
North America to eat much of the same foods that the native
ladybugs eat. Then it says it even eats
ladybug larva, including its own.
So, what about the native ladybug?
Does it eat larva, too? >> They are also cannibalistic.
>> Okay. >> At least the ones
I'm familiar with. Out of 500+ species, there's
probably some that aren't. Any other questions?
Well, thanks for your time. Oh, we do have a question.
>> I was just wondering, who in the Ladybug Project would be a
good mentor for kids, to help them develop scientific
questions and choose, you know, go through, basically help them
going through the scientific process?
>> Leslie Allee and Rebecca Smyth.
Leslie is our number one educator.
She's also one of the PIs on the project.
They are definitely the people that you want, if you want to
get into the real science of it and really get kids involved in
that part of it. Leslie is the person to go to.
>> But come to our program, and we'll try to get that into our
program. >> That's another part of this.
We had a couple hours this morning, but we're going to be
running the program this spring. We're going to be in touch with
the folks at Cornell. So, you can get a lot more
information this spring. I want you to have hands-on.
It's a lot different than me just standing here talking about
it. I mean, had it been nice out, we
would've been outside this whole time.
I would've skipped the whole website thing, except for about
ten minutes, and we would've been outside sweeping and
looking for ladybugs. But since it took everybody
about an hour to drive in here, I figured you probably didn't
want to go back out and walk around.
But it's a great project for getting kids outside, even when
you don't find anything. Any other questions?
Thanks for your time, folks. I'll be around.
( applause )