Coccinellidae

Coccinellidae is a widespread family of small beetles. They are commonly known as ladybugs in North America and ladybirds in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and other English speaking territories; "lady" refers to Mary, the mother of Jesus. Entomologists use the names ladybird beetles or lady beetles to avoid confusion with true bugs. The more than 6,000 described species have a global distribution and are found in a variety of habitats. They are oval beetles with a domed back and flat underside. Many of the species have conspicuous aposematic (warning) colours and patterns, such as red with black spots, that warn potential predators that they taste bad.

Coccinellidae

Francisco Welter-Schultes · CC0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Also called
ladybird beetlePBDB
Sits inside
CoccinelloideaPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta

Time the record covers

At least 165 million years on record.

The record covers at least 165.3 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 168.2 Mya to 11.7 ka.

Middle Jurassic — about 1 of 76 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 0 of 76 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous — about 0 of 76 occurrencesLate Cretaceous — about 0 of 76 occurrencesPaleocene — about 0 of 76 occurrencesEocene — about 27 of 76 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 14 of 76 occurrencesMiocene — about 15 of 76 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 7 of 76 occurrencesPleistocene — about 12 of 76 occurrences172–166 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences166–160 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences57–51 Mya — about 2 occurrences51–46 Mya — about 2 occurrences46–40 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences40–34 Mya — about 20 occurrences34–29 Mya — about 8 occurrences29–23 Mya — about 8 occurrences23–17 Mya — about 2 occurrences17–11 Mya — about 10 occurrences11–5.7 Mya — about 2 occurrences5.7–0 Mya — about 19 occurrences165.3 Mya129 ka172 Mya0 Mya

76 occurrences of Coccinellidae on record, most of them in the Eocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

76 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Found in

13 formations

Upper Freshwater-Molasse — 47.67°N, 8.93°ERott — 50.75°N, 7.26°EFlorissant — 38.92°N, 105.28°WKap København — 82.47°N, 23.66°WKap København — 82.45°N, 24.10°WShanwang — 36.55°N, 118.71°EArgiles d'lignite du Soissonnais — 49.33°N, 2.66°ESalt — 47.69°N, 7.53°EEifel — 50.11°N, 6.82°EGreat Oolite — 51.89°N, 1.95°WRandeck Maar — 48.57°N, 9.53°ERita Blanca — 35.71°N, 102.45°WYoshino — 32.83°N, 130.64°ENingming — 22.14°N, 107.03°E

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The named rock units Coccinellidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 38 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Coccinellidae and its relatives

Eocene

Where Coccinellidae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

3,193 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 41 sites for Coccinellidae, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

37 references

Each of the 76 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 25 further references are not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content2

Picture of Coccinellidae

Credit
Francisco Welter-Schultes
Licence
CC0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

3D model

Source
Sketchfab
Credit
tunosemi
Licence
CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
Commercial use
the licence does not allow it

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itCoccinelloidea through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Latreille 1807