Life Cycle
The two-spotted lady beetle's life cycle starts with eggs that are usually laid in clutches. The larvae hatches from the egg by biting a hole in it. The larvae look very different from the adults: they have elongated, grey, soft bodies with six legs but no wings. They are cannibalistic. Larvae go through four larval stages: by eating they grow and at some point they shed their old skin and appear in a new one in which they can grow more. The last larval stage is approximately the size of an adult beetle. Once it has eaten enough, the larvae attach themselves to a substrate and moult into a pupa. Inside the pupa, the adult develops. Finally the adult ecloses from the pupa.
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Life cycle of Adalia bipunctata. Illustration from «Insects, their way and means of living», R. E. Snodgrass
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Spotted lady beetles mating
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Larva
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Pupa
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The adult beetle
Read more about this topic: Adalia Bipunctata
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