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December 2015. A message from St Helena that the Harlequin ladybird has reached the territory. A survey is being done there to find the area of infestation and if found the synthetic pyrethroid cypermethrin will be used. Any other suggestions.
There’s a paper that came out in May this year: Ten years of invasion: …
Have you got this: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced/doi/10.1111/een.12203/
There is also a very full CABI datasheet: http://www.cabi.org/isc/datasheet/26515
A member wrote, if experiences on small tropical islands in the Pacific are anything to go by, there’s perhaps some possibility that the pest may not survive for long. Since it’s a large ladybeetle, it would need to consume quite a number of prey daily. Whilst it can sustain itself at high prey densities, it will increasingly take a greater effort and time for it to find sufficient prey when populations decline – and this could lead to its eventual demise. Of course, there are quite a few factors in play here, including the host range of the lady beetle: a wider host range would allow it to forage for alternative prey as well when its main food source becomes scarce.
By the way, the Wiki site that Grahame refers to indicates that there’s a pheromone trap available.
It was also said that these ladybird beetles are infected by fungi in the order of Laboulbeniales. Look for yellow bristles. The fungus does not kill the beetle, just impairs them (http://www.esf.edu/Laboulbeniales/).
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