- [Moderator] So we do have Julia with us today.
Her talk is prerecorded.
I will just introduce her as Julia Pupko.
She has done some great work with us here at FEMC,
and is now serving as an ECO AmeriCorps member
as a community science outreach naturalist
at the Vermont Center for Ecostudies.
She will be sharing her talk today
about lady beetles of Vermont.
- Hello, my name is Julia Pupko
and I'm one of the ECO AmeriCorps members
serving at the Vermont Center of Ecostudies this year.
Specifically, I've been working
with the Vermont Atlas of Life
which is a group within the Vermont Center for Ecostudies.
And one of my focuses has been
on the Vermont Lady Beetle Atlas
which I will be presenting on today.
I will start by giving a little bit of history
as to why we began the Vermont Lady Beetle Atlas.
And then we'll end by discussing
the importance of lady beetles,
specifically the importance
of a couple of lady beetle species to Vermont's forests.
To start, in 2018,
Vermont Atlas of Life, or VAL researchers, digitized
a 43-year old document listing lady beetle species
found during and prior to a survey on lady beetles
which was completed in 1976.
While digitizing this, it became apparent
that some lady beetle, native lady beetle species,
had not been recorded from what we could tell
since this document was released.
This made us question
what Vermont's current lady beetle fauna looked like.
And part of the reason why we wanted to find out more
was because there have been widespread declines
in native lady beetle populations across the U.S. and Canada
which have been documented in research.
These declines are thought to be a combination,
caused by a combination of factors
including nonnative lady beetle species introductions,
land use change and pesticide use.
To focus on one of these factors in a little greater depth,
nonnative lady beetle introductions
are thought to be an issue
because some research has pointed to the fact
that many nonnative lady beetle species,
including the Asian lady beetle
and seven-spotted lady beetle,
which I will bring up again later,
can outcompete native lady beetles for food and habitat,
typically grow faster than native lady beetles,
and will actually consume native lady beetle larvae,
which is not good for overall population stability
of native lady beetles
when they have an introduced predator.
So after digitizing this document,
we began compiling other historic records
and lady beetle collections, and digitizing them
to determine what data exists
on lady beetles in Vermont.
We collected and digitized records
from the Cornell University's Lost Ladybug Project,
from the UVM Lady Beetle Collection,
Collection at Middlebury,
Vermont Forest Parks and Recreation,
and then compiled research-grade observations
that had been uploaded
to the iNaturalist Vermont Atlas of Life project.
In total, we assembled over 1,600 records,
and at that point came to the end of data
that was in existence that we could find
on lady beetles in Vermont.
From all of this data, we determined
that there are 36 native
and 7 introduced lady beetle species
that have been recorded in Vermont.
And as of 2019, 13 of these native species were missing.
Other species as I previously mentioned
seemed to be in decline,
and we want to learn more.
And we want to know if the missing species
still exist in Vermont in small populations,
or if they've been entirely extirpated.
From collecting this historic data,
and now starting an Atlas to try and survey
what current lady beetles exist in Vermont,
we hope to inform conservation efforts
which may include reintroduction
of native lady beetle species,
and also hope to gain a better understanding
of nonnative lady beetle species in Vermont
so we can combat them as necessary.
We have decided to base
the Vermont Lady Beetle Atlas
on a citizen science framework
which has been utilized successfully
by both the Vermont Atlas of Life
and other projects.
So the reason why using a citizen science framework
can be valuable is because you can train
enthusiastic naturalists within the community to help you
look for a group of species in question.
And it just increases the number of people
that are able to get out and survey
and hopefully will increase the area that's covered.
So the Vermont Atlas of Life has seen great success
using citizen science in many projects,
including the Vermont Wild Bee Survey.
For example, this year alone, we recorded
33 new species of bees in Vermont
using a citizen science framework.
And the Cornell Lost Lady Bug Project
rediscovered two lady beetle species,
the nine-spotted and the two-spotted lady beetle in New York
which were previously thought to be extirpated in the state.
So as a result of all of this,
we decided to utilize citizen scientists
within the Vermont Lady Beetle Atlas
and ask them to go out and look for lady beetles
and upload their observations to iNaturalist
so others can help to identify,
and then we can utilize all of that data.
This graphic represents a little bit
of what I've been talking about thus far.
This shows native lady beetle species over time.
And as you can see, following the mid 1970s,
there is a very sharp decrease in the number
of native lady beetle species that have been recorded.
And as you can see looking towards 2020,
there has been an increase in native lady beetle species
that have been recorded.
And a lot of the ones that you can see recorded in 2020,
as represented by that red dot,
were uploaded to iNaturalist.
And this just kind of goes to show
how successful utilizing citizen scientists can be.
And one thing to note is
that in the late 1950s,
and then in the 1990s,
two nonnative lady beetle species,
the seven-spotted lady beetle
and the Asian lady beetle respectively
were introduced to Vermont.
And both of these species have been shown in research
to really outcompete
and negatively impact native lady beetle populations.
So that is, you know, we can't say for certain
that the introduction of those species
have caused declines in native lady beetles,
but you know, through this and other research,
we may be able to kind of figure that
out a little bit better,
and determine how these species
may be impacting our native species.
To go over some of our findings thus far,
citizen scientists have rediscovered four species
in Vermont which were lost for over 40 years
including one species this year,
which you can see on the screen.
There's the four-spotted spurleg lady beetle,
convergent lady beetle, undulate sigil lady beetle
and the hieroglyphic lady beetle.
Additionally, citizen scientists
have found three new species of lady beetle in Vermont,
which are native.
You have the undoubtable lady beetle
the mountain lady beetle,
and the Octavia lady beetle which was found this year.
You can see that one on the screen.
So the next slide I'm going to flip to is going to show you
a graphic on the right side which is going to move
through a series of red dots.
And these red dots represent research-grade observations
which were uploaded to iNaturalist over time
over the existence
of the Vermont Atlas of Life iNaturalist project.
And you'll see from start to end
the large increase in the number of observations.
To kind of summarize this,
in 2020 alone we saw an increase
of 234 iNaturalist users
uploading research-grade lady beetle observations
which is really an incredible increase.
And we doubled the number
of research grade lady beetle observations
that were uploaded to iNaturalist
in Vermont this year alone.
So of the 1,700
research-grade lady beetle observations
that have been uploaded to iNaturalist in Vermont
over all of iNaturalist's years of operations,
914 of those or 54% were uploaded this year.
Excuse me.
And now we found one of the missing species this year.
So we only have 12 left to go.
Moving forward, we seek to increase
our citizen scientist participation by conducting outreach
and raising awareness about this project
to try and activate the citizen scientist network
that's already really involved in VCE's research
to get people out and looking for lady beetles.
And we are also going to be systematically surveying Vermont
using priority blocks,
which we have established by breaking up
the U.S. Geological Survey topographic maps
that cover the state of Vermont.
And basically after systematically dividing these blocks
up into roughly three-by-three mile blocks,
we randomly selected a number of those
which cover a representative sample
of Vermont's ecosystem types,
and we'll have citizen scientists survey those
until they're considered to be completed.
And what completed means at this point is still unknown.
We have to start doing more surveys
to figure out
how many surveys need to be done
in a priority block to get
hopefully all of the lady beetle species that exist
in that block to be found.
But since there is so little research
on lady beetles in general,
and specifically lady beetles in Vermont,
it will take some work to determine
what a survey block being completed
actually entails in terms of groundwork.
To end, I'm going to explain why lady beetles matter
and go over a couple forest lady beetle species in Vermont.
So lady beetles are a really important pest controller,
and the collapse of native lady beetle species
may lead to really bad pest outbreaks,
specifically of pests that are native in the United States
that native lady beetles have evolved with and have become
very effective biological control measures of.
Lady beetles exist across all of our ecosystems
from forests to grasslands to wetlands,
and also really help
with pest control in agricultural fields.
The first native lady beetle species
that I'm going to go over that exists in Vermont's forests
is the eye-spotted lady beetle.
They are very closely associated with conifer trees
and are a very important predator of the balsam twig aphid
and also of young spruce budworm larvae.
They have been found to synchronize their lifestyle
with balsam twig aphid populations
and also very actively hunt balsam twig aphids.
They were compared
to the nonnative Asian lady beetle species
and were found to be a much more effective control
of these aphids than Asian lady beetles are.
For example, in one study,
eye-spotted lady beetles were found
to completely destroy balsam twig aphid populations
or colonies once they were located,
and reduced overall egg mass by 30%.
The other species I'm going to speak on is
the twice-stabbed lady beetle.
These are also found in forests
and specifically target scale insects.
Since the introduction of beech bark disease,
they have been found to be very closely associated
with infected beech trees,
and they also attack and consume other scale pests
such as pine needle scale.
One study found that the twice-stabbed lady beetle
reduced pine needle scale in an infected plantation
to extremely low levels.
And they also have been found
to synchronize their lifecycle
to fit the population booms
of the scale insects.
And since they do consume
beech bark disease scale,
it goes to show that these native lady beetle species
can also be important control measures
for introduced scales and aphid pests.
Thank you for listening to my presentation today.
I look forward to your questions.
And if you would like to either get involved, hopefully,
or learn more, feel free to visit that link on the screen.
That'll take you to our Lady Beetle Atlas
on the Vermont Center for Ecostudies website, thank you.
- They're really beautiful little guys,
some neat pictures in there.
- Well, that is definitely one of the benefits
of using iNaturalist,
research-grade iNaturalist observations,
is getting permission from people to use their lovely photos
that they upload as part of their observation.
- All right, question from Judy Risoski,
"Great talk, do you know if the native lady beetle
"is the one used for bio-control in Vermont nurseries?"
- That is a really good question.
And I actually do not know.
That would be, I can put my email in the chat,
and then Judy, if you want to, email you.
I can definitely research and follow up on that.
There are some native lady beetle species
that have been used on a widescale basis for pest control.
That includes the convergent lady beetle.
However, a lot of the nonnative lady beetles
were actually introduced to the United States originally
for pest control measures.
And ironically enough, many of them,
including the Asian lady beetle,
did not actually become established
through pest control initiatives,
but then, you know, had come over on different shipments
of agricultural products and other things
and then ended up becoming established that way.
But that is a really good question.
- All right, another question, Tony McCullough,
"Do you suspect that the missing natives
"are truly extirpated or just haven't been detected?
"If extirpated, any theories why?"
- So since there are a number of missing species,
I think that some of them
may very well have been extirpated
and others do still exist in low levels,
like, you know, this year rediscovering the
four-spotted spurleg lady beetle,
that one hadn't been seen since that survey in 1976.
So there definitely are hopefully more
of those missing species
that still exist in low populations.
However, as I kind of briefly mentioned
in that presentation, there's been a lot of research
that has shown that nonnative lady beetles
typically grow faster,
outcompete native lady beetle populations
and will eat native lady beetle larvae
as they're developing.
And there was one study that interestingly enough, found
that both native lady beetles and nonnative lady beetles
would preferentially eat native lady beetle larvae
over nonnative lady beetle larvae.
So it's just kind of that additional competitive
and predation pressure
which I believe could be a cause
of declines and entire extirpations of some species.
And then in addition to that, there's been land use changes.
So losing farm land, for example,
and kind of those edge habitats can have an effect.
- Great, thank you, Julia.
And I encourage everyone to reach out to Julia
and the Vermont Center for Ecostudies
for any other questions.
And that wraps up our contributed talks for day two.