How the Rediscovery of a 150-Year-Old Specimen Revealed Vermont’s 48th Lady Beetle Species
December 04, 2025After over 150 years, researchers confirmed that Vermont's holotype specimen of the Snow Lady Beetle had been hiding in plain sight at the Harvard MCZ with its location misclassified due to faded collection markers, adding a 48th species to Vermont's Lady Beetle list. Read the blog post »
VCE Kicks Off New Project with Backyard Lady Beetle Blitz in May
May 01, 2020Help VCE kick off the Vermont Lady Beetle Atlas project by participating in the Backyard Lady Beetle Blitz from May 15th to 18th. Learn more. »
Lady Beetles, Ladybugs: A Look At Vermont's Native And Nonnative Species
August 20, 2019A post on Instagram prompted a conversation with Kent McFarland, of the Vermont Center for Ecostudies, about both native and nonnative ladybugs in Vermont. First thing's first though: you may need to expand your imagination when it comes to what a ladybug — or as McFarland calls it, a lady beetle — even looks like. Listen to the conversation at Vermont Public Radio »
My Fair Lady Beetle
April 01, 2019Here at the Vermont Atlas of Life we're always on the lookout for historic biodiversity data. When we find it, our mission is to save it from potentially being lost in the dustbin of history. Recently, we unearthed a 43 year old document - Lady Beetles: A Checklist of the Coccinellidae of Vermont. The authors listed the first and last date each species was collected in Vermont and the total number of specimens known, a snapshot of Lady Beetle life in Vermont prior to 1976. Since at least the 1980s, native Lady Beetles that were once very common across the Northeast have become rare or have even gone missing. Learn more about Vermont lady beetles and help us find them. Read more at the VCE Blog »
