All things green, outdoors, and nature-y. Whether it's animals in their natural habitat, hiking trails and mountains, or planting a little garden for yourself (and everything in between), you can talk about it here.
See also our Environment community, which is focused on weather, climate, climate change, and stuff like that.
(It's not mandatory, but we also encourage providing a description of your image(s) for accessibility purposes! See here for a more detailed explanation and advice on how best to do this.)
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
I noticed today that one of my struggling garden plants is absolutely covered in bugs. I have no idea if those two things are related (we had a massive drought), but I wanted to find out what these little dudes are, and whether they're friend or foe. Any thoughts?
Edited to add: located in western Europe.
Check into your regional species of ladybird beetle/ladybug - these look similar to Chilicorus but aren't the kind around us.
We're not huge fans of the friend/foe dynamic, though it has its uses conceptually. We think a better question would be "what role do they play", as it opens up far more avenues of discovery and management. It might be a species that can do damage in our gardens, but it might also be a food source for a specific other species that you'd like to see more of.
Oh interesting, would these be the larvae then? A quick Google tells me that we have over 60 different types of native ladybugs here, so I'm gonna have to do some searching. Thanks.
And yes, I realise bugs all have their role to play and aren't inherently good or bad. But I was looking for "is it likely that these clustering bugs are killing my plant", i.e. are they a foe in this situation.
That would be my guess. They look similar to our local ladybug nymphs but with a few distinctions.
The intent of the friend/for comment was to encourage deeper conversations, but I can see how it could come across as judgmental. If that's how it came across to you I apologize for not being clear with my language and for causing you to feel called out.
No worries, I think I sounded harsher than I intended too.
As far as I know, ladybugs shouldn't have a direct harmful effect on plants. But what about their nymphs (is that the word? In my language it's Larva), could they cause a plant to suffer?
❤️
But no, to my knowledge the nymphs/larva are highly aggressive predators of plant pests. If they truly are in fact ladybug larvae it's likely that they're a response to the pests that were attacking your already stressed plants. It may be worth keeping a lookout for aphids and mites to see if you can spot a pattern there.
Approximately where are you located?
Western Europe, keeping a bit vague sorry