Detection in Britain of intraguild predation of Adalia species by Harmonia axyridis

Abstract: The harlequin ladybird, Harmonia axyridis, is an invasive alien species that arrived in Britain in 2003. Its spread across most of the country has been accompanied by a decline in some native coccinellid species, in particular the two spot ladybird Adalia bipunctata and the ten spot ladybird Adalia decempunctata. We used a PCR based approach to analyse gut contents of 156 field collected H. axyridis larvae for the presence of Adalia DNA, which was detected in 12.2% of larvae. An extended version of this work is published as Thomas et al. (2013).