The word is out to find another nine-spotted ladybug…but that doesn’t promise to be easy.

Not seen in Rhode Island for 30 years, one bug was found last June in the 2014 Rocky Point Bio-Blitz. The results of the Bio-Blitz were outlined last Wednesday at a meeting in the police community room.

“We go into these surveys telling people we’re not going to find the magic bug, we’re not going to find some rare, exotic things,” said David Gregg, Ph.D., director of the Rhode Island Natural History Survey, whose team conducted the search. “Well, guess what, we did.”

 The Bio-Blitz was an effort by volunteers to find as many species of life as possible in the park during a 24-hour period. A total of 184 participants, with 27 secondary school students and 13 college students, took part in the event. This was the 15th such survey in the state. 

The event’s significant find was the ladybug Coccinella novemnotata. Better known as the nine-spotted ladybug, it used to be the most common ladybug of eastern North America.  

Gregg stated that about 30 years ago scientists tried to locate these bugs and couldn’t; they had basically disappeared while no one was looking. Invasive ladybug species and possible pesticide use are cited in the species decline. 

“This ladybug, that doesn’t occur anywhere else in the east, is hanging on at Rocky Point, and that is a really great story and it was found by a bunch of volunteers,” said Gregg. “In a way, the tougher the neighborhood around it is, the more the animals and diversity are attracted to it, so Rocky Point acts as an oasis.”

Unfortunately, the one ladybug found was killed and kept for study.  

“It doesn’t look as good with the pin through it, as it would be crawling around,” admitted Gregg when he showed the specimen picture to the audience. “But if I saw that we had the nine-spotted ladybug on our list, and I didn’t have the specimen, I’d never have believed it. Chances are, this one specimen is not important to the overall population; that’s generally the case with insects.”

 A citizens’ science project, The Lost Ladybug Project, created by Cornell University in New York, helped identify the Rocky Point specimen this past spring. The project encourages both kids and adults to send in pictures of ladybugs in an effort to track and identify them nationwide.

In the last 10 years, nearly 30,000 ladybug pictures were sent to the project. In all of those examples, the bug had only been seen east of the Great Plains twice, according to Gregg.  

“Now we have to go back and find this ladybug again. There are so few sites known for the nine-spotted ladybug, we can’t even generalize as to what type of habitat they need,” he said, adding that the next two months are when the ladybug is most active. 

Audience members and the community were encouraged to visit the Lost Ladybug website, www.lostladybug.org, and their associated Facebook page and contribute to the effort of tracking ladybug sightings nationwide. It is Gregg’s hope that children throughout the state will start looking for ladybugs and photograph them for submission to the project.

At the time of the survey, the Blitz was unable to access the 82 acres of state-owned land containing the ruins of the former amusement park, which was slated for demolition the following month. They focused exclusively on the 41 acres of the city-owned portion of the park as well as the land to the left of Palmer Avenue, behind developments. 

“We only had 100 acres to work with at Rocky Point, where we had hundreds and hundreds of acres at the other sites,” said Gregg. “This actually makes the Bio-Blitz at Rocky Point the smallest geographical area of any R.I. Bio-Blitz, and this was interesting when you think of the results. We still found 969 species.”

The blitz’s other findings also took several months to confirm. In addition to locating the ladybug, the list of finds includes 283 species of plants, 152 types of moths, 50 beetles, 46 species of algae, 30 crustaceans, 25 mollusks, 23 fish, six reptiles and six amphibians, amongst many more.

Two Rhode Island natural heritage species – species listed by the state as rare enough to warrant particular notice – were also found at the park: velvet panicum grass and bitter panicgrass.

“We were very proud and happy to be part of the Bio-Blitz project. I was down there with my daughters, they found an eastern box turtle, and it was a very exciting moment for them and for me,” said Warwick resident George Shuster.

A member of the Rocky Point Foundation, Shuster provided a historical overview of the park at the presentation.

“It’s a very different memory than I had from my childhood at Rocky Point but one that I think will be more emblematic of the memories that kids today will have of their new state and city park.”

The Bio-Blitz partnered with the Department of Environmental Management, Roger Williams Zoo, Largess Forestry, the Buckeye Brook Coalition, Save the Bay and the Rocky Point Foundation to complete the survey.

“This was a chance to take stock of what was at Rocky Point after essentially a 20-year natural experiment, with that land isolated without much human contact or access in the middle of an urban area,” said Jane Austin, formerly with Save the Bay, who also serves on the Rocky Point Foundation board of directors. “Before we decided what to do with it, we should figure out what was there, and the Bio-Blitz was a good way to rediscover and reacquaint ourselves with Rocky Point.”

“This blitz was not a scientific inventory per se. It’s scientific, but it was a quick check-up,” added Gregg. “If we were really going to inventory the property for biodiversity we would do it differently, but nevertheless there are important lessons to be learned. Our conclusion is that, for a place that’s been an amusement park for 160 years, it’s actually in pretty nice condition.”

 Researchers from Cornell will visit the park later in the month to search for the ladybug. But it seems unlikely that the beetle would only be located at the park, and by asking the public to actively participate more information will be disseminated and it’s hoped the bug will be found elsewhere.

“Instead of just sitting around and complaining about Rhode Island, find something about Rhode Island that’s better than anywhere else and talk about it,” said Gregg. “So maybe we’re the beetle state, who knows?”