The ladybug life cycle is similar to the life cycle of a butterfly. The ladybug also goes through the same four stages like a butterfly, the egg stage, the larva stage, the pupa stage, and the adult ladybug stage.
Egg Stage
Female ladybugs lay their eggs underneath the leaves. This helps them to protect the eggs from the weather and the flying predators. A mother ladybug before laying eggs will make sure whether its the safest place for her babies to find food when they hatch. It lays approximately 10 to 15 eggs in one leaf and the eggs will look like tiny yellow jelly beans. You can see those eggs during spring time but don't try to touch them because it will harm the babies inside the eggs.
Larva Stage
Once the eggs hatch, the larva will come out. As soon as the larva comes out it will search for something to eat. It will look for tiny mites or aphids and it will find plenty of them because the mother ladybugs would have laid their eggs on a perfect leaf where the larva can find enough amount of food to eat. The newborn larva will look like a tiny alligator. It will take few days for the larva to grow large enough in order to shed its skin called as molting. Molting will happen as long as they keep growing and it is very hard to find the shedded skins on the leaves.
Pupa Stage
This is the stage where the larva will go through the metamorphosis to turn into a ladybug. In this stage after couple of weeks the larva will change into a very small thing like shrimp. It will attach to a leaf and will fall asleep for few days. The pupa will go through the metamorphosis in this stage.
Adult Ladybug Stage
Once the metamorphosis is complete, the larva skin will split open and the full grown ladybug will emerge, but it won’t look like the ladybug that is well known. The ladybug will look soft and pink or even very pale for a couple of hours until its shell becomes hard. After the shell hardens it will gain its pigment, which helps the ladybug to become bright red. There are many different species of ladybugs and they all look slightly different in their patterns and colours. The most known ladybugs are the bright red with black spots which helps them to threaten and warm their enemies as they are poisonous and harmful.
