Ten-spotted spurleg

Conservation Status

IUCN Red List

not listed

NatureServe

NNR - Unranked

Minnesota

not listed

Description

Ten-spotted spurleg is a native, small, lady beetle. It occurs in the United States from Maine to South Carolina, west to Minnesota and Missouri, and there are just a handful of records in the deep south.

Adults are 1⁄16″ to 3⁄32″ (2 to 2.5 mm) in length. The body is oval, slightly elongate, and black, with light yellow to yellow markings (which often appear cream-colored or off-white in field photographs).

The head is deeply inserted into the thorax but is visible from above. On the male the head is usually entirely yellow. The plate just above the mouth (clypeus) may be slightly darker or brown. On the female the head is yellow except for the clypeus, which is brown or black. The antennae have 11 segments. They are very short and club-shaped, thicker near the tip than at the base. The compound eyes are narrowly emarginate near the lower inner margin, notched by a small tooth-like projection of the facial shield (epistoma) that juts into the eye's rim.

The upper thoracic plate (pronotum) is convex and wider than long. On the male, it is black with the front outer corners broadly yellow, and there is a narrow yellow band across the front margin with a narrow or broad extension in the middle that juts into the front of the black area. On the female, the pronotum is black, the yellow area on the front outer corners is smaller, and there is usually no yellow band across the front margin, though there is sometimes a very narrow pale band without an extension into the black area. The triangular plate (scutellum) between the bases of the hardened forewings (elytra) is small, triangular, and wider than long.

The elytra are strongly convex and very narrowly flattened at the margins. They completely cover the abdomen. They are shiny and sparsely covered with fine pits (punctures) that are mostly separated by more than the diameter of a puncture. They are black with five yellow spots on each elytron, two near the front margin, one in the middle, and one near the rear.

The legs are yellowish-brown. The fourth segment (tibia) of the front legs has a spine that faces to the side. This is the feature that gives the genus its common name. The tibiae on the middle and hind legs has two spurs at the tip. The last part of each leg (tarsus), corresponding to the foot, has four segments, but the third segment is very short and tucked within the extended lobes of the second segment, making the leg appear to have only three segments. The tip of the last tarsal segment on the middle and hind legs has a pair of claws. Each claw has a large tooth at the base.

Size

Total length: 1⁄16″ to 3⁄32″ (2 to 2.5 mm)

Similar Species

Habitat

Ecology

Season

May through August

Behavior

Life Cycle

Larva Food/Hosts

Adult Food

Distribution

Sources

24, 30, 82, 83.

Brachiacantha decempustulata (Melsheimer, 1847) in Bánki, O., Roskov, Y., Döring, M., Ower, G., Hernández Robles, D. R., Plata Corredor, C. A., Stjernegaard Jeppesen, T., Örn, A., Pape, T., Hobern, D., Garnett, S., Little, H., DeWalt, R. E., Miller, J., Orrell, T., Aalbu, R., Abbott, J., Abreu, C., Acero P, A., et al. (2026). Catalogue of Life (2026-07-17 XR). Catalogue of Life Foundation, Amsterdam, Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.48580/dgykv

Stehr, W.C. 1930. The Coccinellidae (ladybird beetles) of Minnesota. University of Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station, Technical Bulletin 75. 54 pp.