When politicians and most staff are away from Canberra for the summer holidays, a ravenous group of fly-in workers descend on Parliament House.<\/p>\n
They come with a mission to suck the guts out of the pests around the symbolic heart of democracy.<\/p>\n
Nick Jordan walks through the halls of power carrying an important cardboard box.<\/p>\n
Inside are half a dozen punnets of ladybugs, which the integrated pest management officer will release in different outdoor courtyards around the building.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Nick Jordan releases the ladybugs on Parliament House in Canberra to control pests. (ABC News: James Tugwell)<\/p>\n
The four different species of ladybugs are sent from around Australia to eat aphids that can cause severe damage to trees and gardens by feeding on plant sap.<\/p>\n
The ladybugs are one of several “beneficial insects” Mr Jordan uses in his job to try keeping ecosystems in balance without using strong chemicals.<\/p>\n
He said there were hundreds of thousands of aphids all across the courtyards and gardens of Parliament.<\/p>\n
Yet the ladybugs are insatiable eaters and will eat up to 100 aphids per day.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Four species of ladybugs are shipped to Parliament House in Canberra for the summer holidays. (ABC News: James Tugwell)<\/p>\n
“They’ll run around, herd the aphids up and suck the insides out of them,” he said.<\/p>\n
“They’re voracious feeders.<\/p>\n
“Even though over summer there aren’t many people around the building, the bugs are still hard at work.”<\/p>\n
Loading’Obvious solution’<\/p>\n
CSIRO entomologist Adam \u015alipi\u0144ski wrote two books about Australian ladybugs and said using them at Parliament House was an “obvious solution”.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
CSIRO entomologist Adam \u015alipi\u0144ski is a leading expert in Australian ladybugs. (ABC News: James Tugwell)<\/p>\n
Dr \u015alipi\u0144ski said the ladybugs were very efficient aphid eaters, could be easily bred in captivity, lived a long time and could be easily transported.<\/p>\n
“There are not that many predators of aphids in Australia or worldwide,” he said.<\/p>\n
“You can bring in one million ladybirds, put them on the plants and they will eat those aphids.”<\/p>\n
But he said they would never completely wipe out the aphid population because, as the aphid population decreased, the ladybugs would move away, allowing the aphid population to increase again in a cycle that would continue.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The released ladybugs quickly take to their new home in a courtyard in Parliament House. (ABC News: James Tugwell)<\/p>\n
Name auction<\/p>\n
There’s another connection between Dr \u015alipi\u0144ski, ladybugs and Canberra, too.<\/p>\n
Inside the walls of the CSIRO’s storage vault, among the more than 12 million specimens, is a tiny ladybug on a pin called the Chaetolotis amy \u015alipi\u0144ski.<\/p>\n
Dr \u015alipi\u0144ski auctioned off the naming rights for the new species of beetle to raise money after the Canberra bushfires in 2003.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The CSIRO in Canberra catalogues and researches Australian ladybugs. (ABC News: James Tugwell)<\/p>\n
It was bought by a man as a present to his daughter Amy on her 18th birthday, and so ‘amy’ was inserted into the creature’s name.<\/p>\n
“It’s shiny, metallic. It’s beautiful. It’s a gorgeous gold,” Dr \u015alipi\u0144ski said.<\/p>\n
“It’s unique from a biological perspective too. We don’t know what they eat yet.<\/p>\n
“We are doing a lot of evolutionary biology using molecules and things, and we cannot place that ladybird in the whole phylogeny of the beetles.<\/p>\n
“It’s an amazing creature.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When politicians and most staff are away from Canberra for the summer holidays, a ravenous group of fly-in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":374249,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,2667,202155,202153,202152,202151,44,202154,43016,9329],"class_list":["post-374248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-canberra","tag-csiro-entomologist-adam-slipinski","tag-eating-aphids","tag-ladybirds","tag-ladybugs","tag-news","tag-nick-jordan","tag-parliament-house","tag-pest-control"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374248\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/374249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}