Episode 46: Ladybirds in Ukraine

your salvation Ladybugs. Ladybugs. Ladybugs. Hello Everyone and Welcome to Episode 46 of Hidden Wings and Bloodlust. I'm your host Rachel and I'm not going to do the usual intro today, I'm just going to get straight into it. Okay, so today's episode is about lady bird's in Ukraine and I'm going to talk about what species you can get there.

And some bits I found about the importance of lady bird's in Ukrainian culture and even how a Ukrainian woman got into the Guinness book of records for the highest number of lady bird's related objects in her house ever recorded by one person.

So this is quite a massive topic as Ukraine is a huge country and if you think that there are something like 47 different types of labor bed in the UK and I still haven't actually discussed all of them, you'll appreciate this is only just scratching the surface of how many there are. So if you're ready, let's get started. Ukraine is the largest country in Europe after Russia. It has a population of around 44 million people in Ukraine. There are a wide range of climates and habitats.

For example, in most of the country, there is a temperate climate, but towards the south, it is moderated by the Black sea Ukraine and Crimea, which it is still legally a part of Ukraine has a large number of endemic species of plants and animals that are found nowhere else. And according to a post on the iron naturalist forum by a user called C G B C. These include lind, homes, rock, lizard, Crimean red deer, Kerch week ross.

The Donets rose the Crimean bright bush cricket, A cave dwelling rove beetle from T achieve in western Ukraine, which was only discovered in 2015. Crimean snow in summer and the lichen From the Chalky Steppe Grassland near Kharkiv, which was discovered in 2017.

Ukraine also has got a number of interesting introduced species from the days of the USSR for example, there is bogdanov thin toed gecko which has got a very, very small range in Uzbekistan and it actually lives on the concrete in the city center of Odessa and it lives on concrete because there are no other suitable rocks nearby. So concrete is the best habitat for it. There are also Siberian red squirrels in Crimea and dolls lizards from the caucasus that were introduced to Ukraine.

So with all of this biodiversity, it is no surprise that there are a lot of different types of lady bird's in Ukraine as well. So the Ukrainian word for a lady bird is a sonic car, which is similar to the word for sun, which sponsor in both Russian and Ukrainian in Russian, which is widely spoken in Ukraine, the word for lady bird is Bossier Karaca, which is God's little cow.

In 2021, a Ukrainian woman called Nadia Komarova in a town called Dnipropetrovsk in Ukraine broke her own Guinness world record and this world record was for having the largest collection of lady bird themed items in the world. Her collection consists of at least 5,555 items and this was confirmed in the Guinness Book of Records on 21 November 2019.

And it all started when her father gave her mother a picture of a girl wearing a ladybird dotted red dress when she was pregnant and as a child, this picture was hung over Nadia's bed In 29 she was given a lady bird themed brooch by her friend and that's when she decided to start the collection.

Nadia even has got a ladybird shaped mobile phone which is pretty amazing and a ladybird coin from the Republic of the Congo which is sent to her by a fan and features a lady bird sitting on a cloverleaf. Nadia herself says that she thinks she's got over 20,000 ladybird-related items and wants to open a museum at some point so that people can see her collection.

And now that she's collecting ladybird themed items to get into the Guinness Book of World Records, she often gets given them by well wishers and supporters. So the collection has come to grow very large. When she was asked about the collection, she said when we were Children, we believe that if you release the ladybird and let it fly free any dream you make at this moment will become true. We considered it a positive sunny creature and a symbol of good luck, ironically enough.

I still believe in it in Ukrainian. They've got a version of the ladybird Fly away home rhyme which is very popular in the UK. It starts sonic sonic or ladybird ladybird in Ukraine. Different regional dialects have different words for lady birds. For example, this rhyme can also be said using the word Hedrick, Hedrick, which according to google translates as hippopotamus and it's also used as a word for a ladybird bogey.

Karatnycky is also used in Ukraine to mean ladybird, although it's pronounced differently to Russian. But there are a lot of other regional words. These include best trick Zorica, which apparently also means cuckoo Sumiko, Frederick, spagat according to matty, verbose, Catherine, ca Petrick, real bianchi prick. For Bruno, barbara, schock, brusca, Pavelic, babushka is a chick. Um apparently that just means a beetle, judoka vid, mosca veronica.

Dahlia, Chizik, Frederick Frederick chin, cheek, patrick, Petrick Brodziak, Saanich, corona dash pagoda. Some of these names refer to a belief in lady bird's ability to tell fortunes or predict the weather. Ukrainian, folklorist Matt Harvey Thomas who lived during the 19th century traveled around Ukraine and recorded many proverbs and customs around the country. One such proverb was a Children's game of divination or predicting the weather, he said quote as the clouds begin to rise.

The Children having caught the sun, I. E, the ladybird pass it from hand to hand saying the words to a sonic, ultrasonic aroma if it takes off and flies away it will be sunny and if it only spreads its wings, it doesn't leave the hand, it will be cloudy again throughout Ukraine. There are a number of lyrics to the ladybird ladybird rhyme which are popular regionally. For example, in the Poltava region.

The lyrics are according to google translate fly fly ladybird on grandfather's field on grandmother's potion to our backyard in the Yellowstone region. The lyrics are ladybird, ladybird fly out the window, there are your Children, they're drinking honey, but they don't give it to you. And in Ukraine, this rhyme is said to have a pagan origin and could even predate Christianity.

So somewhat disturbingly, a version of this rhyme was recorded which went like this, referring to some of the wars that have happened in Ukrainian history and I mentioned this right not to endorse the message, but just for illustrative purposes. It goes like this ladybird ladybird look out the window because the taxes are coming and you will be killed and your Children will be taken away.

There are also scheduled a key which are Ukrainian folk songs, a little bit like christmas, carols sung around christmas and New Year and some of these scheduled key also mentioned lady birds and one of the lyrics goes like this cedric Dedric give dumplings a lump of porridge, a ring of sausage, not only that give more lard a little more give flatbreads or give me a sausage, I'll take it home and if you give me a gut, then eating comfort,

take out the books because you'll let the mouse into the house take out the sausage because it will ruin the whole house shared, Ricky being Ricky. Give dumplings, mother said to give lard and the father quarreled so as not to delay because the Cavs will freeze. Cedric. Dedric give dumplings cedric Dedric, great ball from a spy clip comes a rival from a sheaf, a whole barrel. I have a pancake, a lump of porridge, a couple of eggs.

So it's obvious that lady birds have a long place in Ukrainian history and folk traditions and there are in a significant number of legends surrounding lady birds. Indeed, when researching this episode are found that astonished. Ca or ladybird is even a Ukrainian surname in Crimea, which is now part of Russia of course, but it's still considered as part of the Ukrainian territory. There is a guesthouse called sonic. Ukraine is a very agricultural country.

In fact, it is one of the largest producers of grain in the world, if not the largest countries all over the world rely on the food that is exported from Ukraine and this grain is often the target of pests such as aphids and mites. Therefore, lady birds are incredibly important in getting rid of harmful pests in Ukraine as they are for agriculture elsewhere in the world. Now, if you listened to episode 39 and 40 on 1976, you might remember that. I talked about the phenomenon of ladybug wash ups.

That happened when Lady Bird's washed up near rivers and seas. And if not then please go back and listen to it. In June 2021 there was a lady bird wash up in to us live in Ukraine where after a series of hurricanes and storms, two million dead lady birds, mostly seven spots were counted.

Ivan Rusev, the head of the scientific department of to us live stream National Park near Odessa said that they had flown near the rivers and lakes to look for aphids in the marshy and grassy areas of the park, but unfortunately had died. Additionally, last year, holiday makers in Edessa which has support on the Black Sea in southern Ukraine reported more events similar to that infamous summer of 1976 where countless lady birds descended on the resorts.

And there were even reports of Lady Bird's trying to bite people. According to entomologist Vladimir moanin. The lady birds were picked up by airstreams and carriage towards the eastern part of Odessa. Somewhat shockingly, they also noticed a huge brown spot in the water and this spot turned out to be a huge collection of lady bird's that looked almost solid and had accumulated in a pile on the sea and I'll link to this to this picture. It's on instagram and it looks quite alarming.

There's also photos of lady bird's calling all over the beach into people's drinks at the seaside and so on. So what lady birds do you find in Ukraine? The answer is quite a few, although it's difficult to find a definitive list of species according to the PSC portal, which is the pan european species directorate infrastructure.

About 84 different species of lady bird have been recorded in Ukraine And 80 of those have been definitively found and about four of those are kind of like recorded as doubtful. So it's 80 confirmed species and the other four have been found, but it's not known like if they're established or not. So The most recorded Ladybird in Ukraine is the Harlequin Ladybird and the second most recorded is the 7th spot. It also has quite a lot that we don't have.

And the website i naturalist dot org has a page which are linked to in the show notes where people in Ukraine can upload their ladybird finds and so far they photographed 47 different species of ladybird. Most of these are lady birds that are familiar to UK listeners. Some of them are less common but are found in the UK.

So for example, you can find the to spot the seventh spot, the Harlequin Ladybird, the 16th spot, the 22 spot and more all over Ukraine and similar issues with the harlequin ladybird and its impact on biodiversity and species such as the two spots due to its characteristics as an invasive species have happened in Ukraine just like they have in other parts of europe, It has become one of the most common lady birds within a few years,

you can also find lesser known lady birds such as the five spot And the 18th spot, which I will talk about in an upcoming episode in Ukrainian. The seven spot ladybird is called sonic semi cracovia. The two spot is called sandwich car crab cove. I hope I've got the pronunciations right for both of those. So let's talk about a few of them that we haven't discussed on the show yet. For example, there is peroxide comas, negro macula tees or the flashlight shield ladybird.

I couldn't find its name in Ukrainian, but I did find it in Norwegian which is ling married Horna as it's also found in Norway. This lady bird is almost completely black apart from to reddish brown cheeks by the side of the pro notam you can find it in central and western europe. It's been found a few times in the UK but has never really established itself as a species and I'm sure you will not be surprised that it eats aphids and scale insects.

Let's look at another lady bird found in Ukraine but not found in the UK. This lady bird is called coxon quatre decent passed a lotta. It's 3 to 4 millimeters long and has a total of 14 bright yellow spots on a black background. Again, it's a predatory lady bird that eats aphids and you can find these aphids in meadows and grasslands, which Ukraine has got a lot of, I couldn't find the Ukrainian name of the ladybird, but in Norwegian again, it's called being married Horna.

Another lady bird that you can find in Ukraine is hip Adamia no tata or the notated ladybird. It's a very variable ladybird and spot patterns can vary a lot. It's related to the Adonis ladybird, which gives us a sort of oval shape rather than the more rounded shape of, say, a harlequin or 1/7 spot. The color of its literature ranges from yellow to red and it can have around 11 spots which are often merged.

It has a line going part way down the middle of the ladybird, and then the line stops sort of maybe like a quarter of the way up, and turns into a huge spot. There's a white ridge going around its prey notam and a very thin white line at the top of its wing cases and again it lives in grassland and eats aphids. Next we've got Julia, let's chat show v this lady bird is interesting because according to a study in Pakistan, it primarily eats plants and pollen, but it also eats aphids.

It is a gray or yellowish color usually, although it's polymorphic, and sometimes these lady birds can be completely black, but they also come in the red or pinkish color. It can have up to 19 black spots which are often merged and the pro Notam is white. It is often found on young apple trees and can also drink clematis nectar. Among other things. One other lady bird you can find in Ukraine is Zootopia, congo barter. This is a very common ladybird in europe, but not in the UK.

On the iron naturalist website, it's referred to as the popular ladybird. I have mentioned it before on the show on the episode of heroin opium Shoko hens is which is a close relative of if you remember, you can tell them apart because heroin opium Shoko hens is has two spots and it's got an orangey color as well as differences within the genitalia.

And if you have not listened to that episode before, I would really recommend going back and listening to it because I found it a fascinating one to research since that lady bird has only discovered very very recently. So this popular lady bird is the pinkish color. It's got eight black square spots on either side and it's between four and five millimeters long. You can find them in forests or unpopular trees. As the name suggests.

They also live in pine trees, large trees and bird cherries and of course they eat aphids. The naturalist website gives quite an extensive list of lady bird's which their members have recorded in Ukraine. So if you're interested have a look for yourself or put the details in the show notes.

There's also reports of people in Ukraine finding the rare ladybird coxon ella sorta rati, which I talked about in a bonus episode of the show and among others, including the little arboreal ladybird calvi a decent guitar to. And there's also, oh no, P a lindsey a which is another relative of the popular ladybird and many more, there's also quite a lot of inconspicuous lady birds found in Ukraine and because these are under recorded generally there's probably likely to be absolutely loads.

So go check it out basically. It's really, really fascinating. But unfortunately we have all heard the horrific news about what is happening in Ukraine rather recording this, Kiev is being bombed and there has just been a horrific destruction of a Tv station outside Kiev. I think something like 70 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in an air base recently and many areas of Ukraine are now left without water and electricity.

And I want to say this anytime a war happens, the destruction of the environment also becomes a weapon of war. So for example, in episode 36, when I had Martin comes here on the show and he was talking about the destruction of Palestinian wetlands and the diversion of water to Israel and the damage to the environment that caused in Palestine.

When I had martin on the show, he talks about how hundreds of species were destroyed or endangered by Israeli government policies and how the conflict in the country and the exploitation of natural resources had a very negative impact on the environment as well as the people.

So not only has this happened in Palestine, but now in Ukraine, you can see how farmland and grassland and now also being destroyed by Russian bombs and you can see how the habitats for wildlife are also being destroyed by these bombs. For example, I watched a video of a tree being set on fire by a missile strike and there are also reports of cargo ships being sunk and pipelines carrying oil and gas having been damaged recently. Putin has also been talking about using nuclear weapons.

And if you don't know, nuclear weapons are completely indiscriminate and they destroy everything or almost everything in the vicinity, leaving whatever is left with harmful effects for years or potentially decades. And I mean what can I say? Like we all hope that this doesn't happen, but but that is that is something that I hate to say that he's been talking about quite a lot. It is very concerning and I just hope that it doesn't come to that.

But another weapon that he said to have used in Ukraine is thermobaric weapons which can destroy everything around the area of the blast and a very deadly in built up areas.

These are vacuum bombs and what how they work is they suck up the oxygen around the explosion when they explode, so when a war starts and there are large scale movements of vehicles, for example tanks or for example people in their cars trying to get out or like lots of soldiers running around this can cause damage to sensitive landscapes. You can imagine that a huge amount of pollution would get caused by debris and rubble, but also noise and light pollution.

And this is even without the fact that these thermobaric bombs or these nukes that that Putin has been on about could get used. And recently we've had the capture of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and the activity and the fighting around the Chernobyl reactor, which as it goes on, could have the potential to stir up radioactive dust and spread it to new areas.

That brings me to the next point, I wanted to mention The Chernobyl nuclear disaster happened in the 1980s and it involved a reactor in Chernobyl blowing up and there was a fire and it failed and a lot of people died and since then the area had to be evacuated by humans. And to some extent there's been some publicity in the news about how this area has been reclaimed by nature. It's become deserted. Its plants have regrown where they weren't before.

But the problem is what I don't know the effect on lady birds, specifically, the radiation released by Chernobyl did actually have an effect on some insect populations such as leaf bugs. And there's even a swiss activist cornelia Hesse Honegger who has made paintings of deformed leaf bugs, which he found in the vicinity of Chernobyl, which were affected by the radiation.

And there's even a suggestion that because Ukraine has got other nuclear reactors which work that this war could actually have an impact on that and just let's just hope that it doesn't. So there's been fighting in the Black Sea biosphere reserve, which is the largest protected area in Ukraine and a listed wetland. The environmental damage caused by this war will not be easily reversed. And of course to fight the war, the military must use a large amount of fuel which burns CO.

Two into the atmosphere and when explosions and airstrikes happen, this just creates more pollution and more carbon emissions. It's been found that even low level conflict can cause declines in wildlife and as people struggle to find food to survive, this can lead to an increase in unsustainable hunting as it has in certain conflicts in africa and the Middle East. And this disrupts the food chain.

Armed conflict degrades the habitat and leads to a loss of biodiversity and also disrupts research and it leads to the over exploitation of natural resources. And I know it might seem kind of weird to be talking about this during the war with so many people dying. But the environmental impact this is all going to have on Ukraine is going to be around for generations to come. The toxins that go into the soil could poison plants and animals.

And it means that it's more difficult for these habitats to be maintained. Also after the war, understandably, people just want to focus on rebuilding the country and not necessarily on the environment, which is completely understandable. That people just want to get back to the rebuilding their homes that have been ruined and everything. There's also the fact that a war completely disrupts research into conservation.

It makes it impossible for any of this sort of research to be carried out because you can't go around studying any wildlife or like finding any any lady birds or recording their numbers or behavior or anything like that when another country is trying to illegally invade and occupy yours at any moment, you could be risking your life. The buildings landscape that you're working on might not even exist the next day.

The Center for Biology and hydrology, which as you may know is the center running Professor Helen Roy's UK ladybird survey has condemned the Russian invasion. The statement they issue said U K C E H. Deplores Russia's attack on Ukraine and we are deeply concerned about the well being of our Ukrainian research colleagues and staff at partner organizations.

We have a long history of monitoring in the Chernobyl exclusion zone in Ukraine, the Russian invasion has a direct impact on many of our colleagues, families and friends. Our thoughts are with everyone affected by this war. The Russian invasion is also an attack on the fundamental values on which academic freedom and academic cooperation are based. We express our support to Ukrainian researchers around the world.

Hashtag stand with Ukraine. And I also want to say that I included that bit at the start about the different words for lady Bird's in Ukrainian dialects and the different songs about lady bird's in traditional Ukrainian culture because a big part of Putin's propaganda is to say that Ukraine is not a country and it's actually a part of Russia and that the only reason it exists as a country is because of Lenin, which is completely bizarre. Obviously we know that this is completely false.

Ukraine's got its own language and it's got a long history with them many interesting folktales and sayings and so on. So what can we do? I've put some links in the show notes which give information on how to help Ukrainian refugees as well as information from the Ukrainian government about which animals are found in the country. I'm also including a link to the iron naturalist project. Lady Bird's in Ukraine.

And if you're in Ukraine or you visited the country before or took a photo of a ladybird when you visited there. Maybe you can upload it and sort of expand the knowledge base. Another thing you can do is on that website if you're looking around for different pictures of animals which you might like to do or different pictures of insects and you see a photo that someone's uploaded from Ukraine of an insect or an animal and you happen to know what it is.

But there's no identification before you can actually support scientific research by helping to identify that animal as some Ukrainian naturalists are still recording wildlife even in the middle of a war. So the cornucopia, Shoko hens ladybird, which was discovered in Iran. It was discovered by Melody is our economies.

And the person who took that photo of the ladybird that are used in the episode, alexander Slutsky was actually a photographer based in Ukraine and I'm going to put a link there to his website. So my podcast recommendation for this week, I've actually got two of them. So Medusa dot io produces very, very good independent journalism from inside Russia. Unfortunately they're under threat of Putin shutting them down.

They produce a very good podcast called The Naked Pravda, which features interviews with Russian journalists and activists and another one called, which means what's happening in Russian. I've lived in Russia and I know that the opposition to Putin is in a very desperate state right now with people being arrested just for protesting against the war. And Putin even banned the word war from the media.

So it would really help a lot if you could donate to Medusa and support independent journalism, Thank you for listening to this episode. I hope you if you didn't actually enjoy it, at least you found it interesting. I'm going to put all the sources in the show notes as well as places for you to donate to and learn about more about the lady birds of Ukraine. And I do hope that listen to this episode has made you think about Ukraine in a different way rather than just thinking about the war.

If you like the show and want to support me, you can buy me a coffee on Kofi www dot co dash v dot com slash h W A B podcast. You can follow me on twitter at h W A B podcast or on instagram at 365 dot ladybird or like my facebook page, Hidden Wings and Bloodlust. You can follow me on apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and music is by Deborah torrents. Everyone, please take care, stay safe and good bye for now.