Note: This site was built and maintained by me, Naomi Cappuccino (Naomi.Cappuccino@carleton.ca). I have now retired, but I will leave the site here as a source of information until my Weebly subscription expires.
Last updated: 29 June 2021

The lily leaf beetle Lilioceris lilii is a serious pest of cultivated lilies in gardens and an emerging pest of native lilies in the wild.  The beetle was introduced from Europe and was first noticed in Montreal in the 1940s. A second introduction took place near Cambridge, Massachusetts in the 1990s (Dieni et al. 2016).  Since its introduction, the beetle has spread throughout much of southern Canada and the northern USA.  

The original reason for building this website was to gather visitor observations on the beetle’s distribution as it spreads throughout North America.  This allowed us to create a map of the distribution, which was published in 2017 (Tewksbury et al. 2017).

As well, the site offers basic information about the lily leaf beetle and about biological control of the beetle using parasitic wasps.  These tiny wasps are non-stinging and will attack only the lily leaf beetle. They have been released in several locations in Canada and the US and are highly effective at controlling populations of the lily leaf beetle.

 References:

Dieni, A., Brodeur, J., and Turgeon, J. 2016. Reconstructing the invasion history of the lily leaf beetle, Lilioceris lilii, in North America. Biological Invasions 18:31-44. link to article on ResearchGate

Tewksbury, L., Casagrande, R.A., Cappuccino, N. and Kenis, M. 2017. Establishment of parasitoids of the lily leaf beetle (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae) in North America. Environmental Entomology 46:226-236. abstract