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Colorado Potato Beetle | Daily Animal Facts

Animal profile

Colorado Potato Beetle

Leptinotarsa decemlineata

InsectaCultivated potato fields and other solanaceous crops and weeds

Field profile

The Colorado potato beetle is a striped leaf beetle whose adults and larvae strip the foliage of potato, aubergine and related plants. It shifted onto cultivated potato in the nineteenth century and spread rapidly. It is notorious for evolving resistance to a long succession of insecticides.

Scope note

This is an editorial profile, not a diagnostic field-identification guide or a substitute for current conservation assessments. Follow the cited sources on each fact for the evidence trail.

Published field notes

2025-07-07

Colorado Potato Beetle

This beetle has outlasted every insecticide tried

The Colorado potato beetle has evolved resistance to compounds across more than fifty active ingredients and every major insecticide class used against it, including the arsenical Paris green that first controlled it in the 1860s.

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