STOP PRESS:  In 2023 Maria Justamond and David W Williams critically examined specimens of both Angle-spot and Schmidt's Ladybirds and cast doubt on the field identification of both species.

On the European continent both Angle-spot and Schmidt's Ladybirds are part of the Scymnus frontalis species complex of about ten species that can only be identified by dissection of the male genitalia. 

I had already suspected that Schmidt's could occur in a spotted form in the UK, as is common in Europe. However, I had thought that other features such as size and wing case puncture pattern could provide supporting evidence.

Maria and David have found all field characteristics to be unreliable, with both species having some overlap in number or absence of spots, overall size and strength or absence of lines of elytral punctuation.

Therefore in the absence of specimens for dissection, all field records may need to be submitted as a species pair.

For general recording Angle-spot should be referred to as Scymnus cf frontalis and Schmidt's as Scymus cf schmidti.

More museum work is needed to find out if there is such a thing as typical Angle-spot and typical Schmidt's, with a few exceptions or if Angle-spot type and Schmidt's type is just a convenient convention for field work.

I have currently left the pages on this website as they were for both Angle-spot and Schmidt's Ladybirds; these now refer to what was considered to be typical of each species before this new information.