New-To-Me Golden Tortoise Beetle

[GoDawgs]

I found a new bug in the garden yesterday! It was on a sweet potato leaf and was a bright shiny gold.When it flew the wings glittered brightly. Wow. I've never seen anything like it. There was another one out there today so I caught it. It's 1/8-3/16" long and I'm pretty sure it's responsible for those bb sized holes in the sweet potato leaves. Such a pretty beetle!

So I searched "tiny gold beetle" and it popped right up. It's a Golden Tortoise Beetle.

https://bugguide.net/node/view/688140/bgimage

The description said that it likes morning glory, sweet potato and bindweed. Bingo! It won't kill the sweet potato vines, just make them "unsightly" but I can live with that. So far there has been just one yesterday and one today, not hordes of them. If that happens neem oil is supposed to make the leaves unpalatable to them. But it can have all the bindweed it wants!

[pepperhead212]

The problem with most of those beetles is spreading disease, while they are eating, as well as laying eggs. Do sweet potatoes get many diseases?

[GoDawgs]

@pepperhead212 , I've been growing them for seven years now and haven't had any kind of problem with them at all. Not even powdery mildew last year when for the first time lots of different stuff had it.

[bower]

Such a gorgeous beetle! Hope it doesn't cause any trouble.
A lot of the pretty shiny metallic insects are beneficials - at least, all the ones I've had to look up.

[JRinPA]

We have a translucent one, kind of sparkly. There are not enough of them to hurt anything. They must breed as slow as a turtle, too.

https://bugguide.net/node/view/40795/bgimage
There ya go, the top left pic in that link is from Schwenksville which is only a short drive. That's what I see here, mostly.

[brownrexx]

My sweet potato vines never had any diseases either. I just had a lot of the leaves eaten off by deer.