Coccinellidae November depending on location and weather conditions. Homes or other buildings near fields or woods are particularly prone to infestation. After an abnormally long period of hot, dry weather in the summer of 1976 in the UK, a marked increase in the aphid population was followed by a "plague" of ladybirds, with many reports of people being bitten as the supply of aphids dwindled. The presence of coccinellids in grape harvests can cause ladybird taint in wines produced from the grapes. "Harmonia axyridis" (the harlequin ladybird) is an example of how an animal might be partly welcome and partly harmful.
Epidemiology of plague to feed its citizens. The grain ships were the source of contagion for the city, with massive public granaries nurturing the rat and flea population. At its peak, Procopius said the plague was killing 10,000 people in Constantinople every day. The real number was more likely close to 5,000 a day. The plague ultimately killed perhaps 40% of the city's inhabitants, and then continued to kill up to a quarter of the human population of the eastern Mediterranean. In AD 588 a second major wave of plague spread through the Mediterranean into what is now France. It is estimated that