I am a biologist, despite being around Bioinformatics in the human health concerns area. I enjoy reading and discussing biology subjects and also other science aspects that affect our daily life. When I was in Brazil I had some experience as a Biology teacher in a High School. One of the subjects that I wanted to be absorbed by the kids (or teenagers) was ecology concepts and how it affects even if we aren't farmers. The invasive species concept was very important for me at the same level as teaching them the benefits of vaccines and sexual protection. Invasive species conquer worlds and bring lots of problems for us, such as reducing the population of native species, even bringing them to extinction, also creating problems for crops growing, and sometimes even invading our homes and eating our food. So I decided to open LinkedIn and I saw a post from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, a government department that deal with food safety, animal and plant health in the country, about these bugs that I have never heard before: The spotted lanternfly. The post was saying that this bug was spotted in the city of Buffalo (NY state in the US) from about 45 km from the Canadian border. It is a warning to be very cautious about not bringing by accident this bug to the country, here the post.
The lanternfly it is known as a plant hopper, despite having wings, it doesn't fly very well, so it jumps, it is a clumsy insect and very easy to capture. It has two pairs of wings, and the second one in the bottom is even more beautiful being red with black dots. In the beginning, when I first saw this bug I was confused initially with a butterfly, but of course, it isn't. The main problem of this insect is that it feeds from plant saps. A tree infested by these bugs could die. But why they are so dangerous if we have lots of insects here in North America that also feed from plant's sap? Well, this lanternfly originally came from China, believed that they were in a furniture container ship in 2014, when they were first spotted in the US. These insects are awesome hikers, the female attaches its eggs to any surface and it looks like a glue, that's why you should be careful to not carry them by accident.
Glue-like eggs in a tree surface from the spotted lanternfly: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/canadian-food-inspection-agency_fulgoretachetaez-activity-6978810172534095872-kydT?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
So they were spotted at first in 2014, and they mainly conquered the east coast of the US, they don't have native predators here and also they found another wonder! Another invasive species, a tree, in this case, the tree of haven(Ailanthus altissima ). Why they were lucky? This tree is their natural host in China, so they grew a lot their population because of that. But why it is a problem if it is affecting only this invasive tree? Wrong, it is also feeding from fruit trees, like grape and peaches. So it is affecting fruit crops.
We can't do much unfortunately for now, but after searching about the bug, I found some interesting videos of people forming bug-killing squads to kill this insect during walks in parks. For every insect that you kill you avoid around 30-50 new lanternflies to be born. And like I said before they are easy to capture, you can use empty bottles, such as the ones from water or Gatorade , and just use the opening on top of them so that they jump right inside the bottle. After that, you can squeeze them. I love every type of animal, but I am also an environment protector, and we should kill these invasive species as fast as we can.
These plant hopper produces a "poop" like the aphids honey dew, which can attract mold, and other insects like ants or wasps. If you pass by a tree of heaven you can feel a rain of honeydew or lanternflies poop. Another interesting thing, at least a benefit that I read around is that this honeydew brought a better quality of honey made by bees in Pensylvania. It looks like that the bees are bringing the lanternflies honey dew to the hive and are making honey from it and it is tasteful. I read here in Wikipedia
To have fun here is a video about the lanternfly vigilantes:
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