A new pest to conquer North America: The spotted lanternfly
Purpose of this post
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.
Why and how it is dangerous the spotted lanternfly
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.
Is there something that we can do?
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.
A quick fact
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:
banner created in canvas
A well researched and written article.
I do appreciate your enthusiasm for "lesser known creatures" (and the trials and tribulations they bring).
Hmm come to think of it, Lanternfly poop sounds like an excellent fuel source for a potential lantern to be used along a certain river in the future.
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ahhahahhaa Yeah I was pretty intrigued by the government's warning! I am not used to write about insects, but here I am! Maybe that's the next step, how to control them and/or use them for something!
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People have a long history of spreading the pests from their homelands as they travel abroad.
Unfortunately, invasives wreak havoc on the environments they invade and have pushed numerous native species.
It is critical for people to learn what species are native and what species are invasive. It is also important that people realize that the classification of native and invasive is relative to the locality. There is not a global list of invasive species nor is their a global list of native species. For each species is native to one area and invasive to another.
Yeah you are correct! these bugs are ok to continue in their homeland... there are native predators there!
!PIZZA
there is a moth that is also invasive and dangerous because it has "urticarial hairs" they are dangerous
everywhere we have tons of examples... thats the bad thing about globalization right?
Invasive species are a pain everywhere on the planet. I was curious with those squads that are self-forming to kill those bugs. Is there any particular reason why this is happening with this bug (which is good, please don't read me wrong), and not with any other invader?
Well , in all videos that I watched since yesterday it leads only to my subjective conclusion, which is: It arrived not so late ago and it is not like one or two that you see in a walk. We are talking about thousands so it is very concerning the way that they are reproducing. At least the videos scared me the amount of insects that they were finding in certain spots! But you are right, in my homeland we suffered from an invasive mussel, called gold mussel, it is so bad that it started to colonize even rivers in South America, the population grows so fast that it blocks turbines from hydroelectric power plants. But of course, it is difficult to create an underwater squad compared to a park walking!
In addition to that, people nowadays have more conscience about invasive species, at least in here people are starting only to plant in their backyard seeds form native plants for example.
!PIZZA
I see. Quantity, easiness to start hunting for them and better education were somewhat three simultaneous factors that help in this case. I hope that this will be one example among many future ones. he future will tell us.
PS: the video is not available from France (although I am not a big fan of videos ;) ).
https://twitter.com/GabrielWajnberg/status/1577407186401107969
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It is difficult to respond to this type of invasion of the ecosystem. We just notice when we see a problem, maybe an animal stops appearing as often, trees or plants die. Like that case there are countless others and sometimes it is because of people releasing a foreign animal into a new ecosystem. Such as the case of the pythons that were released in some swamps in the United States, I think in Florida, if memory serves me correctly.
That work they have is quite difficult and noble to carry out.
!PIZZA
I think australia also had a problem with pets that were released! Another interesting one in Brazil is an african snail that was brought by europeans to be cultivated as Escargot lol! Now it invaded everywhere
!PIZZA
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