SCIENCE NEWS - A beautiful menace is on the move in the United States. Polka-dotted, red-and-gray-winged insects are gliding along sidewalks, climbing on plants and crawling up buildings. Spotted youngsters are leaping away to avoid a sticky end at the bottom of a shoe.
Welcome to spotted lanternfly season.
An invasive plant hopper native to parts of China, India and Vietnam, spotted lanternflies (Lycoma delicatula) have been making their way across the Mid-Atlantic and northeastern United States for more than a decade, and some studies suggest they could reach California in the not-too-distant future.
In the spotted lanternfly’s native range in China, a fellow insect is on the prowl. There, the parasitoid wasp Anastatus orientalis lays its eggs inside those of spotted lanternflies, preventing them from hatching. The wasp may have helped control spotted lanternfly populations in South Korea after the invasive insect swept through the country in 2004.
Wasps might also help in the United States, though not A. orientalis or A. bifasciatus, a related wasp from Europe. The wasps attack not only spotted lanternfly eggs, but also stink bugs and many other plant hopper relatives native to the United States. Instead, researchers need to find a wasp that kills spotted lanternflies without too many native casualties, says Mari West, an entomologist at the University of California, Riverside and who also works with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.