The Legend Of The Spotted Lanternfly Grows As It Reemerges In PA

PENNSYLVANIA — Spring is a time of traditions born anew, rebirth, fecundity. Signs of it are more abundant and more plain than any other season: greenery and flowers busting through winter's hoary rubble, a pure blue coat to the sky, the crack of a baseball bat, the cry of a child at play in the distance.

The flutter of a spotted lanternfly's wings as it hops across the sidewalk.

The latter is a new tradition, and one that threatens to undermine the others. Ever since the invasive and destructive bug arrived from Asia in Pennsylvania in 2014, it's wreaked havoc on both the state's economy and environment, killing crops, hamstringing agriculture, and devastating an already delicate ecological balance.

"There are no easy answers when it comes to the spotted lanternfly," said Rick Roush, dean of the Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences. "And we understand that's hard for people to hear."

Politicians, scientists, and activists do their best to shake the public's prevailing sense of powerlessness and ennui over the bug. They prescribe homemade traps. They warn of how to identify egg masses, and how to scrape them away. At every sighting, you should call the Department of Agriculture to make a report.

The question remains, however, in an age of climate change that is only exacerbating nearly every factor that has spurred the bug's spread: will it ever be enough?

With a fleshy back colored like the scales of a rainbow trout torsional in the current on an April morning, there are those who call the spotted lanternfly beautiful. Beautiful like the mushroom cloud rising over White Sands, New Mexico in 1945, beautiful like a thing that has never before been seen. "Destroyer of worlds," the Smithsonian called the lanternfly, bearing out atomic pioneer J. Robert Oppenheimer's now famous paraphrase of the Bhagavad-Gita.

As the eerie symmetry of the smoke rising from the Trinity site may bear out, nature has its warning signs in the lanternfly. In the brilliance of its coloration is something sickening. In wildlife biology this is called aposematism: bright colors warn away potential predators by signifying that they will suffer if they attack. It's a trait shared by coral snakes, millipedes, and dart frogs in the Amazon. The lanternfly can't kill with its glands or its bite, but of the aforementioned group it's by far the deadliest: they feed on the stems, leaves, and trunks of trees, as well as crops. Their invasive population growth crowds out native life from the ecosystem.

And a study in Nature even shows that as lanterflies feed on the particular plant — another dangerously invasive species, a bush called the tree of heaven — that facilitates their exponential growth in Pennsylvania, two things happen: they store a particular compound that makes their taste deeply unpleasant to birds, and simultaneously, their coloration changes to an even brighter bloodred hue.

Like nuclear radiation, lanternflies are noxious and prolific. In all of eastern Pennsylvania and much of the rest of the state, they were noticeable in 2015, in 2017. They were impossible to ignore by 2020. By 2021, they were ubiquitous, and they show no signs of stopping as the spring of 2022 emerges.

Indeed, should the invasive bug continue its current trajectory, according to research from iEcoLab and Temple University, it could vastly expand its territory. Forecasts published by the lab show its range more than quadrupling in the next 30 years.

RELATED: Spotted Lanternfly Could Cost PA $325M, Thousands Of Jobs: Study

Further research indicates that if the insect spreads into counties adjacent to where it is already established and across the state, the worst-case scenario is startling: a $324.9 million hit per year to the Pennsylvania economy and the loss of 2,810 jobs.

The quarantine zone for the bug was recently expanded. It now includes the entirety of eastern Pennsylvania, and a line of connected central counties heading all the way out to Allegheny on the western border.

While dozens of policy initiatives, outreach efforts, and containment strategies have been put in place, success has thus far been limited. Still, authorities are optimistic that better solutions will materialize.

"Good research takes time — and funding — but we are making discoveries every day and are sharing those findings with the public and key stakeholders," Roush added.

RELATED: What 30 Years Of Spotted Lanternfly Spread In PA Could Look Like

A 2020 study analyzed the costs of fighting the bug. Those range from relatively cheaper initiatives, such as education and increased monitoring, to more-complex measures such as inspection and the eradication of the tree of heaven (Ailanthus altissima), an invasive Chinese tree that spotted lanternflies seem to prefer to use for reproduction.

Warmer and wetter conditions brought about by climate change allow invasives, such as the tree of heaven, to spend more of the year growing out, thus likely providing more habitat for the spotted lanternfly.

The advanced techniques to battle the bug, should it expand across the state, would cost $106.4 million for agricultural methods and $219.6 million for timber methods, the study found.

The lanternfly has a very distinctive sappy egg mass, which runs a gray and pocked scar down the side of the trees which it feeds on. This should be scraped away and destroyed.

If you find egg masses on your property, you can scrape them off using a plastic card or putty knife, according to PennState Extension.

The eggs should be scraped into a bag or container filled with rubbing alcohol or hand sanitizer to kill them. Egg masses should not be scraped off onto the ground as they can still hatch.

Egg masses can also be smashed, but there needs to be an even and forceful pressure placed on the entire egg mass.

Individual lanternflies that can be seen hopping and fluttering about should be stomped and destroyed.

A device called a circle trap is the best solution to kill them, authorities said, as it does not harm other aspects of the environment which the lanternfly is already damaging.