Wanted Dead or Alive, The Spotted Lanternfly

By Davaughnia Wilson | Published by October 11, 2021

The Spotted Lanternfly infestation has sparked investigative research and experiment across the state of New Jersey, including the biology department at Kean University.

The research is being conducted by the assistant professor for integrative biology in the biology department, Dr. Brenna Levine, and a group of student interns to understand how the spotted lanternflies are spreading by sequencing their DNA.

“As you can see, they are everywhere,” said Dr. Levine. “So it is incumbent upon us as scientists to understand a bit about how they are dispersing and how they are behaving to see if there is information that we can provide to management agencies.”

Dr. Levine is a molecular ecologist that uses genetic tools and markers to understand how the wild population of animals is interacting, behaving, and evolving.

She specializes in invasive species, those that have been brought to an area where they are not supposed to be, and in this case, the spotted lanternfly. 

The Spotted Lanternfly is a major agricultural pest. They cost vineyards and farms a lot of money as they feed on agriculture and kill them. They fester on plants leaving a sap and kills them from the inside out.

According to the Spotted Lanternfly home page under the Department of Agriculture on nj.gov, “spotted lanternfly (SLF), Lycorma delicatula, is an invasive planthopper native to China, India, and Vietnam; it is also established in South Korea, Japan, and the U.S.”

The Spotted Lanternfly was discovered in Bucks County, Pennsylvania in 2014. Since then, the Lanternflies have spread throughout the East Coast, infesting states such as Delaware, Maryland, New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Virginia, as well as West Virginia and Ohio.

In 2018 the Spotted Lanternfly was confirmed to be in New Jersey. Though it is not harmful to humans or animals, the Spotted Lanternfly is detrimental to agriculture and vegetation.

According to a spokesperson for the New Jersey Department of Agriculture in a NJ Advance Media, September 2021 article on nj.com, ‘These 13 N.J. counties are under spotted lanternfly quarantine. What you need to know,’ ​​“the Spotted Lanternfly’s ability to travel and then lay egg masses at new locations has allowed it to spread over these last few years, causing increases in populations and therefore making it more visible.”

Dr. Levine explained that it is extremely important to capture the Spotted Lanternflies because, for scientists to make good inferences about the genetic connectivity of populations, it is necessary to know what population the bugs belong to. 

She stated that she is working with a group of student interns to collect samples from all over. She has students collecting from vineyards and different farms and vendors across the state.

“I have collaborators at Fairleigh Dickinson and Stockton that are collecting. Just widespread collection throughout New Jersey, and we are going to see if we can understand a bit about the genetic connectivity of different populations of spotted lanternflies in the state,” said Dr. Levine.

Professor Allison Edgley partnered with Dr. Levine to collect the spotted lanternflies on campus by taking her Environmental Ethics Class on a bug hunt on Sep. 21, 2021, in which they collected a total of 190 spotted lanternflies.

“I gave them nets, I bought in little plastic baseball bats, I also had an electric flyswatter,” said Professor Edgley.

She added that she gave them boards that had a little map of Kean to make small dots to record where they caught the spotted lanternflies.

“That’s how we kind of kept track of it. Everyone had Baggies, gloves, hand sanitizing wipes, collection cards from the biology professor, info sheets so that way if anyone asked them what they were doing, they could show them,” said Professor Edgley.

Dr. Levine stated that her favorite tool is the hand, “I know my students and I have gotten pretty good at just grabbing them, and then we just stuff them into zip lock bags.”

She urges everyone to get involved by catching the spotted lanternflies and putting them in a ziplock bag. Attach a piece of paper with the location, as exact as you can be, and the date they were captured.

Put the samples in the freezer and contact Dr. Levine at brlevine@kean.edu to arrange pickup.

 “These bugs don’t sting, they don’t bite, they’re perfectly safe to handle. So anyone who wants to get involved in this study can do exactly what we are doing and bring those samples to us,” said Dr. Levine

Spotted Lanternflies found in one area might be indistinguishable from another in another area. Dr. Levine and her team are working together to sequence the DNA of these different populations to better understand the spotted lanternflies and how they are spreading.

She explained that it is unknown how connected the different populations are, and as such, she can only assume that samples provided from different locations are from different populations of spotted lanternflies.

“When we sequence the DNA, and we use software to analyze that DNA, we can relate the genetic signatures that we’re seeing to the location those individuals were captured, and that will really allow us to kind of overlay the landscape and geography onto the same locations,” said Dr. Levine.

The lack of a natural predator is the primary reason the Spotted Lanternflies have survived this long, explained Dr. Levine. When a species is introduced to a novel environment in which it didn’t evolve, it is expected to survive for a very long time simply because it did not evolve with any predators.

Another reason is that the Spotted Lanternflies have a wide variety of food sources, one being the Ailanthus Tree, the Tree of Heaven.

“It is a really important really popular ornamental and it’s one that a lot of people have in their backyards,” said Dr. Levine. “We have them on campus. For example, over at Liberty Hall, there is a big adult ailanthus tree. A huge tree that you can see the bark is absolutely covered.”

Dr. Levine explained that the Spotted Lanternflies should die off as we approach winter. The adults will die, but before they do, they will lay eggs which is how they overwinter. Then in the spring, the juveniles will start to emerge.

“It’s really important if people see those eggs, which you can Google pictures of what these masses look like, you scrape them off of trees and surfaces that you see them and crush what you’re seeing,” said Dr. Levine.

Professor Edgley explained that she has a personal vendetta against the Spotted Lanternflies as they infested a tree in her backyard that resulted in it being cut down and removed from her yard by her landscapers.

She first reported the infestation to Rutgers New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station. She then found a post on Facebook, “See it Report it. Submit picture to SLF-plantindustry@ag.nj.gov. She was also informed of the Spotted Lanternfly hotline 1-833-223-2840, which spells ‘badbugs0’, 1833BADBUGS0”

She explained that spreading awareness of the problem is the best way to persuade the campus community to participate in capturing the bugs.

Dr. Levine explained that she and her team are hoping to attack a small portion of the giant Spotted Lanternfly problem which will hopefully assist other scientists by adding to the mountain of information being generated.

“We don’t want the Spotted Lanternfly here for a variety of reasons. The first one is that it is invasive, so it is not supposed to be here, and I consider it our duty as stewards of our environment to take that step. We somehow introduced it, and we need to fix that,” said Dr. Levine.

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