Spotted Lanternflies

At Duke Farms Pop-up Education stands, we've been talking quite a bit about Spotted Lanternflies, and have started to see them in their 1st instar form. Tonight I did a few web searches to try and answer a question that's come up a few times: Does the Spotted Lanternfly need to feed on a Tree of Heaven to complete its life cycle?

Here's what I found:

  • Both this Penn State article and this National Park Service article state that Tree of Heaven is not required for Spotted Lanternflies to complete their life cycle (and thus reproduce).
  • But while this Nature article confirms that Tree of Heaven isn't necessary for them to reproduce, it says that Spotted Lanternflies produce only 1/7th of the egg masses when they don't feed on Tree of Heaven. That's an 86% reduction!
    • They note that the smaller egg masses don't seem to be any less healthy.
    • They speculate that without TOH to eat, SFLs take longer to develop into adults. If true, the effectiveness of removing TOH in lowering SLF populations will probably vary with the climate.
  • And this Audubon article makes another interesting claim, that birds are more willing to eat Spotted Lanternflies when they haven't fed on Tree of Heaven. (This is a little surprising since most birds aren't believed to have much of a sense of taste.)
It's possible that these claims will be refuted by later research, but they both suggest that removing the invasive Tree of Heavens could help curtail the Spotted Lanternfly infestations that's been rapidly spreading in recent years.

Note that I don't have pictures of the 1st instar phase that they seem to be in right now; these are either 2nd or 3rd instar pictures when they're easier to find/see/photograph.

June 18, 2021 at Duke Farms
Photo 141960902, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)


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