Why aren’t spotted lanternflies out enforce in Central Pennsylvania this summer?

Western Pa. residents say "they're everywhere here!"

• Scott LaMar
  BioRecent Stories

  

  Scott LaMar has worked in both radio and television for more than four decades.
  
  Currently, LaMar is the Host and Executive Producer of The Spark program on WITF-FM, 89.5 & 93.3 in Harrisburg, Pa.
  
  Previously, LaMar was WITF TV’s Sr. Public Affairs producer and produced the station’s award-winning weekly public affairs TV program, Smart Talk.
  
  In addition to his on-air duties, LaMar has moderated political candidate debates, including those for candidates running for Pennsylvania governor and the U.S. Senate and was a regular contributor to BBC World News TV before and after the 2020 U.S. Presidential election.
  
  LaMar often emcees or moderates local events and has gone as far as California to emcee a national event.
  
  The American Society of Civil Engineers honored LaMar with their national Excellence in Journalism award in 2020. He has been nominated for five Mid-Atlantic Emmy Awards.
  
  LaMar and The Spark have been recognized throughout the Central Pennsylvania community including ADVOZ Lancaster’s “Dignity in Dialogue Award”, the South-Central Assembly’s “Regional Citizen Award” and was named a “Humanitarian Hero” by The Humane Society of the United States/Pennsylvania.
  
  A native of Coatesville, Pa., LaMar has also worked as a broadcast news anchor, sports play-by-play announcer and manager.

 Matt Rourke / AP Photo

In this Thursday, Sept. 19, 2019, photo, spotted lanternfly gather on a tree in Kutztown.

Airdate: August 29th, 2023

 

Where have all the spotted lanternflies gone? It’s a question many Central Pennsylvanians have been asking this summer. After a few years of seeing overwhelming numbers of the invasive insects, it’s very noticeable there aren’t as many around this year.

Not that they’re missed, but not as many lanternflies makes it feel like an unusual summer. But it is good news for the fruit trees and other plants the lanternflies can damage.

Julie Urban,  an associate researcher in entomology at Penn State University was asked on Tuesday’s The Spark why there aren’t as many spotted lanternflies in the central part of Pennsylvania this year,”The short answer is, I don’t know. The longer answer is it’s unlikely (they’re gone). And so we know that spotted lanternfly populations are extremely patchy and that you might have a really high density in one area and a couple of blocks away — not very high at all. And so a colleague of mine likened the spotted lanternfly spread to throwing a stone into a pond. You have this wave that moves out, but then you still get subsequent ripples behind it. And so their populations are patchy. I hope that potentially populations are smaller in eastern Pennsylvania, perhaps due to the governmental control efforts, but also because we’re seeing it spread and we’re seeing really high numbers in newer areas like Pittsburgh in our state and continued high numbers in Manhattan and other places. I don’t want people to let their guard down yet.”

The first spotted lanternfly found in Pennsylvania was discovered in Berks County in 2014. Nine years later, there’s still a lot we don’t know about the insect that is native to Asia.

Urban described one of the unknowns,”I think one of the big questions is how far can they move? We know they’re not great fliers. But does that mean that they can’t get caught up in a thermal and blow pretty far? Or with this constant movement, their feeding, moving, feeding, moving. How far can they really move? And so my concern is that we might be underestimating this true dispersal distance.”

Urban pointed out a researcher in West Virginia is dissecting lanternflies and using DNA to identify the plants they’ve consumed as a way to know where they’re come from.

She also said researchers are studying whether the lanternfly has any natural enemies to keep the population in check.