Ag department tracks the spotted lanternfly
Butler County and the rest of Western Pennsylvania remain free of the destructive spotted lanternfly.
Native in China, India and Vietnam, the spotted lanternfly was first found in southeastern Pennsylvania in Berks County in 2014.
The invasive plant hopper feeds on tree fruit, grapes, hops and the sap of grapevines and hardwood trees like red and silver maple, birch and black walnut.
Adults are about an inch long and a half-inch wide. They have black bodies and red rear wings.
The state Department of Agriculture, which tracks the lanternfly with help from the Penn State Extension and treats populations of the insect, is asking hunters to report sightings of egg masses or dead adult insects they find and to collect and submit them if possible.
Hundreds of reports of suspect egg masses or insects were made from areas outside of the 13-county lanternfly quarantine zone in southeastern Pennsylvania, but none of the reports from Western Pennsylvania turned out to be lanternflies or their eggs.
Adult lanternflies were found in a few eastern counties and the closest one was in central Pennsylvania.
“We have not found lanternfly in the western part of the state. The closest was a dead one in Centre County. It looks like that's as far west,” said Heather Leach, a Penn State Extension lanternfly specialist. “I think we got 562 calls to our call center from outside out quarantine zone.”
The reports were about isolated adult insects, said Shannon Powers, department spokesman. No infestations were found outside of the zone, she said.
The department sends a team of experts to investigate when adult lanternflies are suspected outside of the zone.
If the insect is proven to be a lanternfly, the finding is labeled a regulatory incident, Powers said.
Regulatory incidents are declared anytime the existence of invasive insect or plant is confirmed, she said.
“The vast majority of those reports from outside the quarantine zone were negative. There are other reports of isolated insects — adults found outside zone — but not infestations. Those sites will be tracked for several years,” Powers said.
Many reports are photographs people take of dead adult insects, but a lot of those photos are of black and red insects that resemble the lanternfly.
“Sometimes it's clearly not a spotted lanternfly, just a black and red insect. We've had a lot of those reports,” Powers said.
Leach said hunters provide more sets of eyes in the woods to look for the lanternfly and egg masses, which can be difficult to detect.
“Egg masses blend in. They look like a smear of mud on hard surfaces like trees and houses,” Leach said.
The smears measure 1 to 1.5 inches long and look like gray putty, she said.
The Department of Agriculture created regulations and recommendations aimed at helping homeowners and businesses in the zone prevent lanternflies from spreading out of the quarantine zone.
Lanternfly populations have also been found in New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland.
