Does the 2010s stink bug invasion hold any spotted lanternfly lessons?

Tracy Leskey remembers when the brown marmorated stink bug became “explosively invasive” in the early 2010s.

“We had significant crop losses, some homeowners had thousands trying to overwinter in their houses,” said Leskey, a research entomologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Appalachian Fruit Research Station in West Virginia.

Leskey has a front-row seat to the similarly explosive invasion of spotted lanternflies in some of the same areas of the Mid-Atlantic where brown stink bugs first became a major issue. Part of her research is to help determine whether spotted lanternflies may follow a similar trajectory.

“As part of a larger national research effort to tamp down (stink bugs’) impact, we now know that the longer they’ve been in the U.S., natural enemies that didn’t recognize them as a food source at first are now eating them,” she said. “We also have an invasive, tiny, non-stinging wasp called the samurai wasp, which lays eggs in brown marmorated stink bugs.”

The wasp first showed up in Beltsville, Md., and because it has co-evolved with the brown stink bugs in Asia, it served as a natural biological control agent across the larger landscape.

“Brown marmorated stink bugs are still here, they still cause problems and growers still pay attention to them, but it’s not at the ‘outbreak’ phase it was in at the start,” Leskey said.

Adam Witt, president at Witt Pest Management in Pittsburgh, wanted to try and learn from his company’s experience with stink bugs and see how it might be applied to the spotted lanternfly.

“They both have a pattern in laying eggs,” Witt said. “The stink bugs overwinter inside homes and then come out to lay their eggs in spring. With the lanternflies, they’re going to lay their eggs and then the adults will be gone, and unless they’re scraped, those eggs will hatch in spring.”

USDA researchers are working to identify what types of animals have managed to identify the lanternflies as a potential meal and overcome the hardwired avoidance of their bright red aposomatic wings. Bright coloration is typically nature’s sign of a poisonous or venomous animal, but other harmless creatures such as the lanternflies have evolved to mimic those colors to keep from being eaten.

In addition, researchers believe lanternflies’ main food source, an invasive plant called the Tree of Heaven, helps make them a nasty meal. A study published in the Nature Scientific Reports journal noted that birds tended to reject spotted lanternflies that had been feeding on Tree of Heaven, due to the bitter quassinoid compounds that are present in the plant and transfer to animals that feed on it.

“Right now our research on control agents is happening in (quarantined research labs),” Leskey said. “We have facilities where both an egg parasitoid and a nymphal parasitoid are being screened, to see if they can be effective against lanternflies without attacking any native species.”

Leskey said she’s gotten a kick from watching North American wheel bugs, a type of assassin bug, hunt down both brown marmorated stink bug as well as spotted lanternflies.

“They’ll wait on the walls where they show up and just go right after them,” she said. Witt said he’s also seen the wheel bug in action.

“This is our third year of dealing with spotted lanternflies, and it’s crazy here,” Witt said. “We’ve treated hundreds of different situations and it’s possible that this could be a ‘peak’ year for them. But who knows?”