So, sure, the spotted lanternfly isn’t really a bug you’d want to cozy up to. Researchers still don’t have a grasp of key facts, such as exactly how far spotted lanternflies can travel in their life span, or key defenses, such as how best to trap them. And even then, they don’t thrive like they would in nature. Spotted lanternflies survive on potted trees-if they’re swapped out every few weeks. Scientists have been able to raise another invasive bug, the Asian long-horned beetle, on maple branches, logs, and even an “artificial diet,” Hoover told me. “It’s probably the hardest to do research on”-in part because of its voracious appetite. “It is the most unusual insect I’ve ever studied,” she said. Read: When conservationists kill lots (and lots) of animals Hoover has heard of entire vineyards succumbing to spotted-lanternfly-induced stress. So worries were, in part, justified: A 2020 study found that among a sampling of Pennsylvanian vineyards, higher densities of spotted lanternflies were linked with a decrease in fruit production and overall vine health. They can devastate grape crops by feeding on sap and excreting a substance called honeydew, which causes black-mold growth, Kelli Hoover, a Penn State entomologist who studies the insect, told me. Even after Korean vineyards were sprayed with pesticides, spotted lanternflies were reported to “ rapidly repopulate,” swarming in from adjacent wooded areas.

When the lanternflies showed up here, the “really problematic” proclivity for grapes and stone-fruit crops they had already demonstrated in South Korea alarmed researchers, according to Emelie Swackhamer, who educates locals on the invasive bug for Penn State Extension. A single tree can host more than 12,000 of the grown sap-suckers across one week. Female spotted lanternflies can pop out 30 to 50 potential offspring packed tightly into an egg mass smaller than a human thumb. Spotted-lanternfly infestations have since been documented in 11 states, but are centralized in the stretch of Eastern Seaboard from Virginia to New York. The bugs were first found in the United States in Berks County, Pennsylvania, in 2014, after supposedly hitching a ride as a bundle of eggs from China via a shipment of stone. Yet in the eight years since the bugs first made American backyards their home, some of the most shocking damage has come not from spotted lanternflies themselves, but from overzealous (and very human) attempts to stop them. “If you see thousands of these very large insects feeding on your tree, then the first thought you’re going to have is That tree is not going to survive this,” Brian Walsh, a Penn State Extension educator, told me. The bug’s wide-ranging appetite for at least 103 different plants worldwide, according to the latest research, has perhaps contributed to its reputation as an indiscriminate life-drainer. The motive for attacks of such self-congratulatory glee-and such careful viciousness-is supposed to be a dire environmental prognosis, our belief that the spotted lanternfly is a threat to Mother Nature herself. He developed an app called Squishr, which ranks users’ spotted-lanternfly kills, complete with gory photos as evidence, on a national leaderboard. “It’s kind of a crusade,” according to Brad Line, who lives in Pennsylvania. Haters have organized “squishathons” and spotted-lanternfly-killing pub crawls. And another: “I can honestly say that’s the biggest adrenaline rush I’ve had all 2020.” “I KILLED A SPOTTED LANTERNFLY!!!” another exclaims. “See ’em? SQUISH ’EM!” reads one tweet, complete with a trophy photo of two bug carcasses stuffed inside tiny glass jars. The dotted, mothlike bugs tend to hop, after all, sometimes narrowly escaping the (almost) perfectly timed thud of a sneaker. Maybe you’ve tried it, after encountering kill-on-sight orders. Squashing spotted lanternflies isn’t always easy.

Spotted lanternfly killing