Over the past decade the invasive Spotted Lanternfly, Lycorma Delicatula, has made its way into 17 states and now several sightings have been reported in the counties around Houston, according to state agencies.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Spotted Lanternfly is an invasive planthopper originally from Asia that feeds on grapevines, hops, stone fruits, hardwood trees and 70 other known plants. The insect can spread quickly and excretes a sticky, sugary fluid that can lead to further damage to crops and plants.
Recently, there have been several unverified sightings of the insect but the USDA said in a statement Friday that it has not received any official reports. Texas A&M AgriLife also said in a statement that there are no verified sightings currently in Texas.
"Texas Department of Agriculture and USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service work together to investigate reports of suspected invasive species in Texas,” the USDA said in a statement. “At this time, we do not have any verified reports of the spotted lanternfly in Texas."
"This is brand new to the state, but we've included it ... because we know that it can fly and spread really quickly," Ashley Morgan-Olvera, the director of research in education and outreach for the Sam Houston State University Invasive Species Institute said. "As a biologist, we're always concerned about the impacts this can have on the food web. The fact that they can feed on several different types of native trees and vines and plants can really impact all of the other species around [like] the other insects, birds or vertebrates that depend on those plants."
The inch-long insect can be found in three main forms: egg masses on trees resembling cracked mud, small black and red spotted nymphs and adult-winged lanternflies, identifiable by the red wings on their back, according to the USDA.
Examples of the Spotted Lanternflies:
Morgan-Olvera said the first reports in Texas came via Texas A&M AgriLife, but reports can also be made online to the Invasive Species Institute and the USDA.
"They can be found on native birch trees or maple trees," she said. "They're known to be on stone fruits, but not a lot of people have apples or cheery trees in their backyards here, [so] if you have grapevines, just keep an eye on that. ... On our home page, we have a way that you can report it if you see this. Just taking a picture and reporting it through our website helps us alert the other departments."
The Spotted Lanternfly was only first identified in the U.S. in 2014 and it is believed to have traveled here via shipments from Asia, said Matthew Travis. He’s the Spotted Lanternfly National Policy Manager for the USDA Animal, Plant Health Inspection Service Plant Protection and Quarantine.
"It's native to Asia, specifically in China," he said. "There are a lot of stories, but it's believed that it was brought in as egg masses on hardscape materials — landscape materials, like retaining walls, and tiling. As [the egg masses] get older they can become very hard to catch. They blend in very well."
The cooperation between federal and state departments is important for verifying if the insect has been identified and what life stage it is in, according to Travis.
"We rely very heavily on our state partners, and it is really a partnership that we share with any pest," he said. "A lot of states have reporting forms that ask for a picture because there are a lot of times [where] these things are mistaken for other things. ... The adults like to crawl on things and go inside of things. A lot of times they make trips hundreds of miles in tractor-trailers [or] on trains.
Insects commonly misidentified as Lanternflies:
Although the USDA does not currently have a federal quarantine on Spotted Lanternflies, state agencies typically enforce their own in the form of education, Travis said.
"It's not just applying for a permit or paying for a permit, it actually comes with training," he said. "It'll talk about the spotted lanternfly, the life stages ... and what they can do to prevent from moving the spotted lanternfly. ... Then, the expectation is that any truck, or means of conveyance, for this particular company, is to have a permit on hand and those staff should have some knowledge and training."
Another plan could be to identify an insect that eats Spotted Lanternflies and release it into infested areas, but Travis said the USDA is still in the early research on that possibility.
"We're looking at more classical biocontrol with parasitoids, an insect that attacks another insect," he said. "Some of our scientists are currently working with a parasitoid in the laboratory, in containment, and [are] developing this parasitoid to make sure that it is indeed a good, suitable control mechanism. We need to make sure that it's not going to attack one of our native species of insects."
Update: The original version of this article mentioned several counties in which the insect was possibly spotted. On Friday, the USDA provided an update to Houston Public Media stating that these reports have not been verified. Texas A&M AgriLife corroborated this and said the sightings might have originated from the mislabeling of several photos on an SHSU webpage that has since been updated.
