The Winged Invaders: Spotted Lanternflies and What the World Is Doing About Them

Aug 20

They came wrapped in silence, hidden in crates of stone that crossed oceans, tucked away like secrets waiting to be told.

In 2014, Pennsylvania met its first spotted lanternfly, and the story of these winged invaders began to unfold.
They are creatures of contradiction: gray forewings speckled like ancient parchment, underwings blazed in crimson fire.
They look like living origami, delicate and ornamental, the kind of insect you might expect to find pressed between the pages of an artist’s sketchbook.

And yet, beauty can wear a dangerous mask.

The spotted lanternfly is not a native here.
It was never meant to belong to the forests of North America or the vineyards of the East Coast.
It is an arrival from faraway Asia, a hitchhiker on the tides of global trade.
And since its quiet debut in Pennsylvania, it has spread like a storm through New Jersey, Delaware, New York, Virginia, Ohio, and beyond.

They do not bite, they do not sting, they make no sound in the night.
But they take.
They take until landscapes sag beneath their hunger.

The Damage They Cause

To understand why so many people stomp them on sight…why the slogan “If you see it, squash it” has become a regional battle cry…you must first know what they do.

Lanternflies feed with mouthparts like needles, piercing bark and vines to sip the life within.
Sap runs thin in trees that once stood strong.
Grapevines shrivel.
Apple orchards feel the theft.
Hops…the very soul of beer brewing…are left gasping.

And they leave behind something worse than absence: honeydew.
A sweet, sticky excrement that coats everything below them: picnic tables, porch railings, the hoods of cars parked beneath trees.
Honeydew attracts wasps and ants, but worse still, it invites sooty mold, a black fungus that spreads like smoke across trunks and leaves.

The result is a landscape both suffocated and drained.
Forests weakened, crops threatened, ecosystems tipped off balance.
Vineyards in Pennsylvania and New Jersey now live under constant siege.
A single insect becomes an army when it multiplies without natural checks.

This is not just a nuisance.
It is a billion-dollar threat to agriculture and forestry.

It is also a reminder that fragility runs beneath the roots of plenty, and that a single species, out of place, can ripple across entire economies.

What Eats Them (and What Doesn’t)

Nature is still adjusting to this new arrival.
Predators don’t yet know what to make of them.
Spotted lanternflies feed heavily on tree-of-heaven, itself an invasive, and absorb bitter compounds that make many creatures turn away.

But hunger breeds adaptation, and across the Northeast, a few brave diners have stepped forward.

Birds have been seen experimenting, tasting, deciding. Confirmed predators include:

Gray Catbirds, nimble and opportunistic, pecking at the bright-bodied adults (these actually helped massively in my garden this year!).
Blue Jays, bold as ever, adding them to their eclectic menus.
Northern Cardinals, their crimson feathers a mirror to the lanternflies’ hidden wings.
Red-bellied Woodpeckers, striking into bark to catch the clumsy insects.
Chickadees and Tufted Titmice, small but sharp-eyed, plucking them from branches.
Eastern Kingbirds, flycatchers of the air, seen swooping after them like sparks in flight.

Others, too…praying mantises with their predatory patience, wheel bugs with dagger-like beaks, garden spiders wrapping them in silk…have begun to join the table.

But these are flickers, not yet flames.
None of these predators alone can silence the lanternfly’s spread.
They are still newcomers to the menu, and many animals spit them out, finding the taste unpleasant.
Nature is deciding whether to embrace them or reject them.
It is a process of slow recalibration.

And so, for now, the burden falls mostly to us.

What You Can Do at Home

The fight against spotted lanternflies is not waged in laboratories alone.
It is a battle fought on patios, in gardens, in orchards, in the simple rhythm of walking outside and seeing one land on your railing.
And while it may feel like swatting at a tide with your bare hand, every act matters.

Here is how to help, responsibly and effectively:

Stomp Them: It sounds brutal because it is. But the official guidance remains clear: if you see one, kill it.
They are not endangered, they are not delicate parts of a balance.
They are intruders, and their numbers matter.
Scrape Egg Masses: In winter, look for gray, mud-like smears on tree bark, patio furniture, or even car bumpers.
These are egg masses, each one capable of producing 30–50 more invaders.
Scrape them into alcohol or hand sanitizer to destroy them.
Use Safe Traps: Old advice encouraged sticky bands around trees, but too many songbirds became accidental casualties.
Today, circle traps or screened funnel traps offer a safer alternative, catching lanternflies without harming the innocent.
Remove Tree-of-Heaven: This invasive plant is their favorite host, their buffet table.
Cutting it down (while leaving native species untouched) removes a major draw for lanternflies.
Be Cautious with Chemicals: Pesticides may kill lanternflies, but they harm pollinators, butterflies, and bees.
If you must spray, use targeted approaches and consider natural repellents first.

Each squashed insect, each destroyed egg mass, each safe trap is a stitch in the fabric of resistance.
The work feels small, but together, it creates momentum.

What the World Is Doing

While homeowners stomp and scrape, scientists and governments are weaving strategies of their own. Across the U.S., teams are racing to outsmart the lanternfly before it cements itself as an unstoppable shadow.

Biological Control: Researchers are studying wasps from the lanternfly’s native range: tiny species like Anastatus orientalis that parasitize egg masses, and Dryinus browni, which targets nymphs.
If carefully introduced, these wasps could become long-term natural checks.
Research Networks: Universities like Penn State, Cornell, and Rutgers have built sprawling projects to track lanternfly spread, study its vulnerabilities, and test new traps and treatments.
Quarantines and Inspections: Counties under heavy infestation restrict the movement of firewood, plants, and even outdoor furniture, to slow the lanternfly’s march.
Trains, trucks, and cars are inspected, for egg masses cling to the unnoticed undersides of everything.
Public Campaigns: The fight has gone viral, with apps for reporting sightings, school programs training children as lanternfly scouts, and entire communities engaging in squashing days.
It is ecological warfare fought with neighborhood spirit.

Globally, invasive species are not new.

Lanternflies are simply the most recent ambassadors of a larger truth: our world, connected by ships and planes, also carries stowaways in every crate.

A Symbol of Global Challenges

In some ways, the spotted lanternfly is more than an insect.

It reflects how easily we, as a species, ferry not just goods across oceans, but also the organisms hidden within them.
It is the story of globalization told in wings.

One cargo container unleashed a ripple effect of ecological imbalance, now spreading across states like wildfire.
The lesson is bigger than any one insect.
From lionfish haunting the Atlantic to cane toads reshaping Australia, invasive species ask us a hard question: how do we protect the integrity of ecosystems in a world where borders are porous?

Every stomp, every scrape, every research grant becomes part of a much larger dialogue, the question of how humanity coexists with the consequences of its own movement.

The Balance Between Beauty and Destruction

To see a spotted lanternfly up close is to marvel at its design.
Wings patterned like porcelain, underwings that flash crimson like a magician’s handkerchief.
They are, undeniably, beautiful.

And yet their beauty carries a hidden cost: orchards in peril, forests drained, the shadow of loss.

This duality is the paradox of nature itself: beauty can be destructive, and destruction can wear the mask of beauty.
Our role is not to curse the lanternfly for existing, nor to romanticize its wings, but to respond with responsibility.

To act, to learn, and to remember that ecosystems are fragile, and every imbalance echoes far.

The story of the spotted lanternfly is still being written.
Birds may adapt.
Wasps may be introduced.
Communities will continue to squash and scrape.
And somewhere in the future, this invasion may become just another chapter in the long history of how humans and nature wrestle with the consequences of crossing worlds.

For now, if you see one, you know what to do.

Stomp.
Scrape.
Protect the orchards, the vines, the forests.
Join the chorus of small acts that, together, may shift the tide.

Sources:

Barringer, Lawrence, et al. The First New World Record of Lycorma delicatula (Insecta: Hemiptera: Fulgoridae). Entomological News, vol. 125, no. 1, 2015, pp. 20–23. https://doi.org/10.3157/021.125.0105.

Dara, Surendra K., Heather Leach, and Julie Urban. "Spotted Lanternfly: A State of the Science Report." Journal of Integrated Pest Management, vol. 12, no. 1, 2021, pp. 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1093/jipm/pmaa029.

Leach, Heather, et al. Spotted Lanternfly Management Guide. Penn State Extension, 2023. https://extension.psu.edu/spotted-lanternfly-management-guide.

Parra, Gina, and Shannon Powers. "Birds and Other Predators Are Eating Spotted Lanternflies." Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, 2020. https://www.agriculture.pa.gov.

United States Department of Agriculture. Spotted Lanternfly: What to Look For. USDA APHIS, 2023. https://www.aphis.usda.gov/planthealth/slf.

Urban, Julie M. "Perspective: Shed No Tears for the Spotted Lanternfly." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 117, no. 49, 2020, pp. 30967–30969. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2019206117.

Michele Gargiulo http://michelegargiulo.com