Where Have All the Spotted Lanternflies Gone?

Well, it's happened, at least in our neck of the woods.

Billed as a major calamity, the spotted lanterfly invasion has gone "poof" this year. Yes, the spotted nymphs could still be found clinging to the stems of Ailanthus sprouts at our Barden in Herrontown Woods. 

And a few adults were later seen perched on the rachis of Ailanthus leaves. We pulled the sprouts out of the ground to deprive them of this haven. Hard to say where they went after that.

Writing a post about lanternflies three years ago, I learned that numbers of the invasive insect had dropped in some areas of Pennsylvania five years after first being seen. Lanternflies first showed up in Princeton in 2018, and here we are five years later, with what appears to be a dramatic drop in numbers.

It's true that people gave themselves over to squashing the pesky bugs--leafhoppers, actually--in spirited ways. (This photo shows one of the more creative approaches.) Some think the unusual weather has had an effect. Insect numbers overall have been down, be it the pollinators on backyard flowers, the odorous house ants that used to invade our kitchen, or spotted lanternflies. But my guess is that it has been the full-time predators, feathered or with eight legs or six, that are to be most congratulated for stemming the explosion of spotted lanternflies. 

Just follow the trail of colorful wings that brightened a walk up towards Veblen House one day.

The most powerful contrast for me is between the invasions of emerald ash borer and spotted lanternfly. Since the emerald ashborer arrived, about ten years ago, I have yet to see a single adult ash borer in Princeton, and yet the devastation they have brought to the ash tree is all around us. The lanterfly, on the other hand, has been seen everywhere, and yet I can't point to a single plant that has died due to their appetites. We humans are visually oriented, but it's the invisible threats--be they an invasive insect or even more significantly an overdose of carbon dioxide--that most endanger our world.