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6 hours ago, Will - Rutgers said:

oh, you will.

i'm not really sure what is supposed to stop their march north.  tree-of-heaven can be found throughout SNE and it's not like our climate is that different.  there's no natural predators yet.

they are an amazingly prolific bug when they get a foothold.

we need to have helicopters start spraying insecticides around here.  I dont know what they're waiting for, these things aren't going away on their own!

 

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15 hours ago, Will - Rutgers said:

oh, you will.

i'm not really sure what is supposed to stop their march north.  tree-of-heaven can be found throughout SNE and it's not like our climate is that different.  there's no natural predators yet.

they are an amazingly prolific bug when they get a foothold.

Have 2 of those trees on my property.  I'll probably need to take them down in the spring.  They are caked with lantern flies and are slowly dying.  

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8 hours ago, FPizz said:

Have 2 of those trees on my property.  I'll probably need to take them down in the spring.  They are caked with lantern flies and are slowly dying.  

cant spray anything on them to kill these pests en masse?  I'd look for the strongest available pesticide and douse them with it

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56 minutes ago, LibertyBell said:

cant spray anything on them to kill these pests en masse?  I'd look for the strongest available pesticide and douse them with it

Better option would be to find a bug or bird that really relishes Lantern Flies. That has minimal side effects and is pretty much self regulating,

Maybe China would sell it to us cheap, seen that they gave us the Lantern Fly and the Emerald Ash Borer.

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1 hour ago, etudiant said:

Better option would be to find a bug or bird that really relishes Lantern Flies. That has minimal side effects and is pretty much self regulating,

Maybe China would sell it to us cheap, seen that they gave us the Lantern Fly and the Emerald Ash Borer.

I wonder who their main predators are.  Seems like our fauna is just as shocked to see them as we are.  Fortunately they haven't made it to Long Island yet but I guess it's just a matter of time.  We have these on the east coast and those monstrous murder hornets on the west coast.  I wonder what's next?

FWIW those murder hornets look so artificial that it makes me wonder if THEY were created in a lab lol

 

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30 minutes ago, LibertyBell said:

I wonder who their main predators are.  Seems like our fauna is just as shocked to see them as we are.  Fortunately they haven't made it to Long Island yet but I guess it's just a matter of time.  We have these on the east coast and those monstrous murder hornets on the west coast.  I wonder what's next?

FWIW those murder hornets look so artificial that it makes me wonder if THEY were created in a lab lol

 

the problem is in the very nature of generalist and specialist predators.

generalist predators, like spiders, mantids, will kill and eat this bug, like they kill and eat many bugs, but they don't seek it out or have an evolutionary niche in killing it, and so are not particularly effective at control, especially against the kind of population density the lanternfly can accomplish.  chickens are also generalist predators but can eat much more than a typical density of insect predators, and can better locally control lanternflies.

specialist predators, that might hunt a specific species basically exclusively and control it, aren't here for the lanternfly because of course the lanternfly is not only unknown to the northeast but has poor analogues in the animal kingdom for other insects that are here.  around the world there any many specific species or genera of insects which are controlled by one specific wasp species.  wasps are like antibodies in the insect world.  there is a wasp species Anastatus orientalis which is under investigation because it parasitizes the spotted lanternfly with, apparently, a high specificity.

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4 hours ago, Will - Rutgers said:

the problem is in the very nature of generalist and specialist predators.

generalist predators, like spiders, mantids, will kill and eat this bug, like they kill and eat many bugs, but they don't seek it out or have an evolutionary niche in killing it, and so are not particularly effective at control, especially against the kind of population density the lanternfly can accomplish.  chickens are also generalist predators but can eat much more than a typical density of insect predators, and can better locally control lanternflies.

specialist predators, that might hunt a specific species basically exclusively and control it, aren't here for the lanternfly because of course the lanternfly is not only unknown to the northeast but has poor analogues in the animal kingdom for other insects that are here.  around the world there any many specific species or genera of insects which are controlled by one specific wasp species.  wasps are like antibodies in the insect world.  there is a wasp species Anastatus orientalis which is under investigation because it parasitizes the spotted lanternfly with, apparently, a high specificity.

This would be an exotic species of wasp not native to our area?  Let's hope introducing it here does not cause unforeseen side effects (as has happened before.)

 

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