‘They’re invasive, they’re not native;’ Keep your eyes peeled for tiny red, black, and white insects

DAYTON — People have reported seeing spotted lanternflies in counties around the Buckeye State, including southwest Ohio.

News Center 7′s John Bedell spoke with the Ohio Department of Agriculture Tuesday about lanternflies and their impact on plants and trees in the state.

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Jonathan Shields is an Agriculture Inspection Manager for the Ohio Department of Agriculture and the program manager for the spotted lanternfly program.

The spotted lanternfly is a plant hopper insect that is native to Asia and feeds on the sap of a variety of plants and lay its eggs on hard surfaces like tree bark.

“They are considered to be a pest because some of those host plants are agricultural products such as grapes and stone fruits and other things like that. They’re invasive. They’re not native, and they are quite capable of spreading rapidly and in an area,” Sheilds said.

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Six counties in Ohio already have lanternfly infestations.

“We currently know of infestations in Jefferson County, in Cuyahoga County, in the Cleveland area, in Lorain County, in Hamilton County, in the Cincinnati area, and as well as small infestations in Muskingum County and Mahoning County,” Sheilds said.

These planthoppers were first discovered in Pennsylvania in 2014. Shields said it is hard to know if infestations will become statewide or when the Miami Valley will see them.

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“Spotted lanternfly is really good at hitchhiking on methods of transportation like train cars, vehicles, and trucks. So a lot of the movement of spotted lanternflies is human-assisted movement, and it follows those transportation corridors,” Sheilds said.

The middle of summer into the fall is the time to be on the lookout for an adult lanternfly. The outer wings are pinkish gray with black spots and a hidden wind that lays underneath the outer ones, which is bright red and a dark black bar, Sheilds told News Center 7.

The coloration of the adults makes them very easy to recognize.

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“They also have several juvenile stages, which we call nymphs, which are smaller. They don’t have wings. They’re black with white spots, but all of the stages can be found feeding on sap of plants, especially some of their favorite host plants, which include grape,” Sheilds said. lanternfly

If you spot one of these colorful incests, report the sight to the Ohio Department of Agriculture website. Shields said to take a picture of the insect you believe is a lanternfly, upload your picture, and provide some basic information about where you saw it.

“We at ODA will follow up on all those reports. Go out, do some scouting in that area and try to identify if there is an infestation and how big it might be if there is one,” Sheids said.

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Right now, the Ohio Department of Agriculture is focusing on controlling the population of these invasive insects.

“There are some chemical treatments that are available for different stages of the insect. So when they’re in that nymph stage, we can do some chemical treatment and also in the adult stage, and then they go over the winter as an egg mass, which can be on the surface of trees, but it can also be on the surface of other articles that are just outside. So sometimes it’s buildings, sometimes it’s transportation,” Sheilds said.

If the infestation is at a low level, the insect will only harm the plants but will cause harm.

“They kind of weaken the trees and that can make them susceptible to s sort of secondary infections, those kinds of things, fungal infections and so on,” Sheilds said.

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In places like Pennsylvania and the eastern seaboard, these insects are killing plants and wiping out vineyards.

“When we are dealing with these invasive pests like this, we really try to recruit as much help as possible from the public, so educating themselves about what to look for, they can visit our website and they can find more information,” Shields said.

For more information about the spotted lanternflies, visit Ohio Department of Agriculture website.

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