States like California and New York, which have prominent wine regions, are extremely worried about the lanternflies, Leach says. They’re expected to cause billions of dollars in damages in Pennsylvania alone, according to the PDA, stoking fears that they may spread to states with robust agricultural industries. "We're seeing damage across a lot of different plant species," Leach says. Scientists fear they have the potential to devastate a number of valuable crops, such as apples, grapes for wine (!) and hops for beer (!!). They swarm in vast numbers, have no natural predators, and lay gray egg masses of 30 to 50 eggs, which lie flat on tree trunks and look similar to lichen. Worst of all, spotted lanternflies are especially tough to kill. On behalf of our fellow Pennsylvanians, we're sorry. Trust us: Popular Mechanics HQ is smack dab in the lanternfly epicenter. (If you have a friend or family member who lives in Pennsylvania, you've probably been hearing them talk about nothing else besides these damn bugs for a year. From there, they’ve spread across the state and slowly trickled into Delaware, New Jersey and Virginia. They're native to China, India, and Vietnam but were first discovered in the U.S. The lanternfly is not a fly, but instead, a type of insect called a planthopper. Researchers at the Beneficial Insects Introduction Research Unit (BIIRU), a subdivision of the PADA, in Newark, Delaware, have come up with a plan to eradicate the invasive insect once and for all, using a curious weapon: wasps. The Pensylvania Department of Agriculture (PDA) is waging an all-out war on a tiny insect called the spotted lanternfly ( Lycorma delicatula).
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