Spotted lanternflies do not necessarily seem like the most formidable foes. As invasive insects, they can do serious damage to crops, but they are also weak fliers whose bright red hind wings make them highly visible.
So when they were first discovered in the United States in 2014, in a single Pennsylvania county, it seemed possible to contain or even eradicate them. Of course, that’s not what happened.
Instead, the insects, which are native to parts of Asia, have spread rapidly throughout the Eastern United States, invading nearly two dozen states. They have shown a particular affinity for urban habitats, forming thick summer swarms in New York City, Philadelphia and other major cities.
Now, researchers have proposed one potential explanation for the insects’ astonishing success: They were pre-adapted to urban living.
The lanternflies that made their way to the United States, the research suggests, descended from a lanternfly population living in urban Shanghai, where they may have evolved to withstand the stresses of city life.
“We think that was maybe a key factor in why they eventually did become invasive,” said Kristin Winchell, a biologist at New York University and an author of the new study, which was published this month in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
The implications extend beyond spotted lanternflies.
Indeed, the results suggest that in a highly connected, rapidly urbanizing world, cities could function as “evolutionary training grounds,” endowing organisms with the traits they need to spread into new environments, said Fallon Meng, a doctoral student at New York University and an author of the study.
Scientists believe that spotted lanternflies were introduced to the United States just once and that they arrived by an indirect route.
Previous research has suggested that the insects initially spread from Shanghai, where they are native, to South Korea, where they became an invasive pest in the 2000s. (In South Korea, as in the United States, the insects seemed to thrive in cities.
) From there, they spread to the United States, most likely by hitching a ride on shipped goods. We are having trouble retrieving the article content. Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings. Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
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