5 June 2023

If you noticed spotted lanternflies (Lycorma delicatula) in Pittsburgh last summer you remember seeing this one-inch long insect.

But they don’t start out this big.

Right now they are tiny black nymphs with white spots. I saw one perched on the edge of a metal chair yesterday at the Phipps BioBlitz and moved closer to confirm its identity. As I approached it jumped so far I couldn’t find it.

I tracked it down and smashed it with my shoe … and immediately wished I’d taken its picture. I found another one (there are lots of them) and learned how to get close enough for a cellphone photograph without making it jump. Not a sharp photo but you get the idea.

The first instar(*) nymphs are tiny — just 1/4 inch long — and well camouflaged, even on a silver chair.

Walking and hopping, they look for something to suck on, primarily Tree-of-heaven (Ailanthus altissima) but they are generalists so they’ll eat anything that appeals to them. Fortunately they are only deadly to Ailanthus and grapevines.

As they feed on plants the insects grow and change through various stages of development. The first, second and third instars continue to be black nymphs with white spots, just progressively larger [B]. The fourth instar is a red nymph with white spots at 3/4 inch long [C].

Right now they’re so small they are easy to overlook. When the one-inch-long flying adults emerge in July-to-September this invasive insect will be hard to ignore.

Read more about them at Cornell University’s Spotted Lanternfly Biology and Lifecycle.

(*) Definition of instar. noun, ZOOLOGY. A phase between two periods of molting in the development of an insect larva or other invertebrate animal. — from Oxford Languages via Google

(photos by Kate St. John, life phases photos from Penn State Extension)