Assistant Professor Franciscan University of Steubenville Steubenville, Ohio, United States
Abstract: Lycorma delicatula White (spotted lanternfly; SLF), an invasive insect, is threatening significant forestry and agricultural damage and expanded financial costs as it spreads westward across the United States. Regular surveying was initiated adjacent to the westernmost quarantine area in 2021 and continued through 2022 to support multi-state monitoring efforts. Specifically, regular visual and sticky-trap surveys were performed every 10 days during the insect’s active season in 13 resurvey plots strategically located near high-traffic roadways and rail-lines along the Ohio-West Virginia border. Sites were located in Jefferson (Ohio), Brooke (West Virginia), and Hancock (West Virginia) counties. Only one SLF was detected in 2021 (the third documented Ohio SLF finding) in close proximity to a railway; this was consistent with human-transportation-mediated dispersal trends elsewhere in the U.S. Of the 31 SLF captured in 2022, 30 were found at the same 2021 site, but one was found on a college campus 1.25 km from the nearest railway. Later, 10 additional adult SLF and egg masses were found on the campus during an end-of-season visual survey of a neighboring woodlot. Failure to trap or detect SLF at survey plots nearer than the campus to the closest rail-line and at commuter parking lots suggests local, unaided dispersal, despite a trend of primarily train-mediated dispersal in Ohio and other affected states. Data from this survey are valuable in the short term for establishing baselines and early-invasion patterns of SLF dispersal into Ohio; in the long term, the results of this effort can contribute to improved SLF dispersal modelling in Ohio and the western United States.
