Calling all canines: Help sniff out the dangerous spotted lanternfly

From New York to North Carolina and as far west as Illinois, the invasive spotted lanternfly is causing chaos in many states where agricultural and forestry industries are essential to the economy. It has been estimated that crops and forest production losses caused by insects and pathogens are close to $40 billion a year.

Spotted laternflies, native to mainland China, prey upon 70-plus host plant species, stealing their nutrients with their piercing snouts, called stylets. They are often characterized as “hitchhikers” for their ability to move long distances through human-assisted movement. Envision logging trucks traveling back and forth across the country with a few unwelcome pesky passengers braced to the back.

Officials in infested states have brainstormed different approaches to stop the spread of this deadly leafhopper.

Stomp, squash, or smash the dastardly bug, they say.

Now, researchers in Virginia Tech’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences are experimenting with a new approach and calling upon dogs in the fight against the spotted lanternfly.

With a four-year, $475,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agriculture and Food Research Initiative, Erica Feuerbacher, an associate professor of applied animal welfare and behavior in the School of Animal Sciences, and Mizuho Nita, a Virginia Cooperative Extension specialist and an associate professor in the School for Plant and Environmental Sciences, have partnered with researchers at Texas Tech University to combat both the spotted lanternfly and the deadly fungal disease powdery mildew with the help of canines and their citizen-scientist counterparts.

The project, unofficially called the Canine Citizen Science Study, began two years ago in an olfactory lab at Texas Tech and has recently expanded to the East Coast, where Feuerbacher and assistants are asking dog owners to unite and utilize their pets’ scent work skills to sniff out spotted lanternfly eggs.

Visit: https://veterinary-conferences.pencis.com/

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