Just thought this was an interesting article regarding possibly controlling the spread of lanternflies since more and more observations of lanternflies in Pennsylvania are showing up on iNat.
https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2019/04/destructive-plant-pest-thwarted-two-native-fungi
The Fig 1 pics in https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/04/24/1903579116 are really cool, showing the fungi sprouting out of the insects.
Edit: Hm, Batkoa (the one that sticks them to trees) has no iNat observations yet: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/340634-Batkoa
However, I remember running across at least 2 US lanternfly obs where I think the description was like, “dead, stuck to the tree”. I hope people will go looking for more of these as the season gets underway!
Edit 2: Found the records, but unfortunately the bodies are not in position to observe any anchoring fungus, if present:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/22472836
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/22472782
Thanks for finding these observations and linking–I hadn’t see them. It would be cool if iNat could get some observations of lanternflies affected by fungus. I saw in the study that the fungus killed off most of the lanternflies before many of the females laid eggs as well.
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