The system will first be put to work in high-risk areas such as rail and shipping yards, where storage containers often sit around for long periods of time and it is difficult and dangerous for a human to check underneath them for egg masses, Tang says. ![]() Once fully trained, it will let scanning devices detect significant infestations in real time, Kontsos says. The team currently has about 400 crowdsourced photographs for its data set and anticipates thousands by winter’s end, says Drexel mechanical engineer Antonios Kontsos, who is building the image-processing algorithm. The mature insects die in the cold, but their egg masses, which can hold between 30 and 50 eggs and look like a grayish putty, withstand winter temperatures and release a new generation in the spring. They feast on more than 70 plant species and leave behind “honeydew” droppings, which attract wasps and other stinging insects and which breed a black, sooty mold that can significantly damage plants. (You can contribute images here.)Īdult lanternflies can fly but prefer to hop. Tang is coordinating a project that asks the public to help halt the lanternfly’s spread: anyone who spots an egg mass can submit photographs, with which Tang’s team will train a sophisticated algorithm that scanning devices can use to search for the eggs. These egg masses “are most concerning because they can go very far by hitchhiking,” says Maureen Tang, a chemical and biological engineer at Drexel University. The invasive, plant-killing insects are known to lay their eggs on almost any surface, including vehicle exteriors. It has spread to at least 26 counties in Pennsylvania, as well as parts of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and New York State. ![]() Since it was first noticed in Berks County, Pennsylvania, in 2014, the spotted lanternfly-a one-inch-long plant hopper that resembles a moth and is native to China-has been wreaking havoc on East Coast lumber, tree fruit and wine industries.
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