SLF

SLF Sap Survey – Citizen Science Opportunity

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If you are a maple producer located within 25-miles of a confirmed spotted lanternfly detection (and we have a good mailing address for you…big caveat!), you should be receiving an SLF kit in the mail today or certainly by the end of the week.

That kit will supply you with some helpful identification resources, a pickled SLF adult to call your very own, a postcard asking for a few Brix value readings from your maple trees, and a QR code link to an instructional video.

If you do not receive a citizen science kit, but you still want to participate, please do so.  We would be honored to have you contribute.

First, download this file of the SLF Postcard (PDF).

Second, watch this instructional video.

Third, collect as much data as you can during your 2024 maple season.

Fourth, seal up your printed datasheet in an envelope and mail to me at:

Attn: Gabe Karns
Sch of Env & Nat Resources
2021 Coffey Road
210 Kottman Hall
Columbus, OH 43210

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please reply to this post or shoot me an email at karns.36@osu.edu.

 

Spotted Lanternfly: Monthly Maple REVIEW

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June’s REVIEW piece is going to come with a request, but first the topic – spotted lanternfly.  The main question of course is this – will spotted lanternfly impact sugarmakers?  The answer put simply and to quote Brian Walsh from Penn State University’s Extension team, “we don’t know, we don’t know, we don’t know.”  While that answer may not be comforting or assuring, it is absolutely certain that lots of work is being done to pursue better answers and there is plenty you can be doing as an individual producer to get ready for your likely “not if, but when” encounter with the invasive spotted lanternfly.  Why do I say “not if, but when”?  Look at this distribution map sourced from New York State’s Integrated Pest Management website.  Spotted lanternfly moves with efficiency and moves with coverage.  I don’t see many holes within the infested range where it has not been found.

“Impacts of short-term feeding by spotted lanternfly on ecophysiology of young hardwood trees in a common garden” was published in 2022 by Emily Lavely and a team of researchers among whom the aforementioned Brian Walsh is a co-author.  The paper can be found in the journal Frontiers in Insect Science.

Here is a webinar recorded through Penn State University last November that spotlights some of the key findings from this paper as it relates to maples and maple sugarmaking.  The recording is pushing 2 hours long, but the meat and potatoes of how this research experiment fits in to our current understanding of how spotted lanternfly impacts maples can be found between the 41:00-48:00 minutes mark.

Before I summarize the relevant take home message from the Lavely et al. study, it is worth noting that the experiment used small sapling-sized trees to document the following findings.  What would those findings have looked like if similar work was conducted on larger diameter tapping-sized trees?  In a nutshell, some short-term intense feeding by spotted lanternfly in the autumn impact stored sugars in silver maples immediately, but has no near-term effect on red maples.  Looking at the following spring after overwintering, silver maples rebound but the red maples in the study showed sugar reductions of up to 40%.  Unfortunately, sugar maples are an even larger question mark, but a fall feeding preference list for spotted lanternfly definitely includes the perennial gold standard species for making maple syrup.

So, what can you do in the near-term to brace for impact, be a tiny part of the solution, and be a first observer/reporter for your area?  Here are 3 practical things to consider.

1st – Learn how to identify tree-of-heaven (Ailanthus altissima) and CONTROL it.  Tree-of-heaven sits atop the summer feeding preference list for spotted lanternfly and is an excellent (or terrible, depending on your perspective) location to observe spotted lanternfly.  Tree-of-heaven is an invasive species in its own right and is notoriously aggressive and difficult to eradicate.  The Ohio Invasive Plants Council has a nice fact sheet that can help you learn how to identify tree-of-heaven, here’s the Ailanthus control sheet from Woodlands Stewards, and Rutgers University has another fantastic resource for how best to control this non-native pest.  Your first action item in short – identify tree-of-heaven and do your best to eliminate it.  By eliminating the preferred host for spotted lanternfly summer feeding, you reduce the chance of your nearby maples being next on the menu when autumn arrives. 

2nd – Indicate your support to the IR-4 project that you want to see more spotted lanternfly research conducted focused on potential impacts to maple and maple syrup production.  This requires you logging on to a website and formally indicating your support, but please scroll down to the bottom of this post and follow 6 quick and simple steps to engage IR-4 and put this topic front and center on the funding agency’s radar for the next round of awards issued in September.  Again, to hear more about this why IR-4 mechanism is so crucial, listen to minutes 41-48:00 on the Penn State webinar linked here.

3rd – Keep your eyes out for spotted lanternfly and report suspected observations immediately.  Here is a current map of Ohio counties with known spotted lanternfly infestations.  You can link to the Ohio Department of Agriculture’s reporting hotline through this ODNR webpage.  While most press releases show the adult winged spotted lanternfly, detections during the hottest summer months are more likely to be the nymphal stages (shout out to NCSU, my alma mater for the nice graphic below).  Being on the front line of early detection helps ensure agencies can respond as quickly as possible to new outbreaks and share information as effectively as possible.

 

6 Simple Steps to Support Spotted Lanternfly Research through IR-4. 

1) Visit this link: https://ir4app.cals.ncsu.edu/Ir4FoodPub/IS_Search

2) Click the down arrow on the upper-left yellow box labeled ‘IS Number’ and select the option ‘IS00441’

3) This will auto-populate Brian Walsh’s research proposal to pursue effective and safe spotted lanternfly controls on the bottom part of the screen.  Click the live link ‘IS00441’ under the box “SUPPORTING/SIMILAR REQUEST”

4) You will be transferred to a new page where you should enter your email address and go through the verification code process as directed.  You will be given the option to register for future use, or to not have your information saved for future use.  Your choice here does not impact your ability to voice support for this project.

5) Enter more information about yourself (enter “Individual Maple Producer” under Affiliation if you’re unsure how to fill in that field)

6) Finally, comment into the “Additional Reason for Need” box and click Submit.  The text box has a small character limit that won’t allow you to type more than a couple complete sentences.  This is what I submitted, feel free to copy-paste or create your own short indication of support.

Spotted lanternfly (SLF) is poised to impact maple producers, particularly those producers with a prevalence of red and silver maples in their sugarbush. Many Ohio maple producers fit this scenario and need options to combat SLF in order to preserve profitability and tree/forest health.

For more information: Look back at posts recapping Amy Stone’s presentation at 2021’s Ohio Maple Days on spotted lanternfly: Part 1, Part 2.

Borers, Feeders, and Galls Oh My!

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Ohio Maple Days 2022 did not disappoint.  The food was fantastic, the vendor room crowded, and the presenters shared a wealth of knowledge of expertise across a wide range of subjects. Dr. Curtis Young, Entomologist, Extension Educator, and Associate Professor, expanded our knowledge regarding maple pests.  Many that most of us were already aware of, spotted lanternfly or Asian long-horned beetle for instance, and lots of lesser known pests.  Before we get into a few highlights, be sure to mark your calendars for next year’s conference December 8th and 9th!

Any attempt to summarize Dr. Young’s talk would fail due to the sheer amount of information that he is able to share in such a short amount of time.  And no notes!  Truly a wealth of knowledge.  Rather than attempt a synopsis, this is a great opportunity to share some general resources and up-to-date information for some of the more alarming maple pests we face here in Ohio.

University of Kentucky Extension has a great webpage that quickly catalogs a wide range of known pests across 4 general categories – leaf feeders, sap feeders, borers, and galls.  While most maple pests are just that – pests, similar to how most of us view the average mosquito, a few present a real and present danger.  That said, if your maple trees are stressed already, a relatively harmless pest can be the proverbial straw that breaks a camel’s back.  Moral of that last sentence, practice healthy silviculture and sugarbush management to ensure your trees are healthy and vigorous.

Asian long-horned beetle are always mentioned in these presentations.  Thankfully, in Ohio at least, control and eradication of Asian long-horned beetle is a success story that we seldom get to herald in the fight against invasive species.  While we keep our eyes out for future infestations, spotted lanternfly has rapidly expanded its range and our state records now show several counties with positive detections.

An excellent website to stay abreast of issues facing plant, shrub, and tree health is Buckeye Yard & Garden onLine where Dr. Curtis Young and many other experts from Ohio State University Extension provide “timely information about Ohio growing conditions, pest, disease, and cultural problems.”

Ohio Maple Days – Spotted Lanternfly, Part II

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Part I last week focused on the basics of spotted lanternfly.  What they look like, where they are, where they might be going, what to do if you see some, and more.  This week, I want to share a few initial findings (albeit preliminary results) of how spotted lanternfly impact maples.  A big thanks to Scott Weikert of Penn State Extension for relaying these great bits of information.

First let’s start with the good news.  One bright spot of optimism for most maple producers is that while monitoring efforts are seeing spotted lanternfly in the forest, the pest does not tend to have super high population densities there.  Rather, the heaviest infestations tend to be more on the edges.  That is perhaps reason to be encouraged for most maple producers, but certainly not all.  In my own mind, I would imagine a sugarbush surrounded by intact forest on all sides is at lower risk whereas a backyard sugarmaker tapping a few open-grown trees may face more of a threat.

Heavily infested silver maple trees are showing abnormal bud swelling during the fall and producing no seeds the following year.  It remains unknown what the implications are for sap quality, but anytime an insect pest interferes with a tree’s reproductive cycle there is cause for legitimate concern.

It is certainly worth noting that initial data suggest that spotted lanternfly favor silver maple more than red maple.  As sugar maple does not constitute much of the forest composition where spotted lanternfly infestations are heaviest in Pennsylvania, it would be conjecture to rank sugar maple’s preference to other maples just yet.  As the pest moves into more localities, more will be learned.

Finally, some researchers observed that feeding on red maples tends to be extremely intense and concentrated to just a few weeks in the fall.  While no actual mortality has been observed in maples at this time, discoloration of the xylem in branches is a suspected result of heavy feeding.  It is uncertain what that damage means for future sap flow, but it stands to reason that discolored wood may inhibit sap flow if the response is similar to when a tree compartmentalizes the wound of a taphole or other injury.

While this post leaves far more open gaps in our understanding of how spotted lanternflies may impact the maple resource in the future, it is a start.  As the pest continues to infest new locations and studies gather more data, we will be better equipped to anticipate and combat impacts from this novel forest pest.

For more information, see Part I from last week or check out Penn State’s resources for spotted lanternfly to learn more.

If you see spotted lanternfly or other invasive species, please report your findings!  That is the single best way to improve the efficiency of any efforts to fight back.  Click here for more information on reporting through the Great Lakes Early Detection Network (GLEDN).

Ohio Maple Days – Spotted Lanternfly, Part I

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Despite significant changes to the timing and schedule of Ohio Maple Days not to mention the ever-evolving challenges presented by COVID, we had a great turnout in Ashland back on December 11th.  A subset of maple producers, about 20 in number, also enjoyed an excellent syrup grading workshop on Friday night the 10th.

During the morning session, Amy Stone (an Extension educator from Lucas County) presented on spotted lanternfly and was kind enough to share her graphic-heavy slide deck with us.  You might consider this a Part I post and I’ll follow-up with a Part II next week.

This half is all about spotted lanternfly.  What do they look like, where did they come from, where are they now, where might they be going, why you should care about them, and most importantly – how to report spotted lanternfly if you do spot them.  Click here to access Amy’s whole slide deck from her presentation on 12/11/2021.

Spotted Lanternfly (Amy Stone) Slide Deck from Ohio Maple Days December 2021

An infestation of adult spotted lanternflies is pretty hard to miss or mistake for something else.

The adults are preceded by 4 instars of developing maturity.  Each stage has a diagnostic “look” and the season when they are active.  Familiarizing oneself with the life cycle and knowing how spotted lanternfly will manifest depending on the time of year is key for solid monitoring.

At first glance you may only notice the one egg mass but look up and you’ll see a second.  Egg masses immediately after a female lays is fairly easy to see, but with passing time, the shiny coat over the egg mass fades and the mass become far more cryptic and camouflaged.

Spotted lanternfly was first detected in Jefferson County, OH, but recently Cuyahoga County has been added to the list of known OH positives.

For a comprehensive dive into spotted lanternfly, dig through the slide deck.  It’s a great exploration of this novel invasive forest pest.

Part II next week will focus on some specific preliminary findings on how spotted lanternfly are believed to be impacting maples.  Because of where spotted lanternfly infestations are currently heaviest, most of the results are from Pennsylvania and most applicable to red and silver maples, but you’ll want to tune back in to hear what some researchers – including several from Penn State University – are starting to learn about the maple – spotted lanternfly interaction.

If you see spotted lanternfly or other invasive species, please report your findings!  That is the single best way to improve the efficiency of any efforts to fight back.  Click here for more information on reporting through the Great Lakes Early Detection Network (GLEDN).

Spotted Lanternfly on the Move

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BAD BUG NEWS ALERT!!  This is not exactly the sort of update we are excited to relay.  Spotted lanternfly was detected last week in Cuyahoga County.  More details can be found at this link.

From a broader perspective, this is a great chance to remind producers that we will addressing the spotted lanternfly issue directly at the December 11th Ohio Maple Days event in Ashland.  And not just talking about spotted lanternfly either – rather, the focus will be to equip Ohio’s maple producers to be trained early detectors of this nasty forest invasive insect pest that poses a very real threat to maples and other native Ohio trees.

Past posts and webinars are also available on spotted lanternfly: