Philadelphia - the city of brotherly love - and the city of flying lanterns.
I recently visited a friend in Philadelphia. He certainly made me feel at home, with his ultra-modern, swanky apartment around the outer edge of the city. Being summer, he liked to open the windows and let the warm air in for ventilation. Also being summer, all sorts of bugs would sometimes find their way into the apartment. Among the bugs was this giant bugger:
It might have been two inches big measured from head to wing tip. Initially I was quite captivated by its beauty. Red under-wings with the spotted upper wings is quite an exotic combo. Also the design at the wing tips gives quite it a special appeal. I normally hate bugs, and would like to stay away from them as much as possible. But this flyer made me appreciate the bug beauty and I believed that my perception towards bugs would change for ever. And then it did this:
...and started flying. And I started running all over the place trying to escape from this monstrosities, and I was ready to pack my bags and leave until my friend came up with a plan to capture them and release them back to the wild. We also made sure that the windows were closed.
Philadelphia is truly the land of brotherly love, and damn lanternflies.
By the looks of it, lanternflies seem to have been around in Philadelphia from the beginning of time. Surprisingly enough, they actually haven't and were recorded for the first time only in 2014. What’s more: buggers are actually designated as an invasive species in this local corner of Pennsylvania. What is even more astounding is that these have their origins in the tropical parts of Asia where their numbers are kept in check by natural enemies like the Anastatus orientalis which are absent in the Americas.
These bugs remind me of a different bug which invaded Pennsylvania: the stink bug. They are so-named because they stink once stepped on. Their exoskeleton looks like the symbol of an interstate, which makes me sometimes wonder which came first: the stinkbug or the interstate.
This is quite similar to a different question: which came first, The stinkbug or the egg? One way to answer the question is to consider the stage in between the chicken and the egg: the larva. The larva comes between the egg and the adult stinkbug, so if the egg has to have come from a stinkbug for a stinkbug larva to hatch from it.
Similar to lanterns flies, stink bugs originated in East Asia, were first found in 1996 in Allentown, PA and labelled as invasive in 2001. While as annoying as lanternflies, they don't really cause problems until they are stepped on. These bugs stink really bad once stepped on. Just don't do that.
The last bug on the list is the emerald Ash borer from East Asia which bores into ash trees. It is a bright emerald color, and looks like something that could fit in the Emerald city from the Wizard of Oz. It causes quite a ruckus inside ash trees in North America, but not as much as in the native Ash trees from Asia.
In Recap
In conclusion, we are in the midst of an Asian invasion. And it starts with the bugs.
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