Spotted lanternflies are invading the US. They may have gotten their evolutionary superpowers in China’s cities.
The spotted lanternfly has spread across the United States with unrelenting speed — and now we have a clue as to why: living in cities seems to have helped these invasive insects evolve to be more resistant to stresses.
“Cities may act as evolutionary incubators that help an invasive species to better deal with pressures like heat and pesticides, which then helps them to better adapt to new environments,” lead author Fallon (Fang) Meng, a biologist at New York University, told Live Science.
The spotted lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula) is a planthopper that uses its long mouthparts to suck sap from plants. The insect is native to China, but has spread through South Korea, Japan and to the U.S., where it was first detected in Pennsylvania in 2014, but is now seen in 19 states in the eastern U.S.
