Yale Honors Work of 9-Year-Old Girl Who is Stomping Lantern Flies in New Jersey 

When 9-year-old Bobbi Wilson heard about the Hoboken campaign to eradicate the spotted lanternfly, she took the message to heart, whipped up some homemade, non-toxic, spotted lanternfly poison out of vinegar, and headed out to do her part. 

Yale decided to highlight this citizen scientist, as she donated her collection of 27 lantern flies to the Peabody Museum of Natural History database and received the title “donor scientist.” 

“We wanted to show… how inspiring she is, and we just want to make sure she continues to feel honored and loved by the Yale community,” Ijeoma Opara, an assistant professor at the school, said in a statement. 

It’s an unfortunate thing as the lanternfly is quite beautiful, but its piercing-sucking talons can damage over 70 species of native and ornamental plants but have a preference for high-value ag commodities like grapes and stone fruit. 

Native to China, they are typically kept in check via parasitic wasps and were accidentally introduced to the United States in 2014. Feeding on plant sap, their bodies create a sugary excretion called honeydew which collects on or around trees and cultivates sooty molds which can lead to tree death. 

Wilson was joining in New Jersey’s “Stomp it Out” campaign to help clear out the winged devils from the state. The campaign recommends three things: killing any individuals seen on one’s property, scraping off the “egg masses” which are greyish slimes that contain between 30 and 50 eggs that they lay in wintertime, and cutting down about 90% of all the Ailanthus altissima trees, also known as the “tree of heaven,” which belies its presence as an invasive pest species. 

As the weather turns toward spring, both New Jersey and Pennsylvania residents need to keep an eye out for these insects and stomp them out to protect our crops and trees.