Abstract
Adult spotted lanternflies, Lycorma delicatula, launch themselves into the wind from elevated locations such as trees, lamp posts, and buildings. Individuals fly in short, successive bouts along descending trajectories of between 10 and 50 m before landing, crawling upward on a new structure, and again launching upwind. The possible physiological limits to the durations of flight-bouts, if not constrained by their poor ability to generate lift, however, remain unknown. In this study, we observed the behavior of tethered spotted lanternflies known to be prone to flight-dispersing, and recorded the number and durations of their successive flight bouts. Additionally, we recorded the flight distances and durations of similar spotted lanternflies in the field that had spontaneously taken flight or had been manually launched. We found that tethered females can perform >20 successive bouts with only 1 min between bouts when flight durations were limited to 20 s/bout. Bouts averaged 97.9 ± 11.4 s when bout durations were unlimited, with some females flying bouts lasting >400 s. Females could quickly advance upwind a distance >3000 m if the bouts of ~100 s each were performed in quick succession in the field. However, adults spontaneously taking flight in the field flew for an average of only ~13 s and traveled an average of ~29 m before landing on the ground or on nearby objects. This information is important to determine how far a locally dispersing adult can fly before finding a suitable host to finish feeding and attain reproductive maturity.
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Acknowledgments
We thank the Lehigh Valley Penn State Extension Office for allowing us to work in and store our field equipment in their office space. This research was funded on a grant to TCB through a Cooperative Agreement AP18PPQS&T00C198 between USDA-APHIS-PPQ and The Pennsylvania State University. Support for this project was also provided by McIntire-Stennis funds from the Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences to TCB.
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Figure S1
Photos of the Dorney Park parking lot for ring-stand-launching experiments. Left: the ring-stand from which adult females spontaneously launched themselves. Arrow points to two females that have crawled up to the top of the ring-stand and initiated their launches. Upper Right: a view of the grassy strip at the generally downwind side of the ring-stand and also showing some of the light posts with garbage cans and one of the two rows of ornamental trees to the left of the generally upwind direction. The arrow indicates the location of the ring-stand. Lower Right: a view of the row of ornamental trees with garbage cans to the right of the generally upwind direction in front of a second grassy area that the females never reached because they landed in the trees or on the parking lot before they got to the grass. (PNG 1580 kb)
Figure S2
Photo of the vineyard, orchard, and wood-row arrangement at at the fruit farm in which spontaneously flying adults were observed flying between different kinds of vegetation under different wind directions. Row 1 in the vineyard was designated as the row closest to the wood-row (10 m apart), and flights were observed to Row 60. A road with a telephone pole separated Rows 26 and 27. This telephone pole acted as a superstimulus to flying SLF. High altitude flights were observed over the apple orchard. (PNG 6292 kb)
Figure S3
All bouts of unlimited duration of tethered flight (± S.E.) by Lycorma delicatula adults in laboratory assays. Adult L. delicatula were tethered on a thread and hanging below a rod and were exposed to a windspeed of 1.7 m/s. The resulting duration of continuous flight was recorded. Individuals were allowed 1 min of rest before the next flight-bout began. Each point represents a flight-bout in the assays of unlimited bouts. (PNG 1005 kb)
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Wolfin, M.S., Myrick, A.J. & Baker, T.C. Flight Duration Capabilities of Dispersing Adult Spotted Lanternflies, Lycorma delicatula. J Insect Behav 33, 125–137 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10905-020-09754-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10905-020-09754-w