The spotted lanternfly was streetwise before it ever flew to NYC

🌟 Editor's Note

Wow January was a year, wasn’t it? To be honest, I wrestle with posting fun interesting science notes, when there’s so much out there that needs our care. But I also know that I need a break from The Horrors. For me, that break is science, knowing that there are people out there studying fly genes and raccoon noses. Knowing that human curiosity, like empathy, can’t be stopped. So here’s a little science note, if you need one.

The command is clear: Stomp when you see ‘em. After hearing more than seeing the invasive* spotted lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula) for a few years, last summer, they arrived in force.

On one trip to the dentist, they were swarming around the building. Two floors up, I got my teeth cleaned to the sickening thwack of spotted bodies slapping against the windows. I waded out with my clean teeth through a graveyard of insects.

The graveyard looks like failure, but spotted lanternflies are an unqualified invasive success. Since their arrival in the US in 2014, the bug has swarmed across the US with truly astounding speed. And why is that? Why are they so successful?

This is a question that plagues many invasive species biologists. What makes a particular species do so well in a new environment, when other introduced species quietly go belly up in the dusty corners of history? Some might have few predators. Others might end up dropped in a habitat that happens to suit them.

And some, like the spotted lanternfly, apparently put in a little extra evolutionary training. A study out in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, shows that the spotted lanternfly underwent genetic selection in other urban environments, before they flocked to the cities of the US.

The authors compared 98 different spotted lanternflies in the United States, and compared them with 20 urban and rural lanternflies from Shanghai (currently scientific evidence says the bugs hopped from Shanghai to South Korea, and thence to the US). In their trip to the US, the scientists showed that the lanternflies faced three genetic bottlenecks. This is where only a few survivors make it from a founding population, going on to dominate the gene pool of the new area. These genetic bottlenecks are characteristic of when a species enters a new territory.

In the case of the lanternflies, one of those bottlenecks was in urban Shanghai, where the bugs that survived the bottleneck were those the best at city living. That city life left its mark, with the insects better able to withstand stress, eat “foreign” foods (the lanternfly prefers the “tree of heaven” which is also an invasive species in the US, you see it growing on roadsides, my strongest memory of learning to identify it is that if you break off a stem it smells a bit like rancid peanut butter) and rid themselves of pesticides.

So when it did arrive in the US, its previous city living had it well prepared for its new life. One city, it turns out, is much like another, full of stress, poisons and weird food.

The findings of this paper caught my eye, not just because of the lanternflies, but because I wonder if this could apply to other invasive species too. It’s not just that the bugs got the mutations in a city. They got them in a human-associated habitat. These are human alterations that they were adapting to. Our poisons, the plants we bring together, the climate change we create.

It makes me wonder if other species are changing in similar ways—making them better able to take not just the human-associated habitat they are currently in, but new ones, nearby or continents away? How many other species get used to one urban environment, only to end up thrust into another? In how many other plants, animals, bacteria or fungi will we find mutations acquired from our suburbs or cities?

These adaptations don’t just mean we create invasive species by setting them down in the new places they invade. We create them by simply existing with them. By building our spaces, and altering our environments, we alter the species nearby. And those who make it? Well they are then set up to succeed, as long as the next environment is a human one, too.

References

Fang Meng, Anthony A. Snead, Aria Yang Zhang, Jason Munshi-South, Kristin M. Winchell; Cities as evolutionary incubators for the global spread of the spotted lanternfly. Proc Biol Sci 1 February 2026; 293 (2064): 20252292. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2025.2292

*I have thoughts on the idea of “invasive species” but that’s a different newsletter. 

🦄 Where have I been?

• Are you hearing tons about GLP-1s and still aren’t super sure what they are or what the differences between them are? Are you wondering about the pros and cons and how they work? I went on Scientific American’s Science Quickly to tell you.

• I wrote another piece for Scientific American as well about the NEW GLP-1s, the ones up for approval or coming up in clinical trials that are even more effective for weight loss…and why that’s not always great.

• For Templeton, I wrote about the evolution of the human brain…and how changes in our very anatomy and structure come down not to mutations IN our DNA, but changes in how that DNA is tagged.

• Very excited to write for National Geographic about beige fat (my favorite kind)! This fat cell type can store energy, but it can burn it too, and it might whisper sweet nothings to your arteries, helping them to relax and reduce your blood pressure.

• I also got to write for National Geographic about how the brain responds to exercise. Because it turns out that you need the brain to get swole, or the body doesn’t improve at all.

• And I got to write about snow leopards! They are gorgeous, they are stealthy, they are magnificent—and they also leave scent marks to attract mates, which are SO STRONG you can smell them for up to 40 days later with your human nose.

• I also have a feature in Science News about the subnivium, an ecosystem that only exists underneath snowpack! With climate change, there’s danger that it, and the species that rely on it, might disappear entirely.

🔥 Where have you been?

• Are you as confused as me about the new food…um…upside down triangle? Did you know we’re in a war on protein? Yeah, me neither. Because we are not.

• Did you know the EPA used to actually take into account the effect of pollution on people’s health when it set rules? Did you know I say “used to” because it won’t anymore? Yikes.

• When you’re stressed it can help to have a hug. Turns out, plants ALSO like hugs! They cope with stress better when they’re touching another plant!

• Sometimes, what your sheep need is not a better fence, or a gun or a trap. Sometimes what you need is a livestock guardian dog.

*Header image: Photo by Magi Kern on Unsplash