Saint Vincent professor seeks public participation in spotted lanternfly research

Sep. 8—Saint Vincent professor and entomologist Michelle Duennes was walking the lots at a Steelers tailgate last year near Heinz Field. But she wasn't looking for the perfectly grilled kielbasa.

She was looking for spotted lanternflies.

"We were also looking at the license plates of people who came from out-of-state," Duennes said. Research out of Penn State University posits a link between large regional events like professional sports and stadium concerts, and the spread of the invasive spotted lanternfly that has done damage to some Pennsylvania crops and annoyed Keystone State residents since it arrived in 2015.

"People come to an area with lanternflies, park for a few hours and then go back home," Duennes said. "Railroads also seem to be another main method of transport."

But as someone who studies genetics, Duennes wants to know more about bugs themselves, and how their interaction with humans and a new environment is changing those genetics.

Duennes is leading the Spotted Lanternfly Invasion Archive, a project to document and study the way the insects, which came to the U.S. from China, adapt to new conditions, and she is looking for help from fellow academics as well as aspiring citizen-scientists.

"There's a lot of public interest in them, and it went from a capstone project that one of my students was working on to something I think we'll be able to continue," she said.

Last year, 23 participants helped collect more than 100 lanternfly samples. In addition to studying their genetic markers, Duennes also studied their morphometrics, recording the way their wing veins intersect to determine if they change based on things like sex or geography.

That group included Elaine Bennett, dean of Saint Vincent's School of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

"We had a substantial population last year," said Bennett, who lives in West Mifflin. "I was happy to collect samples from the section of the Great Allegheny Passage where my husband and I go running."

Early this summer, Bennett's son went out to their backyard multiple times per day to spray their rose bushes with Dawn dish soap and water to collect loads of lanternfly nymphs.

This year, 31 Allegheny County and 14 Westmoreland residents are helping to collect samples, trapping the bugs alive and placing them into a rubbing alcohol solution to be collected and studied by Duennes.

"It's a way for people to do something about the problem and also contribute to research," she said.

Duennes has also partnered with biochemist Al McDonnell at Chatham University in Pittsburgh to bring the study of the lanternflies' various proteins and metabolites into the body of research.

"We met on Tuesday and talked about things like freezing them in liquid nitrogen to look at differences in the proteins they might have," she said. "We could sequence DNA from their gut to determine what types of plants they're feeding on."

Like many people who are trying to kill as many lanternflies as they can find, Duennes said she's noticed that, anecdotally, it's a little more difficult to just walk right up and step on one this year.

"Most times, people stomp on them, and so the ones that get way — the ones that jump faster and farther — are the ones that will survive to reproduce," she said.

Rachael Sarnowski graduated Saint Vincent in 2020, and passes by a couple of hundred dead lanternflies every day on her way to work as a research assistant at UPMC Magee Hospital in Pittsburgh's Oakland neighborhood.

"I love helping with science," said Sarnowski, 22, who also comes home to a front yard full of lanternflies in the city's Brighton Heights neighborhood. "I'll have no problem whatsoever collecting samples."

Duennes said the project's ultimate goal is to track the spotted lanternfly for multiple decades — presuming, as many do, that it's too late to eradicate it — scanning its genome to see how human interaction and the environment changes them.

She thinks Westmoreland County, where reports of spotted lanternflies are slowly becoming more frequent, is a great place to do that.

"We've got a huge spread of the city neighborhoods covered," she said. "But they're not all the way in Westmoreland County yet. I'd like to collect samples from the early part of the 'invasion' so we can track their changes over time."

She would also like to partner with local school districts where lanternflies are a problem.

"I'd love to have students collect them, but then we can go out, talk a little about spotted lanternflies, dunk a few in liquid nitrogen for the kids to see and incorporate teaching as another aspect of this."

Bennett said the educational aspect of the project is part of the reason she and her family volunteer to help.

"It's important because the more we can do to help support scientific research on changes in invasive species, in the environment, in the climate, the more we can contribute to an informed citizenry and informed policymakers," she said.

Anyone interested in contributing to the study can go to MAduennes.wordpress.com and click on the "Spotted Lanternfly Invasion Archive" link.

Patrick Varine is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Patrick by email at pvarine@triblive.com or via Twitter .