Meet Lucky, our weapon against spotted lanternfly
Dog will help keep pest’s eggs from spreading out of state
Lucky the 18-month-old German shepherd loves Frisbees, swimming and dried beef liver treats.
But what most excites her is her job with the state Agriculture Department, where she’ll soon help inspectors sniff out spotted lanternfly eggs to keep the invasive insect from spreading.
Lucky is in the final stages of training with Shane Philipps, her handler and a compliance and enforcement specialist. In November, she’ll help Philipps inspect businesses, like those in the log and lumber industry, or greenhouses and nurseries that could carry lanternfly egg-covered materials out of state.
Businesses are expected to check for lanternflies and their eggs on their own, so they’d probably find eggs that are easy to see.
“[Lucky] really will be put to use in the hard-to-find areas where even with businesses’ best efforts, they might not see them,” Philipps said.
The spotted lanternfly was first
discovered in 2014 in Berks County. A native to parts of Asia, the invasive insect spread outward from Berks and is now in 26 Pennsylvania counties and several other states. In Pennsylvania, infested areas are under quarantine, meaning businesses need permits if they’re moving material out of the quarantine area. They’re also supposed to make sure they’re not spreading lanternflies.
Unfortunately, the bug is a voracious eater, and it’s not picky. It’s been known to feed on agricultural products such as grapes, hops and apples and hardwoods. The insect damages plants both by feeding on them and by leaving behind honeydew, a sticky sweet substance that leads to mold. A Penn State study released in January found the bug is costing the Pennsylvania economy about $50 million and eliminating nearly 500 jobs each year.
Officials hope Lucky can help slow the bugs’ spread by finding lanternfly eggs before they’re shipped out.
She would have been helpful last February, Philipps said, when he and three technicians were called to a greenhouse where lanternfly nymphs had emerged. The four humans spent all day crawling under the tables on which the greenhouse’s plants sat, checking for eggs and scraping them off when they found them.
“She could’ve run through those greenhouses in less than an hour,” he said. “That’s really where I see her being put to use and cutting down the man hours, to do stuff like that.”
For now, Philipps’ training with Lucky is more about getting him up to speed than her. She’s been trained to detect odors and is working on honing in on lanternfly egg masses. He’s learning howto be a handler and forming a bond with her.
Some of that simply involves playing, and other times she practices agility, which will help her have the confidence to jump on a table if needed or walk on uneven surfaces.
When she finds lanternfly eggs, she’ll freeze, stare and stick her nose on her quarry, Philipps said. Right now she’s trained to detect living lanternfly eggs, but it’s possible that in the future she’ll be able to find hatched eggs and living lanternflies. The state Agriculture Department is funding her program through a USDA grant.
Lucky herself is paid in playtime, Philipps said. She’s not terribly food-motivated (except for that beef liver), so her reward for a job well done is playing with a ball.
Lucky’s training comes from a study out of the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Veterinary Medicine. Preliminary results from the study, which began in 2019, show that the dogs correctly identified egg masses with up to 95% accuracy while also correctly ignoring nontarget scents up to 93% of the time, according to a news release from Penn Vet.
The study entailed teaching three already-trained detection dogs to identify the lanternfly eggs’ scent, said Jennifer Essler, a postdoctoral researcher helping to lead the pilot project.
“They already knew the game,” she said. “They know, when they find an odor, they get an award.”
First, they were taught to detect the scent in tins. Then, they had to distinguish the egg smell from other smells, including bark, plant materials and even another bug’s eggs.
She said Lucky has been at Penn Vet’s Working Dog Center since she was a puppy. She said Lucky absolutely loves her job.
“Her favorite thing in the world is to find odor, and as much as we recognize what they’re doing and how impactful it is, for the dogs, it’s just a game,” Essler said. “They don’t know they’re saving forests. They just think they’re finding a random odor and getting a toy.”