The spotted lanternfly is ravaging the eastern US. Pet dogs are coming to the rescue

Frequently found plastered across windscreens along the US's Atlantic Coast, spotted lanternflies are a multimillion-dollar disaster for the US – and the wine industry is hardest hit. Meet the good boys and girls of the resistance.

Fozzie was panting in the viscous humidity of the Virginia summer when I met him. At 11 years old, the labrador mix hardly looked like he had an important job to do.

"He was puppy-trained to be a service dog and washed out of the programme," his owner, Scott Hurst, tells me.

However, by the time I met him, Fozzie had found his calling. Nose pressed to the ground, he eagerly weaved through rows of bushes on a berry farm in Blacksburg, Virginia. Fozzie was on a mission to find the eggs of one of the most destructive invasive species propagating across the eastern United States: the spotted lanternfly.

Along the Atlantic Coast, the spotted lanternfly is the inch-long (25mm) bug with scarlet underwings you might find plastered across your windscreen or flying into your face in the peak of summer.

Spotted lanternflies are more than a nuisance. They're an ecological and economic scourge. With very few natural predators and a broad diet, these insects threaten vineyards, orchards, hardwood forests and urban ecosystems. In the worst-case scenario for their predicted spread through the Midwest and on towards California, they pose an existential threat to the US's wine industry.

Fozzie and his four-legged colleagues are part of the resistance. A citizen-science programme is training pet dogs on demonstration plots like this to find the eggs before they hatch so they can be destroyed. It's revealing the surprising power of pet dogs' noses, with even unconventional sniffer-dog breeds like the humble pug able to play their part.

A pest ravenous for US grapes

Native to China and Vietnam, spotted lanternflies were first detected in the United States in the 2010s, after hitching a ride on imported goods.

You can listen to Riley Farrell's report from the canine detection team in this episode of The Happy Pod.

"Spotted lanternflies are good hitchhikers," says Julie Urban, associate research professor in entomology at Penn State University in the US. "They can hang on at high speeds."

These voracious planthoppers eat sap with a straw-like beak along their abdomens that punctures fruit and damages crops. The sap passes through their digestive tract and is excreted in the form of a sugary substance called "honeydew". This can fall onto the fruit they feed off, and cause the growth of thick, black sooty mould. This mould impacts fruit quality, ruining the vegetation.

Spotted lanternflies feed on more than 70 different species of plant found in North America. Their ravenous appetite comes at a high cost.

In Pennsylvania alone, experts estimate that spotted lanternflies already cost the state's logging and agriculture........

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