Flight Duration Capabilities of Dispersing Adult Spotted Lanternflies, Lycorma delicatula

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.