By Jiri Hulcr, Ph.D.
UF/IFAS Forest Entomologist
A new insect pest recently showed up in Georgia — and the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences Forest Entomology Lab already knows a lot about it.
In the fall 2025, a citizen uploaded a picture of a strange bug to iNaturalist. It caught the attention of Georgia authorities and the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), because this bug may be bad news.
Do you know the spotted lantern fly? It is one of the most obnoxious and rapidly spreading invasive species brought into the United States by trade, and now ubiquitous from Virginia to Massachusetts, mostly on the tree of heaven.
The new insect — browned winged leafhopper — is similar in that it is also from Asia, inadvertently brought into the U.S. by human trade. Like the spotted lanternfly, it also sucks sap from plants, reproduces rapidly, and it’s ample droppings – honeydew – leave black sooty mold on vegetation.
But brown winged leaf hopper is different in two important ways: it is much more boring looking, which means that it’s harder to find. And it is polyphagous. It means that it feeds on many different kinds of plants. How do we know this, even though it just showed up last year?
Because our scientists run sentinel gardens of American trees in Asia. The purpose of these international research plots, where American tree species are planted outside of their native range, is to study Asian insect species before they are introduced to the U.S. and become invasive pests that threaten U.S. forests.
In our garden in South Korea, several tree species were swarmed by brown spotted leaf hopper adults: black walnut, tulip poplar, red oak, and pecan.
Eggs were laid, nymphs hatched, and sooty mold appeared and covered the leaves. Our data from the Korean gardens allowed us to rapidly publish a Pest Alert just this month in the Journal of Integrated Pest Management (DOI: 10.1093/jipm/pmag021).
It’s harder to find and it feeds on many different kinds of plants.
Information such as this is critical for agencies to quickly start a delimiting survey to understand where the insect is, how fast it moves, and what the potential damage might be. Early detection and rapid response to new invasive insect pests requires collaboration between universities, overseas institutions, and agencies, in this case the USDA Forest Service International Programs and Trade. If trade continues, research on invasive pests also needs to continue.
Reach Jiri Hulcr, Ph.D.: jiri-hulcr – Entomology and Nematology Department – University of Florida, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences – UF/IFAS
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