Citizen Science At Its Finest: Scraping Spotted Lanternfly Egg Masses to Protect the FLX

Participants identifying and scraping spotted lanternfly egg masses off a tree

The Finger Lakes Partnership for Regional Invasive Species Management (PRISM) hosted a Spotted Lanternfly Egg Mass Scraping Workshop on November 15th, 2025, yielding a robust turnout of over thirty eager participants. Attendees of the workshop were able to get up close with the invasive spotted lanternfly (SLF) and its egg masses, gaining insight into one of the more difficult life stages of SLF to detect.

Throughout the workshop, participants learned the background of SLF and its life cycles, management efforts, and the current status of SLF in our region. Then they were able to go in the field and see a population in person. What makes this workshop unique is that many people in the Finger Lakes haven’t seen spotted lanternflies yet since they are still just emerging in our region. By bringing people in-person to a population, they are being equipped with the knowledge they need to identify these invaders in the field and take the proper prevention measures.

In the field, participants took a hands-on approach and scraped egg masses off around fifty trees of varying species at the known SLF population at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. With there being typically 30-50 eggs per mass, our participants potentially removed 1500-2500 spotted lanternflies from the area. That’s a lot of lanternflies!

Thank you to everyone who participated in our workshop. You all made an impact!

Stay tuned for more events and workshops like this one and learn how you can prevent the spread of invasive species in the Finger Lakes Region.