She resembles a little black ant, but the scientists gathered around her know better. She is an Anastatus orientalis wasp, our potential ally in the war against spotted lanternflies.
There's nothing in her glass jar except a piece of bark that looks like it's been smeared with spackle. Oblong shapes create hummocks beneath the coating.
The wasp lifts her head and drills down with her stinger, which can taste the living goo of the insect egg it pierces. If the taste is right, she will squeeze one of her own eggs inside.
The researchers will learn in a few weeks what she decided, when the egg's occupant emerges. If it's one of her offspring, that's another black mark for our alliance with her species-an alliance that's looking increasingly shaky.
Scientists hope to partner with A. orientalis because these wasps attack spotted lanternflies, invasive pests that are spreading across the country. Spotted lanternflies are killing grapevines, bombarding homeowners on their patios, and blackening gardens with their sticky feces. No one is sure what they'll do when they reach new areas such as California.
In their native range in China, spotted lanternflies rarely cause problems. They are kept in check by A. orientalis and another parasitic wasp called Dryinus sinicus, which is also being vetted as a potential pest-killing ally. If these wasps pass our tests, researchers will release them on American soil, sending them out to slay our lanternfly foes.
But in this sterile white room on a military base an hour southeast of Boston, the Anastatus wasp is not attacking the eggs of our enemy. Instead, she is piercing an egg laid by another type of lanternfly called Poblicia fuliginosa, which lives in winged sumac thickets in the southern U.S. If the Chinese wasps are released in the U.S., they will probably kill spotted lanternflies-but they might also kill these harmless native lanternflies and other American insects.
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